21 replies to this topic

[Ash-Bash]

Hello yall,

I have decided to start a Fail Blog obviously contains all content to do with Fails. Now I know for a fact these can easily get popular.
Now I need a theme I will be using the best Blogging software out there 'Wordpress 3.0' could some members help me locate a suitable theme for this.

[rpgsearcherz]

Have you considered just creating your own?

You could use pictures of people who (epic)fail as the background or something, lol.


I wish I knew how to turn Photoshop pictures into themes for sites/CMS's -- I could work out some pretty cool stuff.

[magnafrost]

Check out Grid Focus . Its one of the best themes I've come across so far.

[deadmad7]

Ash-Bash, on 02 July 2010 - 07:10 PM, said:

Hello yall,

I have decided to start a Fail Blog obviously contains all content to do with Fails. Now I know for a fact these can easily get popular.
Now I need a theme I will be using the best Blogging software out there 'Wordpress 3.0' could some members help me locate a suitable theme for this.

You seem to be trying out every since niche now, first forums, then url shortner, webhosting and now failblogging. And yet, this is another bad idea in your case, you seem never to think through on your ideas and you are trying things now years after failblogging niche has been explored... first of all, to start of a failblog you need a huge community, and EVEN KNOWLEDGESUTRA doesn't have a HUGE community -- millions of people visit FailBlog.com every month, how are seriously going to compete with that? Where are going to get the fail pictures? They have to be unique and users have to submit that pictures to you. But anyways, you should really think this through? And what is your site name going to be? You better think of good one Ash.

But if you are really going through with this idea then, I'll be glad to help you find your theme. As of now, Wordpress 3.0 is still getting developed on and most themes aren't supporting it already, but if you want you can use 2.0 ones that are just the same but you have to do all the tweaks like headers and footers by yourselfs.

Another thing is whether you are going to be needing a PREMIUM THEME which is paid or a FREE THEME which are usually crappy. There are many premium theme clubs now,the best so far being Woothemes.com , Rockettheme.com . Both of these clubs have PAID and FREE themes. The FREE THEMES in these are especially good and they are very customizable. They have many themes which are suitable for all kinds of websites and you can find the that fits you, I especially like the free theme called 'AfterBurner' which is really fast (claimed to be the fastest wordpress theme) and you can have any color preset you like.

rpgsearcherz, on 02 July 2010 - 10:28 PM, said:

Have you considered just creating your own?

You could use pictures of people who (epic)fail as the background or something, lol.


I wish I knew how to turn Photoshop pictures into themes for sites/CMS's -- I could work out some pretty cool stuff.

Creating you own theme requires high quality images and very high CSS, PHP AND HTML coding work -- these are very complicated for anyone, even people who are professionals. I like to create them using the 'Sandboxes' which are just basic themes and you can easily customize them by coding them, they have all the basic codes but you have to addon where you want to the images and footers and widget boxes.

There is also a new project called 'Divine' which you can add on to your Photoshop CS3+ and it can convert a Photoshop .PSD theme into a wordpress theme, just draw any theme you like and it can convert it, right now it is in beta testing and it is free and you should grab it before it goes into sales. It works most of the time, and it requires a little getting used to but after after a while you can get the hang of Divine and you can tweak it to your likes.

magnafrost, on 03 July 2010 - 01:01 AM, said:

Check out Grid Focus . Its one of the best themes I've come across so far.

I have used Grid Focus once and hated it, they use alot of 'extensive' coding it is hard to decipher them and code them again and they usally never update their themes to fix bugs.

[rpgsearcherz]

deadmad7, on 03 July 2010 - 07:09 AM, said:

You seem to be trying out every since niche now, first forums, then url shortner, webhosting and now failblogging. And yet, this is another bad idea in your case, you seem never to think through on your ideas and you are trying things now years after failblogging niche has been explored... first of all, to start of a failblog you need a huge community, and EVEN KNOWLEDGESUTRA doesn't have a HUGE community -- millions of people visit FailBlog.com every month, how are seriously going to compete with that? Where are going to get the fail pictures? They have to be unique and users have to submit that pictures to you. But anyways, you should really think this through? And what is your site name going to be? You better think of good one Ash.

