Independent Digital

You’ve downloaded the free WordPress software and started a blog but now the default theme seems a bit bland and you’d like to spruce it up a bit. Unfortunately you don’t have any cash. Not to worry. There are thousands of free WordPress themes just waiting for you to download. Some are mediocre, some are good while others are just mind blowingly beautiful. All are free. Just download them, unzip and copy into the theme directory of your WordPress installation. Login to your WordPress blog, select the presentation tag then select your new theme from available themes and you’re ready to go.

Some are widget ready which makes things very easy. In any event, you may need to do some tweaking to get the page to display exactly as you want it to. Don’t be alarmed as it is really very easy. You can check out the really good WordPress documentation for assistance. If you like, you can contact us and we will customise the theme to suite your needs.

Have a look at the tips for creating great WordPress Themes

Here are some links where you will find free WordPress themes that you can download:

http://www.briangardner.com/themes
http://www.wpthemesfree.com/view.php?theme_id=1746
http://www.freewordpressthemes.com/




You need a website but don’t have a budget to pay someone to design it for you. Did you know that there are literally thousands of professionally designed websites available for you to download for FREE? Yes, for free and you can even use them for commercial purposes. Usually all that you need to do in return for using the design is to include the authors details on your webpage. Oh, and you don’t need any programming knowledge at all. Just open the .html file in any text editor and substitute the sample text with your own.

These websites or CSS templates as they are known, consist of a cascading style sheet template and an html file. These templates are the code that creates the webpage, giving it it’s layout, choice of colour, fonts, graphics, etc and contain sample text. All that you have to do is to download the template, unzip it ? it will generally contain at least 2 files:

• an index.html file which is in effect the home page, here you will substitute the sample text with your own;
• the 2nd file will be called something like style.css ? it is the style sheet and contains the layout code for the index page. You do not need to change anything here.

So there it is, just download the template that you have chosen. Unzip it, open the .html file in a text editor such as notepad and substitute the sample text with your own and you have a professionally designed website, for free!

Here are a couple of links where you can get your free css template:

http://www.oswd.org/
http://www.solucija.com/home/css-templates/
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
http://www.ex-designz.net/template/default.asp

Don’t forget that we can help you customise any webpage for you. We can even add a database to it. Use the contact form let us know what your needs are.

Where should I place Google ads on my pages?

Certain locations on the page are ?hotter? than others. In the accompanying image (below), we notice that the colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). Also, ads placed above the fold tend to perform better than ads placed near rich content and navigational bars because users are focused on those areas of a page.

Always put your users first when deciding on ad placement. Consider how they will navigate the page, and what will be most useful and visible to them. Sometimes this will call for the ad to be placed other than where expected.

Tip number eleven to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Making AdSense fit your forum site

Ad placement and format are crucial when designing successful ads for a forum site.

• Placement. Display your ad units where repeat users will notice them
• Forum regulars usually skip the header and go straight to the thread, so ad units above or below the first post can be more effective than ads next to the logo
• Put a leaderboard at the end of the last post which gives the user a ‘next step’ when the content ends. Avoid placing it after the footer
• Formats. Adapt your design for multiple ad units and limited space
• Multiple ad units allow you to use a variety of formats to fill ad space on your site. Skyscrapers above the fold on the left side of your forum produces better results than elsewhere. However, when using multiple ad units throughout the page, the leaderboard is still the best. See the image below:

  

• Place horizontal link units just below the header as these offer a wider range of relevant topics to browse

Always be sure to blend the ads so they don’t appear overly intrusive – but then be careful not to blend them so well that they mislead your users!

Consider using image ads to increase the pool of ads to display on your site. Forums tend to have lower clickthrough so use CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) ads that can improve revenue without the need for clicks.

This is the final of the eleven hot tips on how to make money with google adsense. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Google adsense allows website owners to place ads on their websites for which they receive payment from Google when the ad is clicked.

Ads can be in text, image or even video format. When you sign up with Google adsense, you choose the format and then paste the generated javascript on your webpage. You need to choose the position carefully so that the ad is highly visible. When the page is viewed, Google determines from its index of webpages, which ad to display. If your webpage has not been indexed, then Googles? bot will scan the page to determine which is the appropriate ad.

Google adwords is an ad server. It contains ads that participating advertisers have added to the server. Google adsense calls on the adwords server to ?serve? or display the appropriate ad. Advertisers, who use Google adwords to create their adverts for display, bid on keywords and phrases. The more popular the word or phrase, the more expensive it is. They are then charged each time the ad is clicked. Website owners using adsense get a percentage of this revenue. The ads can either be displayed in Googles? search engine results page or within the content of a webpage. Google adsense is an ideal means for website owners to generate an income. However from an advertising point of view, Google adwords although an effective means of advertising, can be very expensive. The alternative is goFreeClick free text ads. Working on a similar principle as Googles? adsense, goFreeClickallows advertisers to create up to 10 adverts which are then displayed on participating websites, all for free. The only catch is that advertisers place the javascript code on their webpage. This code will then display the appropriate ad when the page is viewed. GoFreeClickis not a means of generating an income for website owners but it is definitely an effective means of free advertising.

The Google adsense code is the code that you place on your website in order to display Google ads. It is generated from within the publisher account. The code is executed when the webpage loads by calling the adserver to release a specific ad for display. The displayed ad is identified through parameters passed on by the code. This ensures that only relevant ads are displayed.

GoFreeClick works in exactly the same way as Google ads. You place the GoFreeClick code on your webpage and when the page loads, a request is sent to the GoFreeClick adserver for a specific ad, which is then displayed. Like Googleads, the display of GoFreeClick ads is determined by the publisher?s profile

An adserver is a webserver which hosts advertisements used in an online marketing campaign. The content of the webserver is contained in a database and is constantly changing as new advertisements are added and old ones are deleted or edited. The adserver receives a request from a website wishing to display an advertisement. The request contains certain parameters which determine which advertisement will be served. Common parameters are region, language and context for example. If a suitable ad is found, it is immediately displayed. If there is no suitable ad then a default ad is sometimes displayed. The default ad is usually a public service advertisement. The adserver also records information about the advertisement such as the number of times it was displayed and how many times it was clicked on.

Most adservers operate on a profit basis which can become quite expensive for the advertiser. Usually the advertiser is charged for the number of times their advertisement was clicked while the person who owns the website which displayed the advertisement will be paid a percentage of this. Googleads is perhaps the most well known adserver.

GoFreeClick is a free adserver offering a free advertising service to anyone who wishes to advertise on the web. There is absolutely no charge at all! GoFreeClick basically allows you to create up to 10 advertisements which are then displayed on participating websites. All that is required is that you agree to place a piece of code on your website (just like googleads) which allows advertisements to be displayed. You have control over which ads are displayed.