Keith Goodrum

The past week I’ve been trying out a couple new widgets in my sidebar.

A Twitter Widget

I found a new Twitter widget to put in the sidebar. You can see it at Widgetbox. Check it out below…

There are several things I like about this new widget:

1. I like the design of this widget. It looks clean, and easier to read.

2. It’s a little wider than the old one I was using. (or at least it seems like it).

3. There is an easy to find link at the bottom called “my twitter page”. When someone clicks the link, it opens your twitter page in another window/tab. It’s a nice feature because it doesn’t take readers away from your blog.

4. In the bottom right hand corner there is a scroll button. This is cool as it lets people click the arrows, and view your previous tweets.

Ezine Articles Widget

I found this widget while looking around inside the author’s area. Check out what it looks like…

I like this widget because it’s another way to show readers what your up to. It’s also a good way to help drive traffic to your articles.

This widget give you multiple display options.

It will be interesting to see if this helps getting more article views, and if there is any backlink power from this widget.

Did you see it?

WordPress released a new version 2.5.1. It is an update for version 2.5. It cool to see how quickly WordPress works on fixing bugs and security issues.

Here are some of the fixes…

In addition to the security fix, 2.5.1 contains many bug fixes. If you are interested only in the security fixes, you can download these corrected copies of wp-includes/pluggable.php, wp-admin/includes/media.php, and wp-admin/media.php. Replace your existing copies of these files with these new copies.

If you download the entire 2.5.1 release, you will be getting over 70 other fixes. 2.5.1 focuses on fixing the most annoying bugs and improving performance. Here are some highlights:

• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

I’m excited to see an update already. I have to admit is was tempting to upgrade. Many people told me it was OK… but I decided to wait.

I’ll install this new version on one of my domains, and see how it goes. Then will upgrade here.

OH, by the way we get to start this all over again in August. That’s the rumored date of the release of 2.6.

Over the past month I had been considering changing themes. The old theme had one drawback that was bugging me. The header was too large, and took away valuable space from above the fold. There was no reason to waste the space with a header that added nothing to the look of the blog.

I’ll miss using semiologic, but I didn’t like any of the other themes that are included.

I could see having a large header if there was graphic which enhanced the blog’s message. But it was a single color with just my name in it.

I had been trying out different themes on another domain, and have settled on this one. I like the clean, minimalist look and feel to this theme.

Over the next week or so I might tweak it here and there, but for now this is the theme.

What do you think of this theme?

Feel free to comment below about the changes.