But if you are really going through with this idea then, I'll be glad to help you find your theme. As of now, Wordpress 3.0 is still getting developed on and most themes aren't supporting it already, but if you want you can use 2.0 ones that are just the same but you have to do all the tweaks like headers and footers by yourselfs.

Another thing is whether you are going to be needing a PREMIUM THEME which is paid or a FREE THEME which are usually crappy. There are many premium theme clubs now,the best so far being Woothemes.com , Rockettheme.com . Both of these clubs have PAID and FREE themes. The FREE THEMES in these are especially good and they are very customizable. They have many themes which are suitable for all kinds of websites and you can find the that fits you, I especially like the free theme called 'AfterBurner' which is really fast (claimed to be the fastest wordpress theme) and you can have any color preset you like.


Creating you own theme requires high quality images and very high CSS, PHP AND HTML coding work -- these are very complicated for anyone, even people who are professionals. I like to create them using the 'Sandboxes' which are just basic themes and you can easily customize them by coding them, they have all the basic codes but you have to addon where you want to the images and footers and widget boxes.

There is also a new project called 'Divine' which you can add on to your Photoshop CS3+ and it can convert a Photoshop .PSD theme into a wordpress theme, just draw any theme you like and it can convert it, right now it is in beta testing and it is free and you should grab it before it goes into sales. It works most of the time, and it requires a little getting used to but after after a while you can get the hang of Divine and you can tweak it to your likes.


I have used Grid Focus once and hated it, they use alot of 'extensive' coding it is hard to decipher them and code them again and they usally never update their themes to fix bugs.

I'll definitely look into that program, although I deal in Joomla mostly, not Wordpress (as I don't really blog much, I focus more on informational sites and stuff). I am pretty good with HTML though and am working my way through PHP now, and I plan to hit up CSS after.

[deadmad7]

rpgsearcherz, on 03 July 2010 - 07:17 AM, said:

I'll definitely look into that program, although I deal in Joomla mostly, not Wordpress (as I don't really blog much, I focus more on informational sites and stuff). I am pretty good with HTML though and am working my way through PHP now, and I plan to hit up CSS after.

Hahah.. I really admire Joomla coders, they have much more knowledge than Wordpress coders and they can come up with good widgets and extensions -- Wordpress people are lazy and get away with Wordpress being more 'bendable' than Joomla. If you want to code in Wordpress, you don't really need good HTML knowledge, its entirely PHP and you can even cheat off the CSS by using the default themes, I hope you can get into Wordpress fast.

And there are more JOOMLA projects like this than Wordpress, I used to know alot of them but i just can't find any right now...

[rpgsearcherz]

deadmad7, on 03 July 2010 - 07:34 AM, said:

Hahah.. I really admire Joomla coders, they have much more knowledge than Wordpress coders and they can come up with good widgets and extensions -- Wordpress people are lazy and get away with Wordpress being more 'bendable' than Joomla. If you want to code in Wordpress, you don't really need good HTML knowledge, its entirely PHP and you can even cheat off the CSS by using the default themes, I hope you can get into Wordpress fast.

And there are more JOOMLA projects like this than Wordpress, I used to know alot of them but i just can't find any right now...

A lot of people who use Wordpress do it because there's people getting rich off their blogs, and everyone assumes it's easy enough that everyone can make millions.

I just really don't like how it seems to me -- it just doesn't seem to be feature-packed like Joomla. And I messed with Drupal for a while as well but that's a lot harder to use than Joomla. Not to mention the user base you can ask questions to is much smaller with both Wordpress and Drupal.

[web_designer]

these are some sites that contain good and unique wordpress themes

http://www.freetheme...egory/showcase/

and

http://www.freewpthemes.net/

good luck ash and feel free to ask if you want anything.

[deadmad7]

rpgsearcherz, on 03 July 2010 - 07:43 AM, said:

A lot of people who use Wordpress do it because there's people getting rich off their blogs, and everyone assumes it's easy enough that everyone can make millions.

