The Huffington Post, the #1 ranked site according to Technorati and the most linked to blog on the internet, has just realeased a new book for bloggers and would be bloggers. The forward to the book comes directly from Arianna Huffington herself.
The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging
was released in paperback format and features 240 pages of information. According to chapter one, “But since we at The Huffington Post like to report on news and history in the making, we’d like to help you, dear reader, get started on making some history of your own.”
The book features the following key sections:
1. How to get your blog started.
2. Tools to help you build your blog
3. Strategies to create a community
4. Tips on finding your voice
5. Entertaining anecdotes from Huffington Post bloggers
The book was released on December 2 so we have not had the opportunity to read it yet. We will post a full review in the coming weeks.
If you are reading this post then you are looking at the recently rewritten Grid Focus WordPress theme in action - call the updated theme Grid Focus 3.0.
Late last week Derek Punsalan, re-launched his very popular Grid Focus theme and it is now available for download directly from his site. Version 3.0 is widget enabled (one of the most common requests from Grid Focus’ users) and compatible with WP versions 2.6 and 2.7. Among the features of WordPress 2.7 and Grid Focus 3.0 will be the ability to create “Sticky Posts”.
The theme includes three sidebars - all of which are widget friendly - a Primary Index (middle column rendered for index, archive, and page templates), Primary Post (Middle column rendered for single post template), and Secondary Shared (Third column persistent on all templates).
Grid Focus has been a blogger favorite since it’s release in 2007. In January 2008, it captured the top spot in ProBlogger’s list of 10 Remarkable (and Free) WordPress Themes. It’s also been featured on Blogger Buster where editors’ noted “This beautiful, grid based design is among one of the best and most customizable themes I have ever used,” and Blogger Perfume.
After reviewing the template and playing around with it for a couple of hours, there are some obvious changes users will see. Bullet points are now used in-place of an image for lists, a new color is used for links, and there is not navigation bar at the bottom of the page.
We would have liked to see the Secondary Shared sidebar be a bit wider — currently it is 240 px. That’s too narrow to get two columns of 125 x 125 ads into the sidebar. Derek’s themes have never been the most advertising friendly and with 125 x 125 ads becoming a more and more important revenue stream for bloggers, another 10-15 px in width would have been a great addition.
You can check-out the demo page below and the theme remains free to download.
