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 video is simple to follow and covers the complete workflow and editing process typical of the photos in that essay. By watching it you will be able to apply the same steps to your own shots and, provided they have the basic ingredients present, you will soon be on the way to producing great shots with lots of mood.

Video Tutorial: Urban Ugliness Workflow

The video starts with the production of three TIF files from one RAW capture (using Rawshooter Essentials). It then covers their conversion to a high dynamic range image (using Dynamic Photo HDR) and the accompanying tone-mapping step. Finally the image is brought into Photoshop for conversion to mono via the b&w filter and the application of a soft-light layer vignette.

The video is 21mins long and is narrated throughout in a clearly spoken voice. All steps are simply explained, with Mark taking the time to point out and let the viewer see what the effect is on the image as each step is applied. This makes it easy to understand and follow what is going on right the way through.

By watching and learning from the tutorial you will be able to apply the techniques in your own ways to bring moody monochrome melodrama to your shots.

In addition to the photo essay and this tutorial, the Highton-Ridley web site contains galleries of all Mark’s fine art images, each of which can be ordered on-line as either canvas or matted prints (using the trusted PayPal for payment handling). Although Mark majors in monochrome there are some beautiful colour images in his flora and colour galleries.

About the Author:

Mark Highton Ridley was born and raised in Scotland before he and family moved to Plymouth (following his father, who was a merchant-navy captain). In shooting his pictures, he searches for the striking and powerful in the everyday and the mundane - details often seen but rarely noticed by other eyes. His work invites you to reassess the familiar with fresh eyes and to listen to the story he’s trying to tell.

"Run-time error ´429´: ActiveX component can´t create object"

Runtime error 429 is usually generated when you try to automate certain actions in Office XP applications. Actions in Office XP applications are automated with the help of the Windows COM architecture based automation server.

Office XP runtime error 429 occurs if the action you are trying to automate needs to use either the Visual Basic (VB) function "CreateObject" or the VB operator "New" to create an Office XP instance.

The error may occur when one of the following conditions is true:

• Your application is not installed properly or the installation files are corrupt.
• Certain required registry values are corrupt or missing.
• Template objects, such as Normal.dot and Excel.xlb are corrupt.

To fix these errors, first try to re-register the application that is causing the problem. For instance, if you are facing problems with Word, open command prompt and navigate to the Office folder that contains the Word.exe file and then run the "word.exe \ regserver" and press Enter. If the template files are causing the problem, you may fix the problem by deleting the template file and then re-creating them. The template file will be re-created when you start the application. You must also use a registry cleaner program to repair any errors within it.

"Run-time Error ´339´ component ´MCI32.OCX´ or one of its dependencies is not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid"

Windows Vista is shipped with only those Visual Basic 6.0 files that are required to keep it compatible with older operating systems and applications. Due to this, users who upgrade to Vista from XP may receive runtime errors related to files such as mci32.ocx if they run applications that use these files because these files are not shipped with the Vista operating system.

The best way to fix mci32 Vista problems is to first uninstall and then reinstall the application that is causing the mci32.ocx errors on the system. To ensure a complete uninstall, it is a good idea to run a registry cleaner to ensure no entries of the uninstalled application are left behind in the registry. If you still get the error, download the latest version of mci32.ocx file from the Internet, copy it to the C:\Windows\System32 folder and register it by running the "regsvr32.exe C:\windows\system32\MCI32.OCX" command.

Runtime errors usually occur due to programming faults, therefore, there is not much you can do to prevent them. However, your operating system and application manufacturer continually release updates and software patches to fix any errors that are discovered in their software. Therefore, as a vigilant and aware user, you must keep your PC updated with the latest patches and hotfixes. This will not only help you patch up problems in the software on your system, but will also enable you to improve the system performance and make it more secure.

When you buy a new computer, the registry is free from any errors. However, as you start working on your PC, make changes to system configuration, install/uninstall programs, browse the web, and perform various other tasks on your computer, many obsolete, unwanted, and incorrect records accumulate in the registry. Additionally, malware such as spyware, adware, viruses, and trojans can also add malicious records in the registry. In due course, your registry drastically increases in size, and gets cluttered and fragmented. This, in turn, affects the performance of your Windows system and can cause severe damage to your PC.

Due to these problems, it is very important for you to perform regular registry maintenance to keep it free from unwanted junk information. Let´s have a look at some of the tools that you can use to optimize the registry and enhance the performance of your computer.

Registry Cleaner Software

The best way to clean and repair the Windows registry is to use a registry cleaner software. They are easy to use and enable you to scan and clean up the registry with just a few clicks of your mouse. Using a reliable registry cleaner tool to clean the registry can fix a large number of system errors, application errors, and driver errors. Using a registry cleaner, you can defragment the registry to remove any registry holes and re-index the registry files to make them contiguous.