I just really don't like how it seems to me -- it just doesn't seem to be feature-packed like Joomla. And I messed with Drupal for a while as well but that's a lot harder to use than Joomla. Not to mention the user base you can ask questions to is much smaller with both Wordpress and Drupal.

That's that people think that they can get rich off Wordpress, and what they believe in is ALSO true. Wordpress is your complete arsenal to get rich in the internet. It has customization -- you can bend it to any type of of site. It has user-friendly controls -- even 'newbies' can get good at all. It has seo -- more than a hundred SEO plug ins to rank high in Google. It also has a admin panel than Joomla, It's more simple.

Though I agree with you, Joomla is more powerful and more bendable than Wordpress but people just find Wordpress so attractive because it is publicized that way and its made to be simple too. Joomla is primarily made for hard-core programmers and site admins.

I personally use Wordpress, Joomla, Mambo and Drupal. I find all of them good in their own ways. So, I guess it all depends on the type of site you want to make and what codings that you know to make.

web_designer, on 03 July 2010 - 12:37 PM, said:

these are some sites that contain good and unique wordpress themes

http://www.freetheme...egory/showcase/

and

http://www.freewpthemes.net/

good luck ash and feel free to ask if you want anything.

Yes. They are free but not 'UNIQUE' and 'GOOD', free wordpress themes that you find in those sites are amateur theme makers who COPY other popular sites and make into a WP theme.

If you really want a good 'FailBlog' fit theme I suggest you consider buying Genesis WordPress Theme Framework from StudioPress and customize it with the quick customizing options in the Theme Panel. They also have nice 'child themes' you can also buy with the club membership. I hope you find it helpful.

[ProGamer2010]

My suggestion a theme like the show "Jack a.." will be blend in with your theme.

[Ash-Bash]

rpgsearcherz, on 02 July 2010 - 10:28 PM, said:

Have you considered just creating your own?

You could use pictures of people who (epic)fail as the background or something, lol.


I wish I knew how to turn Photoshop pictures into themes for sites/CMS's -- I could work out some pretty cool stuff.

I have considered this indeed but I have not used Wordpress in a very long time and I am sure the outcome with be very rubbish :/ I have asked Web_designer if she can make me a theme she has agreed to this though it maybe some time before she can.

magnafrost, on 03 July 2010 - 01:01 AM, said:

Check out Grid Focus . Its one of the best themes I've come across so far.

It seems ok though its not the sort of theme I am looking for, for a Fail blog it is more for a magazine type blog I would say.

deadmad7, on 03 July 2010 - 07:09 AM, said:

You seem to be trying out every since niche now, first forums, then url shortner, webhosting and now failblogging. And yet, this is another bad idea in your case, you seem never to think through on your ideas and you are trying things now years after failblogging niche has been explored... first of all, to start of a failblog you need a huge community, and EVEN KNOWLEDGESUTRA doesn't have a HUGE community -- millions of people visit FailBlog.com every month, how are seriously going to compete with that? Where are going to get the fail pictures? They have to be unique and users have to submit that pictures to you. But anyways, you should really think this through? And what is your site name going to be? You better think of good one Ash.

Well I go loads of free time at the minute why not just make loads of things I have a CEO for web hosting, the URL shortner I just leave by itself brining $1 a day in from ad revenue. I find thinking things through is a boring way to look at laugh and once you have an idea you should go with it. The domain I have for the Fail Blog is very unique and no other like it. I have already got people working on the pictures and no they wont be a copy picture off another website. But technically I have thought it through for a bit as I have got all these people working on it.

Quote

But if you are really going through with this idea then, I'll be glad to help you find your theme. As of now, Wordpress 3.0 is still getting developed on and most themes aren't supporting it already, but if you want you can use 2.0 ones that are just the same but you have to do all the tweaks like headers and footers by yourselfs.

I really do want to go ahead with this I mean the more experience the better right? I can do the tweaks myself I just really can't find the prefect theme for the Fail blog.

