Even though we’re closing in on the most pivotal presidential election in recent memory, the major news stories aren’t happening in Washington—they’re happening on Wall Street. With the Dow starting to look more like a roller coaster than a stairway to heaven, people’s fortunes are hanging in the balance of our economic system, which has been nothing if not grossly mismanaged by our government.

To be sure, the root cause of a majority of the US’s economic problems is a general lack of understanding of fundamental economic principles, both in Washington and in the average American household. Obviously, this is a huge problem, and the only real long-term solution requires an increase in the baseline level of economic understanding.

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Thesis, my first premium WordPress theme, received a major update yesterday with the addition of a new design options panel. This revolutionary upgrade gives users an unparalleled degree of control over their site’s layout by allowing them to specify fonts and font sizes all over the theme. In addition—and this is my favorite part—users can now choose a 1, 2, or 3-column layout with the amazing new layout constructor.

Oh, and if you’re really a control freak, you can adjust the widths of the content and sidebars on the various layouts, too.

Seriously, folks… Stop looking for that one theme that is just right for your site, because it simply doesn’t exist! Instead, check out Thesis—it’s whatever you need it to be, and best of all, you get to call the shots.

And about that free premium theme? If you get Thesis before midnight August 31, 2008 (PST), you’ll receive Cosmo, a magazine-style premium theme, at no extra charge as soon as I’m done creating it. Don’t drag your heels, though, because I know you’re going to want Cosmo once you see it. Besides, I really don’t want to have to tell you “no” when you ask me if you can still get it for free even though you waited until September 1 to buy Thesis!

One of the most irritating topics that people seem to want to talk about ad nauseum is how to make money online. Frankly, I’m sick and tired of reading horrible advice on this subject, and I’m even more sick and tired of responding to people’s questions about Google AdSense, which is quite literally the worst monetization service of all time for people who don’t have millions of pageviews per month. In other words, AdSense ain’t gonna work for you, cowboy.

To rectify this abominable confluence of bad info and terrible services, I’m going to clue you in on two sure-fire ways you can actually make real, spendable, negotiable cash from your Website. Not surprisingly, both methods of earning money involve actual products, and while not necessarily falling under the “easy” category, they both find their roots in the “no bullshit” category, which I happen to love. [Read more →]

We bloggers have it rough. We live in a world full of more WordPress themes than you can shake a stick at, yet most of us are still tied to one old, worn out template. It’s unfortunate, but let’s be honest here—changing themes is a huge ordeal.

Generally speaking, whenever you opt for a new theme, you’re going to have to do a fair amount of customization to get everything just right for your site. By the time you get to your third or fourth theme, you’ll probably begin to grow a little weary of reinventing the wheel with each new design.

Fortunately, savvy users like you can solve this problem by creating a user-defined functions file that will work with any WordPress theme. The idea here is to place all of your common, customized design elements—like an author bio or a sales widget for your sidebar, for instance—within functions that reside in a separate, non-theme file. This serves a twofold purpose: [Read more →]