The Four-eyed Journal » WordPress themes

Jaypeeonline.net’s $3000+ Christmas giveaway

jhay — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 10:55:55 +0000

With 24 days to go before Christmas, it’s that time of the year where bonuses, prizes and goodies are simply given away.

My good friend and fellow blogger, Jaypee of Jaypeeonline.net is back with his biggest holiday giveaway, a $3,000+ Christmas giveaway.

Here is what’s up for grabs:

1st Prize

1-year Publisher Plan from Scribe SEO ($324)
1 Pro-Plus package from StudioPress ($249.95)
1 Developer Theme Package from WooThemes ($150)
1 Premium Theme from WPZOOM ($69)
1-year Freedom-CDN Plan from WP Webhost ($120)
1-year Starter Plan from Reinvigorate ($100)
1-year subscription to Website Monitoring from website-monitoring.com ($59)
1-year subscription to Privacy Pro from Privacy Pro ($35.95)
1-year domain (.com/.net/.org/.info) courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente ($11.99)
$20 cash via PayPal courtesy of DiTesco

2nd Prize

1-Year Publisher Plan from Scribe SEO ($324)
1 Genesis/Child theme package from StudioPress ($79.95)
1 Premium Theme from WPZOOM ($69)
1 Club Membership from Elegant Themes ($39)
1-year Advanced Hosting Plan from Hostentic ($116)
1-year Starter Plan from Reinvigorate ($100)
1-year subscription to Privacy Pro from Privacy Pro ($35.95)
1-year domain (.com/.net/.org/.info) courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente ($11.99)

3rd Prize

1-Year Publisher Plan from Scribe SEO ($324)
1 Genesis/Child theme package from StudioPress ($79.95)
1 Premium Theme from WPZOOM ($69)
1 Annual Access Membership from Flexi Themes ($49.95)
1-year Freedom Plan from WP Webhost ($80)
1-year Starter Plan from Reinvigorate ($100)
1-year subscription to Privacy Pro from Privacy Pro ($35.95)
1-year domain (.com/.net/.org/.info) courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente ($11.99)

4th Prize

1 Genesis/Child theme package from StudioPress ($79.95)
1 Premium Theme from WPZOOM ($69)
1-year Freedom Plan from WP Webhost ($80)
1-year subscription to Privacy Pro from Privacy Pro ($35.95)
1-year domains (.com/.net/.org/.info) courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente ($11.99)

Consolation Prizes

1 Premium Theme from WPZOOM ($69)
1-year subscription to Privacy Pro from Privacy Pro ($35.95)
6 – 1-year domains (.com/.net/.org/.info) courtesy of Jehzeel Laurente ($11.99)

5 Globe Tattoo USB dongles courtesy of Abe Olandres of YugaTech ($20/each) to all contestants from the Philippines will also be given away.

And here’s a bonus: a 15% rebate for website-monitoring.com to all contestants and 2 Golden Tickets to VaultPress.

What an EPIC Christmas giveaway right? For the contest rules and mechanics, simply head on to the contest post to find out.

It has already begun and will end on December 30, 2010. So what are you waiting for? Join now!

Theme Review: Modernist - A stunningly beautiful theme by Rodrigo Galindez

jhay — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:47:12 +0000

Minimalist themes have always been my favorite. 98% of the themes I’ve used in all of my blogs have been minimalist themes with excellent typography, plenty of white space, and minimal colors in the palette.

That’s the reason this blog has had a major overhaul in design, paying homage to the Copyblogger theme by Chris Pearson. But I’ll talk more about it in another post. For now, let’s go back to minimalist WordPress themes as this is the subject of my very first theme review here at The Four-eyed Journal.

Behold the the Modernist theme by Rodrigo Galindez.

Theme designer Rodrigo gives the following description:

Modernist is based on the design ideas of Jan Tschichold, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Dieter Rams, and other modernists. Supports widgets, is SEO optimized, has clean and documented code, it’s fast to load, and is WordPress 3.0.1 tested. Works in IE 6 & superior and all versions of Safari/Firefox/Opera. Includes CSS3 enhancements.