Quote

Another thing is whether you are going to be needing a PREMIUM THEME which is paid or a FREE THEME which are usually crappy. There are many premium theme clubs now,the best so far being Woothemes.com , Rockettheme.com . Both of these clubs have PAID and FREE themes. The FREE THEMES in these are especially good and they are very customizable. They have many themes which are suitable for all kinds of websites and you can find the that fits you, I especially like the free theme called 'AfterBurner' which is really fast (claimed to be the fastest wordpress theme) and you can have any color preset you like.

Yes I have plenty of money to by a Premium theme if needed its just the problem of finding a good one to fit in with the blog cloud.

Quote

I have used Grid Focus once and hated it, they use alot of 'extensive' coding it is hard to decipher them and code them again and they usally never update their themes to fix bugs.

I looked at the Grid Focus theme a minute ago and found it had no relevance and would look like nothing once I have customised it.

rpgsearcherz, on 03 July 2010 - 07:17 AM, said:

I'll definitely look into that program, although I deal in Joomla mostly, not Wordpress (as I don't really blog much, I focus more on informational sites and stuff). I am pretty good with HTML though and am working my way through PHP now, and I plan to hit up CSS after.

I used Joomla for my website and hated all the coding they used it was like all over the place so I moved onto Wordpress.

Also Traffic should not be a problem has my friend wrote an eBook whom he gave to me for free to get traffic to my Wordpress blog pinging etc.. I know for a fact a lot of revenue can be made of popular blog's these days.

[mahesh2k]

Try to find magazine themes. Smashing magazine theme is also good and you can use it for fail blog. There are some minimalistic theme that you can use which puts more stress on content than design. When you're building fail or picture blog make sure your content stands out instead of design. If your content fails for failblog then there is no value for design. So don't put much weight on design and go for content-oriented magazine or minimalistic themes.

[sheepdog]

This thread really makes me scratch my fleas!
What the heck is a fail blog????
I'm not even sure what Wordpress, Joomla, Mambo and Drupal are, though I could guess some kind of computer programs, maybe for making web sites? I'm just guessing here. But Fail Blog has me really confused.

[deadmad7]

Ash-Bash, on 10 July 2010 - 10:23 PM, said:

Well I go loads of free time at the minute why not just make loads of things I have a CEO for web hosting, the URL shortner I just leave by itself brining $1 a day in from ad revenue. I find thinking things through is a boring way to look at laugh and once you have an idea you should go with it. The domain I have for the Fail Blog is very unique and no other like it. I have already got people working on the pictures and no they wont be a copy picture off another website. But technically I have thought it through for a bit as I have got all these people working on it.

I don't know what you mean by you 'got people working on the pictures', who are these 'people' and how do they 'work' on it? Are they just 'you' or you do have a community or something? Cause I doubt you can gather a FailBlog community that LARGE and so QUICK... its impossible unless you had one already. By working on it -- do they take out their cameras and go around taking pictures of people getting PWNT? or do they ask people over the net for fail pictures?

sheepdog, on 14 July 2010 - 01:05 PM, said:

This thread really makes me scratch my fleas!
What the heck is a fail blog????

LOL! I can't believe that you don't even what a FAIL is, I thought everyone knew. FAILs are just weird stuff that people have photographed/caught on tape over the years. I don't really know how to explain it -- here try to look at these pics and you'll see what im talking about

so, basically a group of people started a site called 'FailBlog.org' to post these pictures that they thought were 'FAIL'. Here's what it says on wikipedia -

Quote

The site prominently features pictures and videos of someone (or something) failing at something they are supposed to do, or displaying blatant stupidity or incompetence, captioned with the words "fail", "epic fail" or "X Fail" (X being the activity that the person failed at), although occasionally there are some cases of "wins". The first "fail" was uploaded to the website on January 3, 2008. Since this date, the site has grown rapidly, with the style of the images used on the site growing to become a popular internet meme, and many other smaller sites have spurred after the meme's popularization.

I really hope you get it now -- and if you wanna get your daily dose of FAIL, go to failblog.org

Quote

I'm not even sure what Wordpress, Joomla, Mambo and Drupal are, though I could guess some kind of computer programs, maybe for making web sites? I'm just guessing here. But Fail Blog has me really confused.

