A few days ago, while doing a research for a blog post, I went to the blog of a prominent Malaysian politician to check on her statement as I wanted to link to source for her quote I was including in my post.

Well, I was surprised that she was using the WordPress theme that I used for this very blog. However, her theme has been customized, a very ugly job if I may say so AND the person who did that stripped off the link back to the creator of the theme at the footer.

So in my article, I wrote what I wanted to, and I also mentioned that the credit to the creator of the theme has been removed when we have to leave it intact as it is a free theme.

The web mistress dropped by my blog, “thanked” me for calling them out and reinstated the credit to the theme author. I think that we should always give credit where credit is due and since this is a theme that we can freely use, why remove it, right?

Moreover, another person who would like to use that theme could always go to the website of the theme author to download the code. Isn’t that great?

Anyway, after receiving that comment, which I did not even bother to reply, I went to the blog to check and yes, the author is linked at the bottom as it should be from the beginning.

Did you know that I wasted one whole day trying to fix a template? This is for my iPhone blog. I wanted to find a really professional template and I managed to get a WordPress premium theme for free but I think because it is free there are many loose ends in the codes.

Of course, since I am still feeling my way blindly in CSS-ville, my progress is extremely slow. After installing my new theme, I already spent about three days tweaking it. There seems to be a problem here, a problem there which I discover by the day and I have to get them fixed or change to another template. And that means going back to the drawing board, starting from the point of searching for themes again.

Aiyoh.. I am so afraid!

Right now, I would say that I am 90% done and there are only a few more things to get done. I hope I don’t need to kacau people. They don’t like it when I ask, as if I like to ask in the first place, meh?

The other day, I was using StumbleUpon plug-in for my WordPress blogs. After a while, I decided that I should change to AddThis simply because it offers more services while StumbleUpon is only for StumbleUpon.

Well, as you can see now at the bottom of every post, there is the AddThis button. Hover over it and there is a drop down window with different services that you can use.

The thing that I do not like about AddThis, is that if you accidentally hovered your mouse over it without the intention of using it, the window drops down and distracts the reader, or disrupts the flow of reading.

This is the reason I do not implement ads like Kontera. I know some people are making good money from it but I don’t like it and I don’t want to subject my readers to it.

If I could find a better all-services plug-in for my WordPress blogs, I would be switching over in a heartbeat!

Just like I predicted, even before we have time to use WordPress 2.3.2 really well, a new version is out already. If you look at your WordPress admin dashboard, you will see why you are asked to upgrade to version 2.3.3…there are a few security fixes to patch up the holes found in version 2.3.2

Well, I just want to know, why can’t they just put out a major release that does not have any security holes and thus does not require patching up?

Do you know how much work it is to keep upgrading and upgrading our WordPress blogs even though some of us are using WordPress automatic upgrade plug-in, especially for my friends and I who own numerous blogs? I tell you, the technical issues of blogging sometimes kill the joys of blogging!

I mean, who has the time to keep upgrading, right? I guess I should feel lucky that I am only the end user and not the coder for WordPress. Haha!

If you have read my past posts, you would know that I am building a few more blogs. Well, for the past couple of days, I have been trying to figure out how to remove index.php from my permalink structure. This blog, as you can see, has index.php in its permalinks so I will not change it but for new blogs, I prefer not to have it as it would be shorter and neater to just show my domain name, year, month and perhaps the date and then post slug.

I have found two options to do this. One is by using a WordPress plug in where we have to have access to our Custom 404 file and redirect it to our root directory. Another is to edit our .htaccess file. But I don’t know how to apply what I have found to my own files.

I host a few blogs on my server and it looks as if I have only ONE .htaccess file. I don’t want to change the permalinks of old blogs for obvious reasons but I do want to start with a friendly permalink for my new blogs.

The weird this is that although I did change my permalink structure of my new blogs, which currently still has index.php in it, I am still registering a few hundred search hits. I did a search on the search engines and found that they are still showing my old permalink. So I wonder if these blog readers could find what they were looking for.

If you know of an easy way to help me get rid of index.php from my permalink, please drop me a note. I would be so grateful!

I swear I am going to go cross-eyed anytime soon. This morning, I woke up at 7am with the good intention of searching for themes for my four new WordPress blogs and a website template. Well, guess what? I only slept at 4am this morning and with three hours of rest only, I soon went dizzy. So I spent the morning surfing around and reading blogs! Yeah… Queen of Procrastination in action here!

I chanced upon many websites and blogs that offer good WordPress themes, including Upstart Blogger. I just found out that the blog has changed ownership. Oh, I wonder if anyone wants to buy any of my blogs Muahaha!

Anyway, after blogging a little bit more, I think I will go back to theme searching. I know tomorrow, Monday, will be a busy day for me so I better get most of my stuff done today. An afternoon nap is soooo tempting, though!