Modernist is not a premium theme with all the common bells and whistles, but it is stunningly beautiful, clean and pleasing to the eyes. All thanks to the professionally crafted code that gives life to the theme.

Easy to customize

You can upload your own custom header for customization

It may lack a full-blown theme settings page, but it gives you the freedom to upload your own custom header image. Those who would like to customize the style of Modernist theme can do so easily thanks to the well-documented code which includes CSS3 enhancements.

Social from the start

Modernist is social right out-of-the-box, as links are readily available for your readers to share your posts to Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg and Reddit. It means one less plugin to worry about.

This theme would work best in personal blogs, giving your site a clean, elegant, and relaxed look. It even feels professional thanks to the great typography. I’m using it right now on my personal blog and it just looks great.

The Modernist theme is compatible to WP 3.0.1 and previous versions. Hopefully, it would be updated to take full advantage of the new features of the upcoming WordPress 3.1 as I’m pretty sure post formats would look great when presented by it.

You can give Modernist a preview and download here. Rodrigo offers theme support for an ideal donation of $25.00. Of course you can donate an amount higher or lower, it depends on you.

Lastly, here’s the score I give to the Modernist theme:

Visuals & Styles: 10/10
Features: 7/10
Customizability: 8/10
Support: 6/10
Overall: 7.75/10

What do you think of the Modernist theme? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Blog reboot: Now running on Thesis Theme for WordPress - Do forgive my n00b CSS coding skills

jhay — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 03:36:30 +0000

After three effin’ days of wracking my brains out and juggling, crunching, mixing and messing around with PHP and CSS codes, I present to you folks a rebooted The Four-eyed Journal. Yay!

You’ve guessed it right, this blog is now running on the Thesis framework theme for WordPress. It took me months to save up on the precious ad earnings to finally purchase a license for Thesis so to all those who advertised on this blog and to those who bought text ads via TLA, a big shout-out to all of you!

Well worth every penny of it

Now I understand why premium themes are so steeply priced, well for the average blogger like yours truly. The amount of flexibility, functionality and ‘customizability’ that these themes give you is a testament to the talent, vision and hard work premium theme developers put it into it.

This is not to say that the free theme developers are of a class lower, as some of the best WordPress themes out there are for free, it’s just that there’s only so much you could give away for free. And if you come up with a brilliant product like Thesis or this blog’s previous theme Vigilance PRO, the price is well worth it.

A messy work in progress

I’m still trying to come up with a name to dub this ‘version’ of The Four-eyed Journal. Thesis has given me so much room for customization, the amount of custom code currently employed is enough to produce a new theme on its own. And if the code is given a thorough clean-up and optimization, I could release it as a new skin for Thesis. Which I am planning to do in a few months’ time.

A warning though, my CSS and PHP skills are just a notch above of a n00b’s which explains why some elements of the design are way off. Have you noticed the sidebar? Something’s telling me the styling still needs a lot of work. I know you’d agree with me and if you have suggestions this blogger is all ears.

The layout of the ads are reminiscent of the previous design’s and since I want to have a completely new look and feel, expect to see those ad units come and go or run around the site. Again, if you have suggestions I’d be very grateful to hear them.

The commenting system has reverted to the WordPress’ own. I’m actually torn between sticking with IntenseDebate for good or not. On one hand, I like it because of the functionalities it offers like allow readers like yourself to comment using your social networking accounts without much fuss. On the other, I kinda hate IntenseDebate looks by default and using a custom CSS style for it would be like hacking and customizing Thesis all over again. Here’s another area where you could help me out. Again, suggestions are so much welcome.

What’s next?

A couple of more elements will be added over the next few days, as I continue to refine and tweak this new version of the The Four-eyed Journal. Also, thanks to some of the awesome features of Thesis, I’m going to try out a new way of blogging which involves videos. I’m excited and scared about it. But hell yeah, I’m going for it so watch out.

