Although I think magazine wordpress theme’s are pretty cool and a nice addition to certain blogs, I’ve never had much use of them until now. After launching my online portfolio site, Matthew Henrickson, I went in search of magazine themes. After I tried out Mimbo and didn’t like it, I found Arthemia, and had to look no further.

Arthemia Theme

Arthemia lets you have a headline post as well as featured posts along the right side. Under that is where you can put categories then a three column blog.

It does however take a lot of customization, patience and time to get it looking the way it is supposed to.

To get the headline and featured categories to work you need to name two categories headline and featured, then specify it in the theme editor. The other categories also take some work to have them display after your featured posts

Custom Thumbnails

This part of the process was especially difficult for me. The theme has a built in image resizer, which comes in very handy with this theme, since there should be a designated image for each post.

There is a folder in the theme called scripts which you need to edit the folder attributes to 777 using your FTP client (you also need to change the folder “cache”). Please note that if you have Bluehost or Hostmonster that you can not edit these folders to 777, it won’t work. Knowing this ahead of time will save you a lot of time.

Make sure to read the authors release page which also includes a FAQ, some tips as well as 500+ comments to sort through.

Arthemia Premium Theme

I use the free theme, because I can’t shell out $70 for a theme, so I got a lot of the headache of trying to make the free one work. The Premium Arthemia is mostly on auto-pilot doing a lot of the hard work for you. There is about 20+ features that is listed on the purchase page that sounds great and definitely well worth the money. If I had some extra cash laying around I would of definitely gone with the premium theme, and recommend buying it, I’ve seen many WordPress users get frustrated with the free version. You can buy the premium version at Color Labs Project.

You can see the comparisons between the free and premium versions.

Download Arthemia | View Demo

Some more contests for you and your blog.  Let’s go:

Top Commenter Contest

Be the top commenter at ILovePhotoblogs.com during the month of September and you could win $25! To enter you have to subscribe to his RSS feed by email.

Cash from Goof Blogger

Three cash prizes are waiting for you at Goof Blogger ($25, $15 and $10). Gain as many points as you can by doing different tasks.
Ends on September 30th.

Cash and Entrecard Credits

Join this easy contest at Money Online. Cash, Entrecard Credits and free advertising space for you. Subscribe and write a post about it to gain more entries.
Ends on September 15th.

If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!

Yesterday I introduced my design team and mentioned I didn’t really have any design talent. WebDesignDev has plenty of tutorials and articles dedicated to web design.

Web Design Dev

WebDesignDev was created by Michael Dunlop who also blogs at Retire at 21 (read our review here). When I first looked at Web Design Dev I wasn’t too impressed until I started going browsing.

With nearly 1,000 rss feed readers, this website is very complete. There aren’t very many tutorials (about 30) but the ones that are there are very detailed. They are all thorough with screenshots, which is something I think is important when trying to teach someone something. You can read tutorials on creating flash websites, photoshop, and dreamweaver.

I think I am most impressed with their create a website page. Its the ultimate guide for creating a website, from buying the domain name and hosting to actually marketing the website. That page could be a website by itself.

Update Me

From the website to the forum, it needs updating. The last tutorial was posted July 22nd and several of the forum topics are a month old. It seems whatever initial buzz this site received is now gone and needs a pick me up.

With the web developement category with only one post, I think this site has great potential to opening up their reviews a bit toward WordPress theme installation and editing as well as more. Some themes are already visual enough you don’t need to design your own. It could really open it up as not only a web design resource, but ultimately a top blogging resource.

Submit Your Tutorials

A cool option that WebDesignDev offers is submitted your own tutorial, you can even get paid for it.

Write a tutorial for WebDesignDev and get paid $100 per tutorial published! Learn more…

Before you write your tutorial make sure to contact Michael that this offer is still valid. Not a bad way to make $100.

I have no graphic talent whatsoever which makes it a bit harder to be a blogger. There are lots of times that I would love to create my own image for a post or feature on the blog. So to get banners made I have to hire a few bloggers that I think does great work.

