Just wanted to thank everyone who sent me emails from last year about Daily Digest 3 (Wow. I’ve ignored this for so long, haven’t I?), and to say that I’m deeply sorry for not updating this earlier. I usually upload my themes to themes.wordpress.net but ever since they “cleaned up” that place, I couldn’t update the themes I have there anymore. Thus the delay.

Anyway, here’s the updated Daily Digest 3 Wordpress theme. I fixed some stuff in the codes, and you should be able to use the “Tags” of WordPress 2.3+ with this. Let me know if you encounter bugs.

:: Download Daily Digest 3 ::

Stargaze is the WordPress theme I’m currently using on my personal blog. Here are some tips (w3c compliant classes) that you can use with “Stargaze”:

• To center an image and put a blue border around it (see example screenshot image here), use the class name “itemcenter“, e.g. <img src=”image.jpg” alt=”image name” class=”itemcenter” />
• To align an image to the left and put a blue border around it, use the class name “itemleft“.
• To align an image to the right and put a blue border around it, use the class name “itemright“.
• To center a text or paragraph, use the class name “center“.

:: Download Stargaze ::

This version is a valid xhtml with error-free css. Works fine with WordPress 2.3 to 2.3.3.

Hey. I’ve updated the “Forever Autumn” theme. Sorry it took a while, I’ve been really busy. A special thank you to everyone who’s using this theme!

:: Download Forever Autumn ::.

	Forever Autumn (07.07.07) Forever Autumn is a widget-ready 2-column theme with 404.php and archive.php. Test Run | Download zip file
	Working Girl (05.20.07) 2-column, blue, yellow, orange and green color combination. Test Run | Download zip file
	Daily Digest 3.0 (03.11.07) Widget-ready. 3-column newspaper-style theme. Test Run | Download zip file
	Psalm 8 (03.02.07) A 2-column theme. Widget-ready. Header image of a person’s silhouette sitting on a beach, watching the sunset. Psalm 8 falls under the category of biblical and nature themes. Original photo taken by me Test Run | Download zip file
	Camera Woman (01.03.06) A 2-column girlie theme. Widget-ready. Purple, Pink and White combination. Header Image of Girl with Camera. Test Run | Download zip file
	Daily Digest 2.0 (10.17.06)A 2-column newspaper-style theme composed of black, white and gray colors. Background: Black Test Run | Download zip file
	Daily Digest 1.0 (10.17.06)A 2-column newspaper-style theme composed of black, white and gray colors. Background: White Test Run | Download zip file
	A Long Journey 1.0 (09.17.06) A simple green-layout. Widget-ready. 2-column design with header, sidebar and footer. Header image with stuffed bear, hat and suitcase. Test Run | Download zip file

Hey there!

I’ve spent a lot of time making these themes. If you get some benefit from them, please consider showing your gratitude and appreciation in a more tangible way.

Thanks in advanced!

The Google Adsense team is aiming to decrease the number of check payments they send out to publishers every month in order for them to do business in a more enviroment-friendly way. So today, they are asking publishers to support this cause by signing up to receive Adsense payments via Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT).

Advantages of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT):

EFT payments eliminate the paper required to print and send you your check, since they’re deposited directly in your bank account just days after they’re posted to your Payment History page. There’s another advantage: you’ll have access to your payments sooner. EFT is the fastest and greenest payment option available, and signing up is simple. Get your banking details ready and simply follow the steps in our Help Center.

I would’ve instantly signed up for the Electronic Fund Transfer (the charge for Secured Payment is killing me!) but unfortunately, this service is not yet available in the Philippines. Here’s the list of countries that have Electronic Fund Transfer supported:

Maybe Google Adsense can do something about getting EFT available in the Philippines too in the near future.

The StatsPRO allows you to view the number of site visitors who have viewed or clicked the specific items in your feed.

What does “Reach” tell us?

Subscribers is a measure of how many people are subscribed to your feed. At any given time, you can expect that a certain percentage of this subscriber base is actively engaging with your content and this “Reach” measurement provides this additional insight.

Additionally, there may be people viewing your content beyond your known subscriber base. For example, they may view your content on a feed search engine or news filter site.

Reach aggregates both of these groups, providing an accurate and useful measurement of your true audience.

Now we can see the daily number of subscribers who interacted with our feed content. I’ve activated mine and so far I’m liking what I see.

How do you activate “Reach”?

You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the “Item Views” checkbox to activate these PRO features.

MyBrand on the other hand allows you to use a feed address that bears your domain name. So instead of using http://feeds.feedburner.com/joniang, the feed URL for this blog can be something like http://feeds.joniang.com/myfeed. But don’t try that one, that’s just an example.

With MyBrand, you can have not only the feed but all-related resources such as stats tracking, ads, stylesheets, etc. located at your own domain. I wanted to try it but apparently I have to send an e-mail to FeedBurner first to request its activation. Hmm, I can try that some other time.

Where is MyBrand located?

The MyBrand service is located under the “My Account” tab after you’ve signed in.

When I first heard the news about Google acquiring FeedBurner, I thought it didn’t matter much. But now that they made the then paid services at Feedburner free for everyone to use, then I say I hope they acquire more sites soon. Lol.

A meta description should be included in a page not because it will help a website rank higher in search engines, but because it will help a website distinguish itself from other websites in the SERPs. Most Search users almost always check out the description of a certain website found on the SERP before pointing the mouse to the website’s link. So it’s important that you provide a convincing and descriptive meta description.

