Since I am developing this new set of themes not only for me, but also for you, I wanted a much more flexible theme, so you can easily change the layout width, the header, the sidebar widths and the whole color scheme. Therefore, I also want to ask you for your input regarding design elements and features that you would like to see in the new theme. Please submit your ideas and suggestions as comments to this post.

You can see the current state of development by selecting the “web2.0″ theme from the theme switcher as your default theme for my blog.

I started with a 3 column theme, with two sidebars on the right (my favorite layout) and a blue color scheme. The borders of header, top navigation, main column and footer are very flexible in width and height. For the sidebar widgets, I created subheading backgrounds and bottom borders (with rounded edges) in different widths (130, 150, 170, 190, 210, 230 pixels), so you can switch between these values (there will be a tutorial showing how to do this).

3 different color schemes are available right now: blue, green, red

In addition to the current layout (3 columns, 2 sidebars on the right), there will be:
- 3 columns with one sidebar on each side
- 2 columns with sidebar on the left
- 2 columns with sidebar on the right

The layouts are all based on the LayoutGala CSS Layouts. For the SEO aspect, these layouts are designed in a way that the main content comes first in the source code, before the sidebars, regardless where the sidebars are located (left of ride side).

The sidebar uses the normal HTML markup for WordPress sidebars (nested unordered lists), so it should work well with any widgets, just in case you are using this feature.

Below each post, there´s a box with links to categories, tags and different social bookmarking sites. Already integrated, the “social marker” button that allows people to bookmark your post to several services at once.

Well, here I am, open to your suggestions.

Remember, these themes are for you, so contribute your ideas to the development !

The problematic piece of code is found in the search form of the sidebar template (sidebar.php) and also in the search widget located in the file “functions.php”:

echo $_SERVER[’PHP_SELF’]

I have just updated my themes and checked my blog for other XSS vulnerabilities using the WP Scanner by Blogsecurity.net and now everything is fine.

If you are using any of my SEO WordPress themes, you should either download an updated version of my themes or update your theme using the theme editor in your WP admin panel.

Updating your WordPress theme is very simple:

1. Login to your WP blog and go to Presentation > Theme Editor

2. Click on the sidebar link to load the sidebar template into the editor.

3. Search for the following piece of code:

<?php echo $_SERVER[’PHP_SELF’]; ?>

and replace it with:

<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>

Save the changes (click “update file” button)

4. Click on the functions.php link to load the functions template into the editor (this file contains the widgets).

5. Repeat step 3. Hint: the code for the search widget is located in the upper part of this file.

That´s it. Now your theme is save (unless you have previously made some dangerous custom changes that I don´t know about). You should also always upgrade to the latest version of WordPress, because there are other security issues (including cross site scripting issues) that can be found in earlier versions of WP.

If you are unsure about whether your blog is XSS proof or not, use the WP Scanner. This tool also checks your plugins for possible XSS vulnerabilities.

Instead of 3, there are now 9 different basic layouts available and in addition to the default headers and sidebar styles, I have created 5 different headers and 5 different sidebar styles that you can combine as you please. So, mathematically, there are 9×6x6 = 324 possible combinations.

And of course, every theme is still easily customizable. For tutorials on editing your themes, please visit our SEO Themes FAQ section.

Get Your New SEO WordPress Theme Here

These are the improvements:

1. Different templates for different pages: Now there are slightly different templates for the different types of pages: homepage (index.php), category index page (category.php), monthly archives (archive.php), single posts (single.php) and pages (page.php).

This gives you more flexibility. For instance, if you don´t want users to post comments on your pages, you can simply remove the “comments” code from the template “page.php”.

2. Hierarchy of the Headings: There is now only one H1 heading on an index page (homepage, category, archive) and the post titles that are linked to the full articles are now H2 headings (formerly H1). Subheadings in the sidebar are now H3 (formerly H2).

However, on individual pages, the post / page titles are written as H1 headings.

3. Title Tag: I´ve changed the most simple template tag for the HTML <title> to a better one. Now, your blog´s title is used as HTML title on the homepage, on category and archive pages there are also the category names respectively dates (month / year) added to your blog´s title and on single pages, the post/page title is used in addition to your blog´s title to form the HTML title tag.

If you want to update your current theme like this, use the following code inside your theme´s header.php template:

<title><?php bloginfo(’name’); wp_title(); ?></title>

There are quite a few different - more sophisticated - possibilities to form the HTML title tag of your blog pages, but I´m going to write another post tomorrow and give you the different codes, so you can choose the one that you like best.

AdSense Deluxe replaces special comments inside your posts with the javascript codes for your Google AdSense ad blocks, just the way you´ve entered them in the plugin´s options. But instead of the AdSense javascript code, you could enter any HTML code and text into the “code” textbox.

Look at the box on the right side - it´s been included into this post with the AdSense Deluxe plugin. I´ve simply created a new ad block named “wptutorial”, entered the HTML into the “code” box and then placed the comment “<!–adsense#wptutorial–>” into this post.

You could use this technique to feature books, software tools or whatever else you like. The advantage is that you can easily make changes to all your ads from one place.

And the best part is that you will save a lot of bandwidth and server space, because you do not need to host the videos on your own server - they will play directly from YouTube. Sure, there are certain limitations but it´s an easy way to get started publishing videos.

Here´s a funny technological nonsense video I just came across on YouTube. A self-destructing and self-healing robotic chair - LOL.

1. Install and activate the RunPHP plugin
2. Write the PHP code directly inside the editor, where you type in your article and check the option “run PHP code ?” on the right side before publishing.

Here´s an example for an Amazon product feed - the two best selling web design books:

And how about syndicating the latest news about a specific topic ? Check out the three most recent SEO articles from Yahoo´s RSS newsfeed:

For a detailed step-by-step guide to including feeds on your blog and other great (and profitable) ways to keep your webpages updated with fresh content - check out the video tutorial for CaRP Caching RSS Parser.

Just to show you that it really works: below you see the syndication of an article RSS feed from Ezinearticles.com - showing the 5 latest blogging articles.

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, "http://www.easywebtutorials.com/carpfree/bloggingarticles.php");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
?>

I´m going to post an update for the RSS syndication tutorial shortly to show you exactly how to do it. It will be available in the advanced version of the tutorial.

As a participiant in the AdSense program, you can choose from many different formats. A very popular format for example with space for up to 4 advertisements is the large rectangular banner -336×280 pixels in size.

However, you shouldn´t paste the AdSense javascript code directly into your blog posts, but use the AdSense Deluxe plugin for WordPress blogs instead. With this great plugin, you can define and manage in one central place the different ad block formats and then use simple comment tags to insert the ad blocks into your posts. This not only eases up your writing, but also saves you time when you once want to make changes to the ad styles and formats.