Mark from Me and My Drum

I keep telling Mark to set up a portfolio of his work. He mostly works on word of mouth, so I’m spreading a bit more of a word for him. I needed 125×125 banners made from Mark and he delivered with several buttons that I still use today. Now I am trying to convince Mark to make a header for Contest Live.

He just remade his blog with the WP-Vybe theme and a stunning new header. Get in touch with Mark and tell him BAYB sent you!

Visit Mark at Me and My Drum

Kim from JA Blog Graphics

Kim has a great portfolio of all her banner work. She even updates a blog posting the new banners as well as a link to the customers website. So not only will you receive your banner but possibly a free link as well.

Here are the banners that were made for me:

Take a look at her pricing, it’s very affordable. For a static 125×125 button you will only pay $5. For bloggers 125×125 buttons are so universal you can use it for anything, advertising, Entrecard, or Project Wonderful.

Visit Kim at JA Blog Graphics

Karen C from A Blog of Goodies

I’ve mentioned A Blog of Goodies several times lately. I had noticed she had made some buttons, so while waiting for Kim’s buttons and forgetting about Mark’s work, I asked Karen to make one for Contest Live. I was very pleased and surprised at how much I liked the button and how fast she made it for me.

I don’t know if she officially makes banners for money, but she may do some work for a few bucks.

Do you do design work? Fill out your portfolio and do some work for us and get featured!

After blogging about Performancing Ads I never made much use of it. I left it on the sidebar for less than a week and just moved on. Why run Performancing Ads when I have OIOPublisher? Now you can do both.

Perfomancing Ads with OIOPublisher

Performancing has made it easy to get your ad code for whichever region you want. You can add this code to OIOPublisher or directly to a blog.

After you get the code you can go to your OIOPublisher dashboard and install the code into your default ads. You need to change the defauly ad as HTML. From there just copy and paste the code they have given you.

This is a bit of a hassle as for every box in OIOPublisher you need to create a new region. As always with Performancing the first box is always “advertise here” which I also don’t like. I don’t want to send advertisers to sign-up there to buy an ad from me, I want people FROM Performancing to sign-up for my ad. Otherwise I could do the advertising myself.

However, this little tip may be great for your blog if you aren’t getting enough advertisers. Thanks to Rockfuse for posting about it.

Make Money With PerformancingAds
Buy the OIOPublisher Plugin

Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest. We only had one DVD to giveaway this time, but if you didn’t win, you can check it on Amazon. I’ve viewed it and thought it was pretty good movie, the best was the actual Heckling.

Winners

Heckler DVD: DR Wright

Autographed Jamie Kennedy Cap: Caffinephil

Thanks again to all the participants!

To successfully network a blog with other blogs in your niche can do wonders for your SEO, traffic and overall branding. I had that idea with Contest Live. Its the only active contest voting network and with so many contests going on daily, I thought it would be a perfect resource for bloggers with contests. After getting set-up with the website and content up I began contacting the blogs on the Top 20 Blogs list as well as several others.

And The Result Was…

Well it was sad. I got one response declining link exchange and that. One actually asked a bit more about Contest Live, but that was two weeks ago, with no response since.

As BAYB has become a great place to find contest blogs as well as our weekly contest round-up, I not only envisioned Contest Live as a place for contests, but also a place to find other great contest blogs.

So how do I attain that with a failed networking campaign?

Attraction with Contests

To get initial buzz and visitors, sponsoring contests has been a huge boost. I have sponsored entrecard credits and advertising space for Contest Live. I’ve been able to balance links to Contest Live as well as the blog.

Getting set-up as a sponsor was a lot easier than I thought. Some contests were already in progress and I caught them early enough to throw in an additional prize. Ive also contacted people who are looking to host a contest and get in that way.

I even got my own contest featured at A Blog of Goodies and was able to pick up several great members and people submitting great contests.

We have a great guide 6 Tips for Hosting a Blogging Contest, which is a little old, but still remains pretty valid. I am looking to feature a few more contest tips upcoming.

Have you been able to use contests to further promote your website?