Blog Design: April 2006 Archives
If you want to make your blog stand out from the rest, then giving it a unique and tasteful look and feel is a must.
I've already mentioned blog design in the past and a couple of months ago I was lucky enough to get my hands on an excellent book that is sure to give you plenty of ideas: Blog Design Solutions
If your blog gets a reasonable level of traffic, both from regular visitors and search engine referrals to your archives, then adsense optimisation may not be such a bad idea.
This blog, for example, uses a theme which is designed from the ground up to be search engine friendly and adsense optimised. Unfortunately the link is probably still dead and the theme is not overly compatible with the latest versions of wordpress.
However there are plenty of other Wordpress themes that can help you make the most out of your archives and posts.
One I recently discovered is the MW theme
This theme comes with "building blocks" for adsense users. All you have to do is add your adsense or other advertising code into a number of template files that will then display your adverts neatly on your blog. The theme also offers support for several other plugins and features, so it's quite a nice product overall.
Another theme which you may want to check out is Adsense Ready
While it may not be as complex as other themes it is aimed at serving contextual ads.
If you want to setup a simple and effective photoblog one software package that is worth looking at is Pixelpost.
It describes itself as being:
A small photoblog application that's a no-brainer to set up and use - this is truly for anyone wishing regularly to post their photos on the web like a blog.Although I haven't seen that many blogs using it the ones that I have look fantastic.