Well that’s about it for now. Thank you for having read this far down. If you have questions, comments or see something broken please say so via the comments below this post.

Until then, have a great weekend everyone!

And now back to the regular programming

jhay — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:39:17 +0000

5 days of no blogging! This is becoming a habit for me.

Well not really, despite having lots of non-class hours these past few days especially when classes were suspended last Thursday because of the storm my time was eaten away by extra-curricular and social work.

Just this last Wednesday, I was a guest at the general assembly of Genshiken, an anime club in DLSUD, to kick-off the launching of their sparkling new website. Their new site/blog is one of my latest projects in my newest advocacy, using blogs to bring communities closer together. These Lasallian otakus are a great bunch of people, many years younger than me. But thanks to Japanese anime, I’m able to retain my child-like ways with them.

Despite the heavy rains, the group still pushed through with their first major project for the semester. It was a great success and the event has already created so much momentum, their new site has had a great jump start. Keep track of their blog as my self and their web team have lots of cool stuff in the offing in the following months.

Speaking of the heavy rains, I really don’t know if I should be thankful for it or not. On one hand it freed me up from the appointments or events I had involvements that Wednesday.

First was a debate about feminism which was a project of the Lasallian Women’s Circle and Vox La Salle Debating Society which I am a co-founder.
The second event was an open-consultative forum for the students of the College of Business Administration, this time it was organized by the University Student Council’s Advocacy Committee, of which I was appointed to be the committee head.
Third was of course Genshiken’s General Assembly in which I was a guest speaker.

All three events were scheduled to take place at exactly the same time! The caution from my K800i’s calendar telling me that the three events were in conflict with each other was really an understatement. Times like this, I wished I could really perform Naruto’s Kage-bunshin technique (Shadow clone replication) or I had that clone (the weird and evil one or perhaps a mutation) to cover places for me. But the rains brought by typhoon Chedeng helped me and shaved off the consultative forum and the debate from my calendar because both both were outdoor activities. Since there’s no umbrella big enough to cover the whole campus they were postponed at a later date. (insert sighs of relief here)

There’s a big lesson here though, besides taking priorities for my self, all event planners (in my university at the most) should really take the weather report into account whenever they plan for their activities and projects. Sure we may live in the sunny tropics but hey, when it rains here, it really, really pours. Time, momentum, resources and working relations are strained to the limit whenever mother nature decides to unzip and ~~piss~~ rain down on our little efforts. Now who said the weather report was boring and useless?

On the other hand, during days of heavy rain and ugly weather, there’s this fear or hope that classes be suspended. Highschool and elementary students would definitely hope for this but us college studs, err students would take a step back and assess the situation first before saying a word. Finishing an academic load of 20+ units in 5-6 months is no laughing matter so time is of great value here. A day of class suspensions is the equivalent of a long quiz, a graded recitation or 3 chapters of the book. Add in term papers, group reports and in my field, experiments! Argh!!! Curse the effin weather!

So what to do when there are no classes and you can’t go anywhere because mother nature is bitching outdoors? Well, as you can see from what I’ve done you can sit for 9 hours in front of your computer and ~~prowl YouTube for sex scandal videos, make money off the internets, and completely forget about taking a bath~~ change the theme of your blog (Honestly, that’s all what I did). Coincidentally, Shari who’s got an award named after her (awesome!) chose to do the same thing and use the same theme. Notice how I tweaked the headings of my sidebar in order to make it more “human” and less Google-bot slave? It’s a good thing this theme is not among the vulnerable ones.

From experiences like this, college life and storms really do not mix well. What really, really doesn’t mix well are military spies and universities. You go to school to learn the in’s and out’s of life, of society, to meet new different people, exchange ideas that will determine the faith of your life and your country, but how could you maximize all these if you have mysterious heavily-tinted vans roaming around campus and stalking student leaders and students who ‘think differently’ (I might get sued by Apple so there I quoted it). Human Security Act? More like Security-for-GMA Act.

Now why can’t mother nature just suspend her and her minions. Permanently. So that our country could go back to its right programming?