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How to Blog - 4/8 Design & Tweaks February 26, 2007

Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Productivity, Technology, Blogging , 85 comments

Step 4 takes the design perspective into account. If you want your blog to stand out from the rest, you need to start experimenting and tweaking with your php files. The best and most common step is to simply toggle between your offline blog, the files in your wp-content folder and the WordPress codex. Additionally, it’s best to change the permalink structure for better search engine optimization.

When you look at some of the most beautiful and practical WordPress themes, take for instance the Phoenix theme by Nick La, you might get inspired to follow the same path and create your own WordPress theme in the end - all from scratch simply by trial and error learning of how css templates work.

Changing Permalinks

When you’ve installed your blog, you’ll find that the links to your posts come out numerically as a ?p=1 which doesn’t tell what your articles are about. This is why you need to go into the permalinks panel found under the options tab in the WordPress main interface. Choose the “Custom, specify below” tab, enter /%postname%/ in the blank field and press the update button. This way, your post urls will include the title of your posts, which makes more sense to the GoogleBot when indexing your content.

I found that this step was as simple as that on WordPress 2.1, but you might also get a warning message saying that you have to update your .htaccess file. This requires a bit more tweaking then to get it right, but the guys over at Tubetorial give you the fix.

Favicon

A favicon is the small pic located on the browser tabs that go along with the blog’s urls. This is a way for your blog to stand out more - and it doesn’t take much of your time. You can find premade favicons from the web, but to have one that matches with your blog design, just create a 16×16 bmp or png file on paint as I did. You then need to use a separate icon converting program to save it as an .ico file that the browser understands. I suggest @icon sushi. Next, put/upload the favicon.ico to the blog’s root directory and see if it works. If not, then add the following code under the head tag in the header.php file and it should do the trick. (Add the tags)

link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”http://www.yourblog.com/favicon.ico”
link rel=”icon” href=”http://www.ourblog.com/favicon.ico”

Style.css & php files

When you start playing around with these files, you’ll be glad you’ve got yourself an offline version of your blog. When it comes to altering these, it’s all up to your own taste of how much you want to change - as well as learn in the process. For the past two weeks I’ve been working on a new project (which has taken away time to update on this blog) and it’s been an invaluable experience. DIY is cheap and you gradually learn the ins and outs of what’s possible to do, but on the downside, it takes a lot of time compared to paying someone else to do the job for you.

Your first blog may never reach perfection, but it’s all about gaining the knowledge and experience to eventually reach more optimal results, so stick to figuring out at least the basics of the code that creates the blog you see in order to grasp the future possibilities. I’m in a bit of a crossroad at the moment on where I should focus my effort, but I’ll keep you all updated on a reasonable frequency.

Checklist for step 4 - design & tweaks

Permalinks - Change the structure for better SEO
Favicon - Create one to stand out more
CSS & PHP - Familiarize yourself to the basics (and beyond)
Insert images or videos - interactive content can spice up your blog.

In the fifth step of this “tutorial” (Friday, March 2nd), we’ll be tapping into utilities provided by Google to get more out of your blog’s performance.

Bookmark this page or subscribe to my feed to stay updated.

(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

Taking Control of Your Life February 20, 2007

Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Consciousness, Personal Growth, Philosophy, Purpose, Relationships, Beliefs, Time , 4 comments

Life is undeniably a pretty complex term. When we look at all the different aspects of a human being’s life, what we are responsible for and what we can or can not control, the list can grow quite long and into many layers of details. Take for instance circumstances, emotions, skills, diseases, other people’s behaviour, luck, success and happiness. How many of these, and to what degree would you define to be within or beyond your control? An even greater question that I’ve been battling lately is the question of how much we as human beings are supposed to take control of in our reality in the first place.

Some books and teachings say that we should just let go of our desires, live simple lives and give up the thought of taking control of our destiny - that everything is going along just as it is meant to, which means that trying to alter things is futile and a waste of energy. In other words, life is meant to be a humbling experience where the solution is simply to enjoy our stay on this planet and live with care and love toward ourselves, others and the Oneness of all that exists.

Another way of thinking is that this whole reality is your own creation and you (read I) are fully responsible of all that goes on in it. Therefore, it’s obvious that there’s a lot of cleaning up to do with all the misery and catastrophes that occur every single hour and minute of every day. This revelation either breaks you if you don’t even have the strength to take care of yourself, or it has the power to create a great human being out of you that actively improves the world - through internal or external means (self-improvement or altruism).

Option 1 resembles more of a theistic approach and option 2 an atheistic approach, but it doesn’t have to be that cut and dried. The underlying question is if you have the full control of your reality or if it’s beyond your reach, found in something or someone else’s control. It’s all a paradox that seems to circle on endlessly when you think about the human levels of consciousness as explained by David Hawkins. In broad terms, people below the consciousness of 200 are denying the responsibility of their own life and need to grasp this revelation to reach neutrality. However, to get past the mid levels and reach unconditional love and enlightenment, you have to more or less again give up the control that your ego and corporeal body has access to. So what then is the answer, should a human being strive for control or not?

I wasn’t able to push this question forward until I started asking myself what the word control really means and comprises of. The traditional explanation would for instance consider having control of a car. It then means that you’re the master of the car’s movements and nobody else is able to influence it. This I would name ‘direct control’ and it follows in suit with the subjective reality perspective that everything is happening due to your own thoughts and actions - that circumstances, emotions, skills, diseases, other people’s behaviour, luck, success and happiness are all within your control.

However, I’m also convinced that ‘indirect control’ is an equally powerful concept and a very acceptable mind-set as well. This is the power of being a master at how you relate towards everything - even though you accept that everything is beyond your control. Your control is therefore strictly internal and in a way, you control the external occurrences because of your own relationships towards them. In this case for instance, cold weather does not have control over you because it does not bother you. You are in total acceptance of your surroundings and thus, you are the one in control. It’s still a kind of control after all even though the outcome is beyond your reach.

So what this all boils down to is a separation between internal and external control. Now if we look at the small list of concepts I presented earlier (circumstances, emotions, skills, diseases, other people’s behaviour, luck, success and happiness), we notice that all of them are within one of our ‘controls’ and that in the end, you don’t have to choose one form of control over the other. They can both co-exist and you just choose one according to the nature of the issue. I’m sure you’ll find out which concepts require direct control and which require indirect control.

Many people find themselves out of life balance when they only rely on one form of control. They get mad at the universe or themselves when there’s no single solution to all of their daily matters that they want to control. Fortunately, there is a solution for how to take control of life, but it takes time and effort to master both kinds of controls for improved life quality.

Or were you more inclined to find an answer to which of the two introduced teachings are more correct? Life isn’t a goal or a destination you strive to reach. It’s a path and an experience where there is no past and no future - only an endless amount of the present moment. Life wouldn’t be very exciting if all our questions were answered, but I hope that you start to recognize the two kinds of controls that you may use and slowly master from now on to make the best of your life and the present moment. This matters more to me than finding answers to all the questions I can think of.