However, there are times that after you’ve written a unique, search-engine friendly meta description for each of the pages, you still won’t see those descriptions in the SERPs, rather you will see a different kind of description. This is probably because you’ve recently submitted your website to the ODP (dmoz) or Yahoo! Directory, which are two of the largest and influential directories. If your website is included in either of these two directories, chances are, they are the ones that provide the title and description of your website to search engines.

In order for search engines to stop reading the title and description from dmoz or Yahoo! Directory, you can add the following meta tags inside the <head> section of your page:

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOODP" /> or <meta name="Slurp" content="NOODP" />

and

<meta name="ROBOTS" content="NOYDIR" /> or <meta name="Slurp" content="NOYDIR" />

These tags will allow you to have full control over your pages’ titles and descriptions. For more info about this topic, check out the following articles:

• Yahoo! Search Weather Update and Support for ‘NOODP’
• Yahoo! Search Support for ‘NOYDIR’ Meta Tags and Weather Update

Among the SEO blogs I’m subscribed to, I am particularly fond of SEOmoz. The people who blog at the SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog usually come up with creative ways to explain their point and they have good sense of humor too. Their posts are simple and well-written, it’s perfect for those who are beginners in SEO (like me).

My favorite feature in SEOmoz is their Whiteboard Fridays. Every Friday they post a video wherein one of them is going to talk about anything related to Search with the use of a white board illustration. It is usually Rand who appears on the videos but whenever he’s unavailable the other “Mozzers” take his place.

Just by reading their blog posts and watching their videos, I can pretty much tell that the SEOmoz office is a great place to work. The Mozzers seem to really love what they’re doing. Hmm. I wonder how that feels like..

As an SEO amateur, I can very much relate to the recent post at SEOmoz entitled The SEO’s Guide to Beginners. It was written by mystery_guest who’s also working as an SEO. I especially like this part:

A lot of people are under the erroneous impression that I am not only part of the SEO industry, but that I have an extensive understanding of SEO, in general.

This is woefully untrue. I’m pretty much clueless..

That’s me right there! I’ve been working as an SEO for 2 years and I’ve successfully worked on a bunch of websites, but really, I’m just as clueless as the next girl. Because the Search industry is constantly evolving, it’s more often than not that I find myself lost along the way. Read the rest of The SEO’s Guide to Beginners and you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Mystery_guest also wrote about keeping the SEO language clean. Would you believe I also refer to my job as “Internet Marketing” when I’m talking to people who (I assume) are unfamiliar with SEO? Most of the time, after I tell people I work as an SEO their next question would be, “What’s an SEO?” Someone even gave me this follow-up question: “Are you like a CEO?” Hah! I wish!! So to avoid further queries, I just use the term “Internet Marketing”. That sounds less complicated, doesn’t it?

To sum up this post, I recommend SEOmoz Daily Blog to SEO beginners out there. I’m sure you’re gonna love it.

Note: This is NOT a sponsored post. I just happen to like SEOmoz.

• Since WordPress is Open-Source, it is FREE! Just go to their website, download the latest WordPress version, and install it in your own server. But if your hosting offers the Fantastico commercial script library, then you can just perform a WordPress one-click installation from your CPanel.
• There are tons of free themes to choose from! Web Tools Collection and the Theme Viewer have awesome WordPress themes selection.
• The many, many plugins (and continuously growing in number) are free for everyone to use. Plugins are my personal favorite. They make a blog more usable, accessible, highly customizable, and of course, fun! For a long list of working plugins, I recommend the Wordpress Plugin Database.
• WordPress adheres to W3C standards for XHTML and CSS. If your blog has valid XHTML and CSS, it will most likely appear all right when viewed using different standard-compliant browsers.
• With WordPress, you have the freedom to set the categories of your posts (add / delete / edit) and there’s no limit!
• Once you’ve successfully installed Wordpress, the standard RSS and Atom configurations for feed readers or Aggregators are automatically good to go.
• WordPress has a built-in trackback or pingback feature. Trackbacks or pingbacks lets another website know that your blog has an entry that references that particular website, and vice versa (It also notifies you when another website used your blog as reference).
• WordPress has the Codex! The WordPress Codex is a comprehensive tutorial website that helps you with everything you need to know to tweak your blog. I also find myself coming back to explore the Codex once in a while when I need something or when a client requests for a specific thing to appear in his or her blog.
• WordPress is not only for “blogging”. Since it’s a CMS, it’s also useful for corporate websites that need regular website updates. You can actually modify WordPress to not appear like a blog.
• Best of all, WordPress has a large user community. When you’re part of this community, you can be sure that interaction with other bloggers is easier and faster.

I’ve been using WordPress for more than a year now and I can say that I’m very pleased with it. WordPress allows me to have full control over my website. Whatever I need or want to do, there is almost always a solution.

And here’s something exciting: Ever since I set up my personal blog with WordPress, I’ve been able to (slowly but effectively) improve it in terms of backlinks, unique visits and page views, readership (well, not really. lol) and search-engine friendliness. I’m happy that my blog has reached that certain level of “worth” some advertisers are looking for. Thanks to my blog (which is powered by WordPress) I’ve been making some moolah on the side.

Here are the topics I plan to write about in this blog:

• Blogging / Blogging Softwares
• WordPress
• CSS
• Web Design
• SEO / SEM
• Earning Money Online
• Paid / Sponsored Reviews
• Computer and Gadgets
• Latest Web-related News
• (and other online, techie stuff)

I wish I can write here regularly (due to my crazy schedule, I might not be able to). Please subscribe to this blog for updates!