With the recent increase in demand to maintain a healthy registry, there are many third-party registry cleaners available today. Many websites with registry cleaner downloads will also provide you with information, such as user and expert reviews, and utility features that help you in selecting the tool that best meet your needs and is compatible with your operating system.

AntiVirus and AntiSpam Tools

Today, a large number of viruses, spyware, and adware can creep onto your computer through open Internet connections and infected removable data, such as CD/DVD-ROM and pen drives. These malware programs not only clutter your hard disk with unwanted entries, but also add many malicious entries within the registry. These entries are usually added so deep within the registry, that it is practically impossible to remove them manually. Regular antivirus and antispyware scans can help you check your system and the registry for malicious information and remove them from the system.

Program Uninstallers

Incorrect or incomplete program uninstalls are a major cause of clutter and junk on your system and the registry. 90% of the time, a program uninstall performed using the Add or Remove Programs feature or program uninstaller available with your application, does not remove all registry entries and system files it adds to your system during installation. To get rid of this digital junk, you need something better, such as a third-party program uninstaller. Using a good and reliable program uninstaller, you can ensure complete removal of a program from your computer and ensure yourself a healthy, uncluttered, and fast system.

The registry is a vital component of your Windows operating system. You must always keep it free from unnecessary information to ensure yourself a healthy system. Registry cleaner software, antivirus and antispyware tools, and program uninstallers are some of the useful utilities that you can use to clean your registry and enhance your computing experience.

But during that time, I found that reviewing all those submissions wasted a lot of my precious time, especially because many submitted links and comments were unrelated and not even tutorials at all. There are already good tutorial directories out there, so why the heck start another anyway ?

So, I decided that I will close down my tutorials directory (i.e. for now I will just stop receiving submissions) and create a couple of extra categories / subcategories on this blog in which I will post reviews and summaries of tutorials that I come across and personally like.

I could post links to the directory myself, but it´s easier and faster for me to post my reviews and recommendations for really good articles and tutorials to my blog.

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.

I agree that most of the styles on a webpage should be done in CSS, defining the style rules in an external style sheet. This way, your webpages won´t be cluttered with lots of recurring font tags and style attributes and you will get a higher percentage of real content in the source code of your webpages, which is beneficial for your webpages´ rankings. Another advantage of CSS is that you can easily change the styles on all pages of your website by modifying only a single file - the style sheet.

In theory, a website layout can be well done purely with CSS, but there are certain limitations and problems, most of them caused by browser incompatibilities. I´m not an expert in CSS, but I´ve seen lots of website layouts done with CSS, where the content breaks the layout and boxes overlap each other, making certain parts of the content unreadable.

Eric Costello has some nice basic CSS website layouts that you can copy and play around with. But until today, I haven´t found an example for a website layout which does what can be done with the famous “table trick”.

Using the HTML table trick ( see templates in my html tutorial, I can create a search engine optimized website layout with 3 columns (2 sidebars and the center column with the main content). Usually, using a pure CSS layout, the content of the left column would come first in the source code, then the main content and finally the right column. But with the HTML table trick, I can move the main content to the top in the source code.

That´s why I´m still using HTML tables to create the main boxes in those website layouts where SEO is the most important way to generate traffic. Hint: not all websites need to be laid out to rank well in the search engines in order to get traffic. There are quite a lot of other techniques to attract visitors to your websites. But that´s a different topic.

If your website layout uses a sidebar on the left, you will usually find the content of this sidebar above the main content inside the source code. Here is where the HTML table trick comes into play. Let´s take a look at a very simple example.

The scratch on the left shows you a simple website layout with a header box, a left sidebar (menu) box, the main content box and finally a footer box, designed purely in CSS.

In the two boxes below, you see the CSS stylesheet and the relevant part of the HTML source code which both together form this website layout. As you can easily see in the source code, the sidebar content comes first and the more important keyword focused main content of the page is moved downwards.

In order to move the main content above the left sidebar inside the source code, you can use the following layout trick using a HTML table with two rows and two columns like illustrated in the scratch on the left.

The first table cell in the first table row has the same width as the sidebar but it remains empty, so it´s only a few pixels in height and can´t be seen by your visitors. The second table cell in the first row spans over two rows and forms the largest box which contains your main content.

Only in the second row, you will find the sidebar content inside the first table cell. Take a look at the source code below and you will see how the main content is moved towards the top while the visible layout remains almost the same.

Feel free to copy the codes from the boxes above, experiment with them and modify and use them for your websites. Get my HTML video tutorial if you want to learn html with ease.