CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR (Vps web hosting) BLOG S LAYOUT 487
CHAPTER 17 CUSTOMIZING YOUR BLOG S LAYOUT 487 sophisticated than a simple blog. You can download the completed version of the theme from the Apress web site as c3rohorses-learning-layout.zip. Other Layouts You can do a lot more with WordPress. Here are some suggestions for other layouts: For a review site, you might include affiliate links on your articles or sidebars. Plug-ins are available to help you manage those links. One example is AdRotator by Angsuman Chakraborty (http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/ wordpress-plugin-adrotator-rotate-your-ads-including-adsense-dynamically/). For a site that has a number of authors producing articles, you can use plug-ins that allow you to list posts just by a particular author. For example, Customizable Post Listings (http://www.coffee2code.com/archives/2004/08/27/ plugin-customizable-post-listings/) is another useful plug-in by Scott Reilly, who wrote the Customizable Comment Listings plug-in introduced in Chapter 16. It might make sense to use the excerpt on your main page instead of the whole content or the post teaser. You can also find plug-ins that will allow your readers to vote on each article, giving your authors valuable feedback about what does and doesn t work. Chris J. Davies has a great voting plug-in, available from http://www.chrisjdavis.org/2004/11/30/ new-plugin/. Numerous photo and gallery plug-ins are available, too. Examples include IImage Gallery by Martin Chlup .c (http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/iimage-gallery) and FAlbum by Elijah Cornell (http://www.randombyte.net/blog/projects/falbum/), which uses photos stored on Flickr. A model-building or car-customizing community site could get immense value from these. If you are prepared to put a little thought into what your community wants and a little effort into giving it to them, WordPress can become the backbone of an online community. Aim to give the most to your community, and in turn, you will get the most back from it. Listen to your readers and your contributors, too. Don t jump at everything they ask, but consider their complaints, their praise, and their suggestions with equal value. Summary In this chapter, you ve seen how you can tailor WordPress to better fit the needs of your community readers. I have given you some ideas about how to anticipate your readers expectations and how to help them get a better experience from your site. These things are essential if you are to have a successful online community site and keep your visitors coming back for more. In the next chapter, I will cover some essential maintenance practices that will keep your blog running smoothly for years.
Searching for affordable and proven webhost to host and run your servlet applications? Go to Linux Web Hosting services and you will find it.