Here are the answers to some questions that a few readers asked me in a previous post.

Cody asks -

What kind of resources have you found most useful in designing for WordPress? I’ll clarify a little…I know my way around WordPress to customize an already-made theme, but is there anything you’ve found especially helpful when you were learning to build new themes from the ground up?

I usually design a theme like I would do any normal website design. Once the template is ready I begin slicing, and build the basic CSS stylesheet. Since you want to know what would be helpful in building a theme from the ground up, I suggest building a theme using a code editor without any WP specific PHP tags and then break it apart in the way that WP has it structured. Here are some of my steps -

• I slice my template
• Build the CSS for it
• Make the theme in XHTML, along with PHP. i.e the sidebar, comments, post, header, footer areas are all called via PHP tags.
• Once it works, go over to WordPress Codex and just place in what I really want, or is needed for the theme. You can also use default templates as a reference. Once you know the common tags you’ll insert them like second nature.

If you’re a PHP guru, you can do some really nifty stuff. I’m not a code guru…yet. I found the Codex to be the single best resource while building themes from the ground up.

Neil asks -

If you could improve 1 thing with Wordpress - what would it be?

WordPress, I feel, needs to realize that they have grown past the “blog only” CMS that they started off with. With blogs themselves growing and becoming more like portals I think it would serve them better to add another default template which would more or less let a user decide to go with either a blog layout or a portal/website/magazine type layout.

Ellie asks -

Could you share with us some tips on how to attract more advertisers?

If online tactics and social networking tactics are not working for you then try offline methods. Make a few phone calls to local businesses who you know are advertising on Google, Yahoo or MSN. This would work well if you have a sizeable local readership. If you don’t have a local readership to boast off, then you need to market yourself offline.

Sooner or later the internet is going to become more profitable for those people who can market themselves better to their immediate community for some niches, rather than an international audience.

Bonus - A lot of people still look at classifieds in newspapers for buying stuff locally, place a free advertisement in those classifieds to redirect people to place classified ads on your blog for free. Have it easy for them to contact you {having a small URL helps here} and build it up slowly but surely. Make friends with local businesses, your local gas station, 7-11 etc…place your information there and see how it works. The sky is literally the limit here. You can begin charging as it grows, or make money on CPC ads.

Sami asks -

Can you promote Charity Week? justgiving.Com/charityweek

Absolutely! Any reader who can relate to this will surely help as well.

Jen asks -

I’d like to know more about the person behind the blog - ie you. …what interests do you have besides blogging? Do you have a day job? How do you combine your blogging and your other work (if you do it). What’s your favourite hobby?

Hey Jen! OK, here goes -

What interests do you have besides blogging? - Well since I design for a living, anything that has to do with design interests me. My actual profession of choice in college was fashion, right now I’m on hiatus with that. I did run my own label at one point of time, hopefully I will be going back into it soon.

Do you have a day job? - Nope. I make a living 100% online. It’s not that great, but can’t complain either. Since blogging is more or less of an income stream for me I treat it like a job. I wake up, see what’s happening around my feeds. I write my post and optimize any posts that are getting traffic, so I can make more money off of them.

What’s your favourite hobby? - I haven’t really picked up any hobbies per se like stamp collecting etc…instead I spend whatever free time I have with my family. I do spend a lot of my free time watching movies, with family again, as I look to them for inspiration for design etc…so I guess that could be a hobby.

Zach asks -

I’d like to know if you own and run John Cow, and did you start the million euro wiki? These are the questions that keep me up at night…Also, what programs do you use for your design/coding?

No, I do not own or run John Cow or the Million Euro Wiki. I just did some design work for them.

I use photoshop CS2 for design, Dreamweaver 8 for coding sites in XHTML/CSS {I code from scratch mostly, no templates}, I use Swift 3D v.4 for 3D stuff, Flash Pro 8 and sometimes Illustrator CS2. I’m going to shift over to using Notepad++ for coding soon.
 
This was actually fun! I think I’ll make it a monthly feature.

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About the author

Hyder has been blogging for the past two years on this blog. He started Weborithm, his web company, in 2007 and along with designing blogs and websites also releases various web related products.