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I’m hoping that someone in my blogosphere can assist me with some changes to this blog theme.  It’s the sidebar especially..

What I’d like to do is to have a 1 column sidebar underneath the 2 column sidebar - preferably widget ready.  I’ve been playing around with the sidebar.php but so far nothing I’ve done has put an additional sidebar underneath.  It ends up outside the theme on the right side.  I’m figuring it’s a div thing, but so far I’m stuck as to get it working the way I’d like.

So, if there are any themers out there that would be so kind as to help me out, I’d love to hear from you!

In the meantime, during my dropping today, I came across a fabulous site that has terrific tutorials on creating your own WordPress theme.  Check out CK Marketing’s tutorials.   I haven’t attempted to create my own WP theme yet, though I may just give it a go and see what I can come up with :)  Perhaps after going through it and getting more familiar with the layouts I can figure out how to modify my Wahm Cafe theme to do what I want.

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Do you have more than one website or blog that you’d like to cross promote? Or perhaps one of your colleagues has an absolutely fantastic blog, and you would like to put some of their content on your own site. There is now a truly fantastic (and easy) way to do just that - actually, there are a few ways, depending on what your blog is made of.

Feevy -

Tags: feevy, simple pie, rss feeds, wordpress, blog

Seeing the message “This Website Has Been Suspended” is definitely my worst nightmare come true, as I’m sure it is for every other website owner out there, but that is exactly what I faced when I arrived online Saturday morning.

Friday night at about 11:00 pm, I’d been working behind the scenes with another WordPress theme.  Unfortunately for me, it seems there may be a problem with the theme itself.   What occurred was a major server overload, and following that, a DDOS attack.  I’ve talked before about the dangers of 3rd party plugins, and blog themes are in this category too.

The server overload simply means that my site was using up way more than it’s share of server resources, making the server unreachable by anyone trying to access a website on it.  This can happen for several reasons (though it never should), including hacking, spam, scripts gone wild etc.

The DDOS attack is something entirely different.  DDOS is short for Distributed Denial Of Service and according to WikiPedia means that:

…is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted, malevolent efforts of a person or persons to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely.

…One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consume its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.

I’m still unclear as to whether or not Wahm Cafe was the intended target of the DDOS attack, but at any rate it was well over 24 hours before the server was back up and running, and still 2 days after that before Wahm Cafe was back online, giving me downtime of more than 56 hours which really sucks.

The good news is that I’m now back online, with a new theme - it still needs a bit of tweaking which I’ll be working on (ie:  the header image is too short), and I have to investigate the contact links in the right sidebar as they don’t seem to be working for me.  My computer has a few unresolved issues which sometimes interferes with javascript, so I’ll test that out from my laptop.

Have you ever had your website shut down?  I have enough experience with hosting that I didn’t panic about it.  I knew it was shut down for the safety of the rest of the server, but still… talk about annoying.  I’ll have to wait and see if there are any long term effects from being down for 3 days.

What Is Mobile Blogging?

Mobile blogging is an exciting phenomenon that is sweeping the blogosphere. One of the reasons why many bloggers are attracted to the medium of blogging in the first place is that they enjoy being able to make frequent updates and posts that keep all of their visitors in touch with current news and events. Mobile blogs, or “moblogs,” take this to the extreme by allowing users to post things literally as they happen through their mobile web browser (ie internet ready cellular phone). This new wave of moblogs and mobloggers keep web surfers up to date with good and bad events of importance as they occur all over the world, helping to make international communication
faster and more accurate.

How Can I Create A Mobile WordPress Blog?

While moblogging is certainly on the rise, mobile users are also in desperate need of content that can be viewed on small display screens. Until recently it has been the ‘big boys’ that have been able to mobilize their websites into viewable content on these small displays, or we could choose to pay a not so small fortune to have our websites converted into a mobile version. Now however, with the ongoing development of XHTML-MP and an awesome plugin,it’s possible for everyone to transform their own WordPress blog into content that can be displayed on mobile browsers.

• Download the WordPress Mobile Plugin from http://www.andymoore.info/download-manager.php?id=10
• Upload the plugin to your wp-content/plugins folder
• Activate the plugin. Go to Plugins > Click Activate
• Customize your site. Go to Options > WordPress Mobile (note - if you are familiar with CSS, further customization can be done)
• Visit your site using your phone’s browser

Mobile blogging is still in its infancy because the technology that makes it possible has only recently hit the global market. The first moblog technology became available over a decade ago, but it is only the past two or three years that mobile web devices have become user-friendly enough to appeal to most consumers. As camera phones, iPhones and other mobile technology become more popular, more and more bloggers are getting away from their desks and are hitting the streets. Likewise, more and more business owners will discover the incredible opportunities open to them by having a mobile version of their website online. Moblogging is becoming much more widespread that it was even a few months ago, and mobloggers are quickly attracting a lot of attention with the blogging community.

Many people feel that the limitations of blogging have a lot to do with geography. After all, there is only so current that a blog can be when you need to run home and boot up in order to update it. However, mobile blogging marks the beginning of an thrilling new era when web-based communication can happen spontaneously from any location. Moblogging devices mean that there is almost nowhere on the planet that remains off-limits for bloggers.

Mobile devices make it possible to blog from the sites where current events are unfolding, which is one of the reasons why mobile blogging has so much thrilling potential to revolutionize the blogosphere. A moblogger with a camera phone can post blog entries from, say, the foot of the podium at a presidential speech, or from the stands during the final moments of the world series. This enables bloggers to experience the same real time thrills that live television coverage provides, but in a more democratic medium. The combination of mobility and individual control that moblogging provides certainly places mobloggers on the cutting edge of today’s communications technology, and it is hard to imagine that the number and prestige of moblogs will not continue to grow in the coming years.