Wordpress, Joomla, Mambo and Drupal are CMS (Content Management Systems) which are a type of control panel for your website that has addons, place to post your blogs, edit your themes and other stuff like changing your title bar or meta data. You are kind of right but they aren't computer programs -- they ARE your site, they basically 'manage' the 'content' on your site.

If you want to know the DIFFERENCE between Wordpress, Joomla, Mambo and Drupal -- see this post where i talk about the differences.

Edited by deadmad7, 14 July 2010 - 02:33 PM.

[The Simpleton]

deadmad7, on 14 July 2010 - 02:30 PM, said:

LOL! I can't believe that you don't even what a FAIL is, I thought everyone knew. FAILs are just weird stuff that people have photographed/caught on tape over the years. I don't really know how to explain it -- here try to look at these pics and you'll see what im talking about

Well there's nothing wrong in not knowing about something and I'm glad you went ahead and explained about the concept too. I had a wrong idea about FAIL and you cleared that up. Thanks a lot!

[Harlot]

The first thing I want to say is that this is not criticism. The fact is that success is always a possibility (at least most of the time). However, you must clearly understand what your goal and purpose is for creating a blog on failures or fail. Are you creating the blog on fail because you are passionate about such humor and wish to post some of your own? Are you creating the blog simply to entertain yourself and others? Are you doing it for the money?

If you are doing it for the first two reason, then go ahead and shoot for it. If you are doing it to bring in money, you will be fighting an uphill battle. The first issue is that there is always a developed site on fails, and the idea is not unique to you. The fact is that you have competition. What do you have that the other fail blog, that people have been using for quite a while, does not? This is why Ash-Bash keep asking if you have a team or community to help you. It may sound easy to simply post pictures, but you have to put the time in to find those pictures. That could mean searching the internet for hours at a time simply to find a few unique pictures. Either way you will be seen as an intruder and you site will be dismissed by most as a imitator. People don't like spending time on a cheap copy when the real thing is free.

The second problem is that its a terrible niche. A fail blog is a niche that you can't make money off of unless you have thousands upon thousands of people visiting your websites, and even when you have thousands of people you will likely be using only google ads rather than independent advertisers who pay a lot more since the middle man (google) is no longer there. Most advertisers who buy directly from sites want a particular audience. They want a website for moms, as they can target mothers with their products. They want a website for bikers, as they can sell their bike shining product to bikers. They want a website for pimps, as they can sell pimp canes and suits (lol). Anyway, I am sure you get the point and understand what I am telling you here. If you have a website on "fail", some of everybody is visiting it, and all those people have different interest. When it comes to advertising...a site with small traffic that has a targeted audience is better than a site with large traffic but no idea on the interest and needs of those visiting. When it comes to making money, you have to pick the right niche and stick to it. I once had a political blog, but then I realized that I would never make the money I wanted to make with it without being at the level of Daily Kos. I have a passion for politics, but if you plan on going to politics its best not to write about it anyway, especially if you're going to get only $.50 a month from ad revenue.

So if you are doing it for money, pick another niche. Write about music, gardening, cooking, food, or any of those boring topics that people seem to need advice on. You need a website where people have problems and need to buy a product in order to solve them. Start a blog on weight loss, and sell products that relate to weight loss through affiliate marking. If you want to make money, you usually have to write about a boring topics. I am sure that many people will differ, as they may consider slaving over a stove all day and later blogging about it as fun. It was mentioned above that you have opened and closed all these different websites. That is a sign that the sites are not making money and therefore the project is thrown out of the window. I have done that many times before, the latest being my political blog. I have thrown forums out the window left and right. The fact is that I failed most of the time due to competition. I had two or three political blogs in my life time. Two of them were on the national level and they failed miserably. The third was on the state level and it was actually pretty successful. I only kept it open for two months and the traffic was coming in like crazy. I was receiving more visitor than I ever had before with a website. However, I closed it because I have a better idea that should have a greater effect and traffic with less effort and work (including a better niche).

