It’s time for another free review, and this time it is for Thou Shall Blog, a blog that describes itself as a ‘beginner’s blog for beginners’ and says it’s there to document a ‘personal journey in the blogosphere’.  

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like a great start to me. I’m not really fond of newbie blogs about what newbies need to know, much like I don’t like MMO blogs that don’t actually MMO! But I was prepared to give this one a chance because you can’t judge a blog by its niche.

First impressions of this blog, and please remember that it’s first impressions that count, is that the template is boring. Everything is white, grey, or a teal which is suspiciously close to grey. It’s certainly easy to read, but it’s not at all eye-catching. Even the RSS icon is black and white! I realise some people may consider this style to be ‘refined’ but I will always consider it to be just ‘plain’. The layout really needs something extra.

The content is easily browsable from the front page, with a few sentances  of each post visible at the same time. Some people will insist that it should be full posts or nothing, but I don’t really care either way. At least you can browse a wide selection of his recent posts, and hopefully find something that interests you.

Speaking of interest, I wasn’t particularly engaged by the content on offer. It’s certainly very informative, even including samples of code where they’re appropriate, but they’re just not interesting unless you’re desperately seeking help with something. That’s no fault of the blog, just a product of the niche that means casual readers aren’t particularly engaged.

Also, this writer seems to enjoy saying “Content is King but Traffic is Queen”.

Overall I’d give it a …… hmm, that’s a tough one. The blog isn’t bad as such, it just isn’t the sort of things I look for in a blog. I suppose it should get a 5 out of 10.

It always seems a daunting task when starting out with a new blog- first impressions are so important, so where can you find that perfect theme which isn’t the same as everyone else? Prepare for some window shopping because I’m going to give you a list of my favourite places to find free wordpress themes.

• http://www.wpthemesfree.com/ - This website has a few thousand free wordpress themes, with a couple of new ones added every day. There’s bound to be something remotely suitable in here, and to make it even more useful there’s a nifty search option in the right hand column. You can search by category, or if you have something specific in mind you can also search by colour, columns, sidebar location or a handful of other features.

• Bloggeries theme section has a selection of themes by a few rather unrecognised designers. Some of them are truly beautiful (a personal favourite of mine is the scroll layout, if only it matched what I’m about!), and because they’re a less commonly used source, it’s unlikely you’ll bump into someone with an identical theme. Please do me a small favour though, if you’re going to sign up to Bloggeries please do so with this link: CLICK. It gives me credit for referring you.

• Slider v3 is the most customisable template I have found, and as such I felt it deserved a special mention. It has an in-built, incredibly easy menu to edit the theme, and allows you to alter header height, sidebar width, sidebar location, which posts are open or closed, completely redesign your colour scheme and icons you use. The default settings are quite plain, but here are two examples of what you can do with this theme; Example#1 & Example#2. Did I mention the rotating header script comes with it? I have now!

• For those of you that are cleverer than I, there is a Wordpress Theme Generator here: http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/ but I myself just aren’t clever enough to make anything spectacular with it.

Google will give you thousands or results for ‘free wordpress themes’, and many of them are quite good. When choosing a theme, check to see whether you have permission to edit any part of it, such as changing the header or colour scheme. If you can, then that gives you another degree of personalisation to your favourite theme.

Just be sure to leave the designer’s links (and their sponsor’s) in the footer. They deserve their credit for giving you the free theme.

When you don’t have any cash to spare, but still want to make your way in the net, there are a handful of recourses you can use to spread your links around. The huge advantage of free services of course, is that they cost you nothing to use and so any gains you make is all profit.

• Forums. There’s no better place on the Internet to strut your stuff or ask for help. They’re the internet equivalent of wandering down to the local pub and having a few pints. You never know who you’re gonna bump into, and just how useful those contacts will be. Some of the more useful forums to join are Bloggeries, Digital Point (beware of shifty people) and anything relative to what you’re writing. Smaller communities are often better quality. Larger communities, like larger cities, end up attracting scumbags and scammers.
• Social Networks are a highly regarded way of getting your pages indexed in google, and getting the attention of the casual web surfer. They are, however, difficult to use effectively and you get better results when someone happens to submit your writings without you begging for it or asking for an exchange. Stumbleupon is a personal favourite, other bloggers fantasie about reaching the front page of digg. I suppose it gives them a warm little feeling inside, but digg doesn’t appeal as much to me.
• Blog Engage is a social network that is similar to digg, but deserves a special mention for itself because it is just for blog posts, and nothing more. That shows a lot of potential for bloggers to promote themselves without competing with youtube videos and news articles.
• Entrecard. The infamous Entrecard is free, but if you’re going to get anything out of it you have to put into it.
• Search Engines are the holy grail of free traffic. They bring you the people who are actually, actively searching for you. Unfortunately, like Monty Python’s grail, you’ll find yourself going through al sorts of jokes, antics and quests to gain this source of traffic.
• Directories. They may help you with your keywords, and quality is more important that quantity, but don’t expect many people to find you thorugh them. Normal people search the search engines to find what they’re looking for, after all.
• Statcounters, including statcounter.com itself and google analytics, are invaluable free tools if you want to know how your place in the net is being used. There are a multitude of them out there, but the two mentioned above are free and will work for any type of site. Statcounter is best for low levels of traffic, which Google Analytics is more use for larger sites.

And in the spirit of free things, I have decided to offer free blog reviews and ctitiques to help the new fellows on the block get some feedback on how they’re going. All you’ve got to do is ask HERE (<– click)