Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

Here is a wallpaper I made called WordPress Sunflower. Yeah, I know, fan art pretty much.

Anyone who has items they made as a fan of WordPress, you are welcome to pitch in to the readers. Just use the contact form to tell me what you have or would like to offer. You definitely get mention and link credit for your work.

WordPress Sunflower: It comes in 3 different sizes. If your resolutions is larger, please use the contact form and I will cut a larger from my larger raw image for you and anyone else who might have the same.

WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper (800x600) (271)
WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper (1024x768) (204)
WordPress Sunflower Wallpaper (1280x1024) (250)

Feel free to download them. Even though I do not put my name on them, please do not claim as your own. Hope you like them.

I made a set of simple social network icons for my clients as a default method, but after some careful thought, I decided to release this set. Currently there are 30 icons available. I am sure I will be adding more, but this is only the beginning.

I will be colorizing this set into several colors for your use. I know I will have my own colorized set to match my own website and from past experience, I know others look for specific sets and colors to match their site too.

In making these, I wanted to be simplistic and use some of my pixelling skills, but all keep some of the integrity of the brands.

Icons available are:

• Blogger
• Yahoo! Buzz
• Delicious
• DeviantART
• Digg
• Email icon
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Foursquare
• Friendfeed
• Friendster
• Google
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• MySpace
• Meetup
• Plurk
• Posterous
• Reddit
• RSS feed icon
• Squidoo
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• WordPress
• Yahoo!
• Youtube

Simplistic Social Icons - General Set (670)

Let me know any requests you all have. Please only request those that you actually do use.

Social networking sites have brought webmasters to seeking ways to entice their visitors to follow. Other than normal linking, social network icon sets can be a nice visual touch.

It is a good thing that there are generous web and graphic designers out there willing to take the time to make social icons for the hundred of social networks out there. Below are 13 places I think that have the best social network icon sets that bloggers, business owners, and well, any type of site owner can download and use.

Simple Circular Social Media Icon Set

Set of Social icons no. 2 by Tydlinka

Social Media Mini Icon Pack

Set of social icons

SocioLEGO, a free Social Icon Set

Heart v2: Free Social Iconset in Heart Shape

21 free social vintage icons

Socialize Part 3 Icons

Social Media Stars Icon Set

Web2 Icons

Social Media Balloons

Woodgrain: A Free Social Media Icon Set

Page Peel – A Free Social Media Icon set

There really are not that many custom Thesis themes out there. Of course, they are also known as skins. For me, I like to use the custom CSS, the custom configuration file, and also Thesis OpenHook.

My first custom Thesis “skin” is more of a step by step tutorial. So, before I go into this tutorial, here is what the result SHOULD look like. Plugin installed for the navigation is WP-PageNavi. Layout includes an author’s box and a simple custom comment area.

(Right click on image to open larger screenshot preview)

This tutorial is a bit long, so I broke it into 6 parts. It really does not matter what order, but this was the order I thought would be best. You are welcome to adjust whatever you wish.

Here is the download link for the images included with this simple skin/ theme.

A tiny late for the holidays, but I hope just as well received as the previous wallpapers. This one is called WordPress Earth. Please remember if you do create your own WordPress fan graphics and would like to share them with others, you can use the contact form and submit. You do get credit, so please remember to include a link to your site as well.

This wallpaper comes in 3 resolution sizes, 800×600, 1024×768, and 1280x 1024. If your resolution is larger than the ones offered, please use the contact form and I will create one from the larger raw image I made for these wallpaper. They are free to download and use.

Download Background Tile #6 (339)
Download Background Tile #7 (345)
Download Background Tile #8 (359)

Hope you enjoy the wallpaper. Remember, please do not claim as your own, and please, if you splice it up and put into a layout, please give credit where it is due.

I am pleased to know that since the release of both of these scripts, that they have done well in the community since introducing them in January 2009.

PHPurl, my free PHP URL shortening script has been downloaded over 1737 times. Before I reset the demo site, Re-URL.me, the site had been used more than 7000 times to shorten URLs. I even had an issue at one point with banning spammers. I was a bit flattered at first, but also angry to have to find the time to remove them. It ended up the reason for resetting the numbers. PHPurl was introduced at the time where short URL sites have been in need, especially since Twitter has become mainstream. There have been countless sites that have mentioned my short URL script and I appreciate it a lot.

My other PHP script, which is a simple ad management script, PHPads has been downloaded over 3900 times. PHPads is actually a re-troduction and rename of its previous – PixelledADS, which was available well over 3 years ago. Most of the installation questions I have gotten have been the same, and dealing with not CHMODing certain files or changing the ads.dat file before loading it up. As for the page and the demo, because I did not remove the configuration section that allowed people to change the password, I ended up removing the demo, and replacing it with screenshots, until I can find the time to put a demo back up again. Someone had changed the password to be a jerk.

I enjoyed the comments and some of the smaller jobs that people have hired me to customize these for them. As for donations, there have been a few, but it was to be expected. Developers are not as appreciated, but I did not want to turn these into commercial GPL. I may introduce such versions at a later time, but right now, until I have more time on my hands, that will not happen anytime soon.

I appreciate the support and look forward to introducing other projects I have worked on the side this past year.

Yes, I finally got my down to pixelling again. One of my visitors sent me an email asking if I could make Robot smilies. Although I could charge for them, I do these for free and like to give them out. I did though mention they are welcome to send me a donation through Paypal at nile AT blondish DOT net if they liked to use them.

Anyway, the robot emoticons are 31 pixels wide and 25 pixels tall. There are currently 20 in the set. I do have ideas to make more in the near future. You are welcome to download them. They are free. I also take requests for ideas for smilies. It may not necessarily mean I will jump on it right away or agree to do them.

Here is a preview of a couple of them:
Robot Smilies (621)

This is the 39th emoticon set I have made. You can find more on Blondish.net’s Emoticon page.

I was surfing and came upon Icon Buffet. Of course, with the name, I thought it was going to be some cutsy site, but it was not. The site is chock full of icons in several varieties and they are all free.

Funny story though, they use to sell their icons, but according to Icon Buffet’s about page, they turned around and decided to offer all of their icons for free and make a community out of it. So now, you can connect with other icon fanatics and swap icon making tips, icon sets, and just about anything related to icons.

I think that is pretty nifty, especially for those looking for more resources to decorate their websites. Icons range from basic site navigation, to even some that I consider quite the novelty. I have not seen these anywhere else.

Have you been to Icon Buffet? If not, would you use this site as a resource in the future?