Nevertheless, if you go ahead with the project, one suggestion would be to get reed of the idea that your blog is a fail blog. You should really market yourself in a more unique way. For example, you could create a domain called tuked (just an example - domain already registered) and use the work "tuked" instead of "failed". Not only does this make you site look less like a cheap copy, it begins the creation of a new word which is the domain name of your website. Another suggestion is to give commentary on your fail pics. Failblog currently doesn't do that. They simply post the picture. I remember running across a blog that posted pictures and gave very short commentary on them. I'm really upset that I can't find the site anymore. It was entertaining and addictive. There was one picture of a girl falling on face first on a slip & slide, and the blogger made it seem so funny. He was saying something along the line of not taking her out of the house because she'll be falling all over the place. I really hate I can't find the blog, the guy had me laughing all night. I ran across that blog months ago and still remember it (just not the domain lol). So those are two quick suggestions for you.

[Ash-Bash]

I have now given up the Fail Blog idea even though I still have the domain even when there is nothing on there there is about 2,000 hits a day I am going to redirect the domain to my WebHosting account to get the most out of it.
Now I am a web master of over 9 websites it is hard to create more such as this one. I guess this idea was a bad one now I review it. Never mind not that much of a loss .

[mahesh2k]

That's the worst you can do about redirection. Why redirect when you have hits and content ? instead sign up to adbrite or project wonderful and start earning bucks. 2000 hits a day is good number for you site. Besides how come fail blog content and webhosting is related ? if domain is not making sense then how come you retain those traffic ? I doubt you'll retain those unless it makes any sense. Just keep the site and hosting separate. You can instead add domain name as backlink to hosting from that blog. But then again it's your call.

[Ash-Bash]

mahesh2k, on 01 September 2010 - 10:42 PM, said:

That's the worst you can do about redirection. Why redirect when you have hits and content ? instead sign up to adbrite or project wonderful and start earning bucks. 2000 hits a day is good number for you site. Besides how come fail blog content and webhosting is related ? if domain is not making sense then how come you retain those traffic ? I doubt you'll retain those unless it makes any sense. Just keep the site and hosting separate. You can instead add domain name as backlink to hosting from that blog. But then again it's your call.

I already have a Tech Blog and 3 others that I am admin and another 2 I own. My Tech Blog has ads all over it so I may redirect the domain to that to still get money. I really have no more time to do another blog at the the moment. Basically I will still earn from the ads on my tech blog but it really does not bother me.

[deadmad7]

Fail Blogs are bloated with automatic scripts and immense advertising. On every page, there is a average of 3-5 ads and they also have their big icons about their "network" of blogs. It would be nice to see a Fail Blog that is focused on the fail.

[benon7]

Hi all, new to this forum. Name is Ben if anybody sees this post... Hope you don't mind of me telling my story of PHP discovery. I got into PHP thinking I could learn from the ground up after using Joomla, and I did, and then I started trying to make a framework or CMS as one would call it, and thought I was approaching some kind of novel idea. I disregarded Joomla as some amateur effort and swore of CMS' and thought it good to make my own CMS. Then I discovered drupal. Hated it. Then I was in heaven!! This is amazing! Makes my life easy and I can kind of rely on a community to help me!

Just found this interesting thread about Failblog while trying to guess what CMS it is created with - I'm quite a fan. There's a certain part of me that is jealous for someone getting rich off of such a novel and original idea - something almost I could have thought of. If only I were that "original."

I feel like these ideas all peak to one central point within a given community, and then someone decides to take action and put the idea in motion. That someone could be one person or a group of people, and that someone or group of people could actually make money off of the idea. So I guess while having the right knowledge or resources is important, so is taking action. One strength with another.

I guess these communities give good ideas life.

As for the perfect CMS, I feel like any of them can be adapted to do what you want them to do, and further optimized as one learns what the CMS can and cannot do. I don't have a lot of experience bending wordpress or joomla, but I have played with drupal and I love it.

I talk too much...

[soniat]

you will get free or premium themes from wordpress