I know this post is a little late, but better late than never. As a follow up to my previous post about Wpdesigner’s $5 themes club giveaway, it came as a shock to me when Small Potato (owner of Wpdesigner) announced that Wpdesigner is for sale a couple days ago. With the possible sale of Wpdesigner, the future of the $5 themes club is uncertain as to whether the new owner would continue producing themes and providing support. If it does sell, I sincerely hope it goes to a good buyer that is familiar with WordPress and capable of maximizing Wpdesigner’s true potential. It is currently listed for sale on SitePoint, with the high bid at $16,500 at the time of this post. Either way, I wish Small Potato the best of luck in his future endeavors.

I’m sure while browsing for WordPress themes, you’ve come across some that are advertised as being Adsense ready. What does this mean exactly? Basically this means the WordPress theme has been designed to have space for Adsense ads in the available dimensions. In reality, nearly every WordPress theme is potentially “Adsense ready” as any theme can have ads placed, wherever you want. In this tutorial, we’ll go over several ways on how to insert ads into your WordPress themes. You can do this through:

• A variety of WordPress plugins
• Inserting raw ad code directly into the post
• Inserting ad code directly into your template files

If you want valuable tips in inserting ads into your WordPress themes, read on.

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Today we have yet another Rambling Soul template, converted into WordPress by me. This one is called Featherlight. This design has absolutely no images. Everything you see on this free WordPress theme is achieved through pure CSS. Live demo is available here. Download it here. Screenshot of the theme is below.

Just wanted to let you all know we added a couple new pages to the site, which you can see in the top navigation now. The resources page will have inks to WordPress-related sites. The new sitemap was added so visitors could more easily navigate the site.

Here we have another template designed by Rambling Soul which was ported into WordPress by me. It features two widgetized sidebars along with a theme options page to control page output. You can see the demo here. Download it here. Screenshot of the theme is below.

If you have just set up a WordPress blog, and want to change your permalink structure from the ugly and non-descriptive permalinks such as http://yourdomain.com/?p=1 and http://yourdomain.com/?page_id=2 to nice looking URL’s, read on. In this tutorial we’ll go over:

• Where to customize your permalink structure in your WordPress admin pane.
• Date and name based permalinks
• Numeric based permalinks
• How to make your own custom permalink structure

Pretty soon you’ll have SEO-friendly and descriptive URL’s for your WordPress site.

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If can see this post right now, then you’re viewing the site from our new host, JaguarPC. I became completely fed up with the previous host, HostNine (not going to give them a link), and decided enough was enough. Earlier today you may have noticed lots of issues accessing the website, especially the demo server, which I know was completely inaccessible for me for quite some time. Just a few tips when getting hosting:

• If a host says they have a “99.9% uptime guarantee, never believe it.
• Do your homework. Read verifiable reviews, testimonials, etc.
• Try to avoid “overselling” or hosting plans offering way too many resources than are actually available.
• Go with established hosts with solid reputations and stay away from the “fly-by-night” hosting companies.
• Don’t choose the absolute cheapest host you can find. Chances are these cheap hosts will cause more headaches than its worth.

Hopefully I won’t have to run into these hosting issues in the future. Theme Lab has really been growing fast and traffic is increasing by the day. JaguarPC has been around since 1998, they have a great reputation in the industry, and I’m confident to have this site hosted with them. Let me know of any bugs you come across while browsing the site, although I should have everything taken care of.

Today we have another free WordPress theme release, designed by our good friends over at Hive Designs, which was ported into WordPress by myself. It’s a good looking theme with a widget-ready sidebar, plus space for 125×125 advertisements. You can see the demo here. Download it here. Screenshot of the theme is below.

In our previous tutorials, we went over “manual” installations of WordPress themes and plugins, which involved downloading the plugin or theme files to your computer, and uploading it manually via an FTP client. Fortunately, there is an easier way with the OneClick Installer WordPress plugin. What this free WordPress plugin will do is take a remote download link to a WordPress theme or a WordPress plugin and automatically copy the files directly to your server. Alternatively, it can also install via a .zip file archive saved on your computer. After this you can activate the theme or plugin as usual. No more using FTP!

In this guide I’ll go over the features of OneClick, and how to use it to install a free WordPress theme from Theme Lab without even breaking a sweat. Complete with screenshots so you can easily follow along. While using this plugin, you’ll be able to install, update, and remove plugins and themes with ease.

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Today we have a cool free WordPress theme up for download. This is a nice colorful theme, with a rainbow arch in the header, which is why it was called Rainbow Arch. I know, very creative. As usual, the theme is widget-ready with two widgetized sidebars. Anyway, check out the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

As you can see, this theme has space for a 468×60 advertisement. The ad code can be pasted in the 468×60.php file.