Please bear with me while blogdemanila.com is getting a facelift.  It has been ages already since this blog was given a makeover. It won’t be an extreme makeover but just simple upgrading and tweaking of the layout.

I’ve promised that I will use a custom theme for this blog, but due to unforeseen new projects that came-up, I don’t have the luxury of time to create my own theme anymore.

If you find anything unusual or awkward in this site, like broken links, missing posts and images, please be calm and patient.

If you have noticed that I seldom post here at blogdemanila.com, this is due to some offline projects that I’m doing . It doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit blogging. No, never!  It won’t happen.

In fact, I’ve already lined-up some topics that I’m going to post like basics of blogging, link building, adsense tips, seo techniques and services that blogdemanila will offer.

So, please stay calm while I’m  fine-tuning and adjusting the layout of blogdemanila.com.

I think this is a good news for all WordPress users.

Best WordPress Theme

WordPress has won the Overall Best Open Source CMS Award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards.

“From Blog Software to Full-Featured CMS”

Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress,  was very excited to learn about the good news because it is the first time that WordPress have won this award.  This is no small feat because WordPress was designed to be a “blog” software and not a CMS ( Content Management System).

Tied for runners up are MODx and SilverStripe.

WordPress receives US$ 4,000 in prize money, while MODx and SilverStripe each receive US$ 2,500.

Aside from winning the  top spot in the Overall Award,  WordPress also made its way into the top five for the first time in Best Open Source PHP CMS Category.

According to the award site, WordPress outranked Drupal (Winner) by a very slight margin. I guess WordPress has the best chance to win this category by next year.

Matt , in his blog, wrote “ Every member of the WordPress community, from core developer to beginning user, should be proud to be part of this momentum: congratulations to us all!”

Best WordPress Theme

As most of you are aware already, I’m making a complete make-over on my site. I thought it’s gonna be easy but it’s not. I could have taken the easy way, that is upload a new theme then bang… everything is done.

The die has been cast. I already made a decision to use a home made theme for BlogDeManila.  It’s been more than a week since I announced that BDM is under renovation and yet until now I’m not done yet. The process is taking so long because I have to install everything (wordpress core files, plugins, theme template) on my local computer. I also installed PHP, MySQL and Apache in order for me to avoid touching my live blog while doing the surgery or else you will see the blood and bones.

I’ve been in the I.T. industry for more than a decade already and studying how WordPress works is not that easy if you are not a programmer. It’s not as easy as plug-and-play. You’ve got to touch the bare metal of the wordpress core files and understand how each modules are related to each other. Alright, I’m stopping now discussing the details. I know this subject is boring.

Anyway while searching for a nice theme features and layout to copy, I admit that I’m getting my inspiration from different themes such as Thesis, Flexibility and the theme that MichaelMartine.com is using, I’ve found a brand new theme that is so cool! Really, it’s freaking awesome!

If you want to check this theme just make your way to HeadWay! Why did I tell you that this is freaking awesome? Have you seen a drag and drop theme? This is it! You will appreciate the ease of the drag and drop feature of the layout editor plus it has a vast amount of options.

HeadWay allows you to change options from behind the scene from adding your favicon, rearranging your blog’s navigation using the drag and drop. No longer you have to fiddle around with WordPress default navigation!

You can also change the color of of virtually any element of your blog such as font and  background colors by using the color picker.

For those who wants their blog to get a high Google PageRank and SERP, HeadWay can help you optimize your site too! It has an SEO options than can edit virtually everything SEO related down to titles, meta tags, noindex-ing, and more.

How I wish I’ve found this fabulous theme before I announced to the world that BDM is under renovation.

Alright, make your HeadWay now!

WordPress 2.8 Compatible Theme