With the wife and kids gone on vacation for a whole week, today is the first time in quite sometime that I get to have my nose against my laptop screen and tried to monkey around with my website. My blog is powered by WordPress as you can tell from its ubiquitous blog layout and features. I use a FREE theme call Mystique. I remember a couple of months ago, I spent hours trying to look for a simple FREE WordPress theme that I can use for my blog. I couldn’t find anything that I thought was simple and clean. I ended up going to WordPress.org and installed the first theme I saw listed. Luckily, it was sorted by the most popular. So I think this theme was suppose to be the most popular at the time I install it a couple months ago.

I never paid for a “premium” theme before so I don’t know whether Mystique has most of the features that a paid premium one would have. My guess is that you probably get a lot more features and flexibility if you pay for it. As for me, this theme is good enough. Though, I think Mystique is quite nice, the point of my post was to let you know that I spent the whole day (hmm..like 8 hours) just trying to make a few adjustments. Which would have taken a WordPress/PHP programmer a few minutes to do. So perhaps, it is worth paying someone to do the web development work for you (assuming he/she is good).

The things I tried to do with my blog today were:

1. Insert a logo to the blog header. I created the logo all by myself. I did a search on Google for “free logo design” and found LogoMaker.com. It has a simple web interface to let you create your own logos. It said that it is FREE to use for your website. But, they don’t make it easy for you to download. I think they really wanted you to pay. But the ad said it’s “FREE”. I actually try to pay, but they don’t tell you how much, until you fill in your personal information. Kind of a strange way to do business. Oh well.

2. Reduce the length of the header – this took me at least 3 hours to stumble onto a solution all by myself.

Solution: Goto Mystique settings -> User CSS -> and paste the followings:
#site-title{padding:0em 0 0.0em 0;}

3. Insert a banner Ad next to the logo. This took me another 3 hours to figure out with the help of digitalnature (Mystique creator) supporting notes. I still haven’t figure out how to move the banner next to the logo yet. Oh well…I guess this will do for now.

Solution: Goto Mystique setting -> Advance -> User funtions -> and paste the followings:
<?php
function my_header_ads(){
echo do_shortcode(“[ad_code=N]“);
}
add_action(‘mystique_header’, ’my_header_ads’);
?>

***Remove the under score in “ad_code” and replace “N” with a number. I have to do this, otherwise, it is thinking that I tried to insert an ad on this post.

Goto Mystique setting -> User CSS -> and past the followings to adjust the banner position. (I still can’t get the banner to display next to the logo).
#header .ad{
position: absolute;
right: 5px;
top: 10px;
}

Hope this help some of you. Share your favorite free or premium WordPress themes, techniques and tips on improving our WordPress blog looks and functionality.

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