Magazine Style Theme quite popular used by many bloggers nowadays, but most Magazine Style Themes are not free on the net. Anyway, if you are looking for free Magazine Style Theme, this is good news for you.

HeadsetOptions.org just launched a download free magazine style theme named HeadsetsOptions Play which is not only full functional, it’s also completely customizable, all without touching any code. I must say that this free magazine style is pretty nice design and neat which can be compared with those premium magazine themes designed by Adii and Revolution.

If you want to find out more about quality wordpress themes, you can check it out my other blog called WordPress Theme Store.

This post is quite useful for those newbie of blogging who want to create a new blog using own domain.

I suggest you visit BecomeABlogger.com where this site teaches you how to create your first blog and first post by providing free step-by-step video training. Their videos are covering the following topics:-

Video 1 – Why You Should Use WordPress
Video 2 – How To Get Your Own Domain Name
Video 3 – How To Get A Web Host
Video 4 – How To Install WordPress With One Click
Video 5 – How To Upload Files To Your Webhost Using FTP
Video 6 – Choosing A WordPress Theme For Your New Blog
Video 7 – How To Install And Use WordPress Plugins
Video 8 – How To Create Your First Blog Post And Blog Page
Video 9 – What RSS Is And Why You Need It
Video 10 – How To Use Feedburner For Supercharging Your RSS Capabilities

Pink of October is two columns and widget ready free WordPress theme which is designed by StandardsForLife.com. Although this free theme is not my choice but overall it has been meet some blogger’s requirement of selecting a free theme. I personally think that the width of sidebar is too small, it will look better if this can be adjusted to about 200px. Anyway, I hope you like this theme and I strongly recommended. Click here to download.

I remembered last time after I upgraded WordPress, some of my blog entries have weird characters as per below picture. Then I have take few minutes to edit some post entries in order to amend these weird characters, unfortunately I get bored and lazy to do so, then I just let it be.

Now I only know there are few methods which can help you to replace these weird characters very easily. Anyway, before you going to do anything, remember to backup your database first to avoid data lose.

Method 1: Use Search and Replace WordPress Plugin

This plugin allows you to search and replace texts across all your posts. As usual, download the plugin, install and active it and then you are ready to go.

Method 2: Using PhpMyAdmin under Your Hosting Control Panel

You have to login to your hosting control panel and click on PhpMyAdmin to proceed. If you are not so familiar how PhpMyAdmin works, be sure you back up the database first.

1. Open your database in PhpMyAdmin
2. Click on the SQL tab and use the following quote and paste to the text area

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE (
post_content,
‘Item to replace here’,
‘Replacement text here’);

3. Click “Go” button

WordPress is one of the best blog platforms because WordPress has wide variety of plug-ins, but some of the WordPress plug-ins as below are not encourage to install in your wordpress, you can check it out why at Connected Internet.

1. Angsuman’s Translator Plugin Pro
2. Gravatars
3. Reader Posts Plugin
4. Fancy Archive

You should know how importance of backup your wordpress database, so I will not going to repeat this topic here. What I want to talk is about how to backup your wordpress database.
To me, normally I will backup my database weekly (suggest you backup your database 2-3 times weekly, but I’m lazy).

Last few days, I have shifted my old web hosting to new hosting because I’m not satisfied with the server uptime for the old hosting, so this is first time I import the data that I had backup to new database. I had backup my database with 3 different ways before shifting the web hosting as below:-

1. Using backup wordpress plugin
2. Backup through WordPress Admin > Manage > Export
3. Through phpMyAdmin

When the time I want to import my database to new database in new hosting, I’m not sure why I can’t import my database through WordPress Admin > Manage > Import since my backup file is about 2mb plus only, but maximum file size is allowed to import your database file is 8mb. I have tried to import the database for few times, but at last it still cannot work.

Luckily I have used 3 different ways to backup my database, otherwise I may be already lose all my data. Anyway, I have successfully imported my data using phpMyAdmin finally.

I heard my friend said, you should backup your database through phpMyAdmin if your database file size is very big. Also, my experience told me that this is the safest way to export (backup) and import your database.

If you don’t know how to backup your database through phpMyAdmin, check it out this video tutorial. I hope this can help.

Don’t laugh at me, I have been taken 2 or 3 day’s time to learn how to create archives using smart archive wordpress plugin last time, this is because I don’t know how to create page template at that time. Now, I told you how to create archives using smart archives wordpress plugin in 5 minutes.

Download Smart Archives WordPress plugin

1. Download Smart Archives plugin
2. Upload this plugin into your wp-content/plugins directory
3. Activate this plugin through your WordPress Administration panel

How to Create Page Template for Smart Archives

1. Open your theme folder and find page.php
2. Duplicate page.php and rename it (i.e. page-archives.php)
3. Open page-archives.php (the file that you duplicated just now)
4. Add the following coding at the top of the page (before )

<?php
/*
Template Name: page-archives
*/
?>

5. Upload page-archives.php to your selected theme folder
6. Create new page
7. At the right hand side of the “write page” page, can you see Page Template?

8. From there you can select “page-archives” (the page-archives.php that you upload just now)
9. Save it and give a page name like “Smart Archives” (Don’t use “Archives” as page name, it doesn’t work for me last time)

I noticed that many sites have selling WordPress themes, some selling $15 per theme (mostly this theme looks not very unique); some selling their themes for the price ranging from $50 until $100 (some themes more high on the price).

Since there are many sites have providing free WordPress theme to download, my question is, will you still buy WordPress theme? You can give a vote for the poll is located at the right bottom sidebar.

I’m not sure how about you, since I know a little bit how to design WordPress theme, then I have never think of buying WordPress theme, unless I think it is worth to buy for those unique and special themes.

Anyway, I hope you can help me to complete this survey. If you like my Ads Theme, you can download here and check it out the demo here.

Update 08/12/2007: The poll made my site load slow and I already take off this poll. Anyway, the result showed that 80% of bloggers will not going to buy WordPress Theme, the rest will consider to buy WordPress theme.

I like to receive comment from readers because I like to interact with them, people comment your post means that they have read your post. If you wan to encourage your readers to comment your post in order to make your blog more active, then you should try the following top 5 wordpress plugin that can help to increase your comments.

1. Show Top Commentators
Encourage more discussion from your readers, by displaying their names (linked to their website if desired) and number of comments they have made recently to your sidebar.

2. Brian’s Threaded Comments
Adds a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment. For example, when you click the reply link for comment no. 2, then your comment is placed directly under the comment no.2.

3. Subscribe to Comment
Allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.

4. Comment Relish
Developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences. Numerous tags have been integrated to allow for information to be included in the message easily (I.E.: timestamp, author name, comment, ETC.).

5. Link Love
Turns off nofollow for all commenters who have posted at least 10 comments.

NeoClassical theme for WordPress is a 3 column theme and it looks simple in the design but the coolest feature of this theme is the huge rotating header image. The following is the picture for how NeoClassical theme looks like. (Click the image to view the demo site)