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Upgrading to WordPress 3.0 and Thesis 1.8 in A Weekend

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Wordpress 3.0 and Thesis 1.8

There is some interesting news to share with you today regarding Thesis Theme and WordPress, I have successfully upgraded the blog to the latest version of WordPress and also upgraded our blog theme to Thesis 1.8, I must say that this is a step I wanted to take since long time back, but I didn’t have the heart to do it while running our blogging contest, I mean who need to suffer and have hard times facing website problems at a serous time, and you all know that upgrading your CMS could break the site, and this is not a good thing because my fellow bloggers was expecting the blog up and running 24/7.

Anyways, this is not the only thing I wanted to share with you guys, I am so very excited because I finally could upgraded our Thesis Skin as well, maybe some of you will never notice the differences, but there are some major and minor changes.

Why I updated FB Skin?

First of all, you know that I have designed this Thesis Skin a few months back, and I am always looking into more development to enhance the performance of our blog, and also make it more comfort for our contributors by giving them more exposure.

So, I was thinking how to highlight our bloggers, and add their links allover the blog, and one main challenge was how to place more articles on the home page without forcing visitors and readers to scroll the page down to much.

Also another thing, I was planning to remove a few unnecessary WordPress plugins after upgrading to WordPress 3.0.x and Thesis Theme to 1.8, and instead of using these plugins I wanted to add some working PHP codes manually in a try to speed up the page load if our blog.

I am going to list some of the changes -in points- I have made so you can get the whole idea!

What’s New on FB?

  • Reduce empty spaces on the header
  • Added a widget for banners at the header
  • Google search (better results)
  • Display more articles at Home page
  • Added “Nice read” to sidebar at home page
  • Added Google AdSense to posts
  • New related posts plus images after post
  • Reduce width of sidebar
  • Added “Great Pens” to posts on sidebar
  • Added a widget for banners at the footer
  • Added “Our Contributors” to footer

What you think about the new look?

I got some feedback on Twitter yesterday, some of my friends says they like it, and some others says the new layout is not appealing to them, and I reply -to myself- work on the blog never ends!

Plz, take a look around, I would appreciate your thoughts!

About

I create websites with WordPress, and I develop Schema Plugins to help SEOs. I am a social network lover. I am also the night creature who works hard to keep this project up. Owner and founder of the Famous Blog.

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{ 95 Responses }

  1. Faustino Halder says:
    Many thanks for the great variety with plugins, i have a number of favourites to, including the all known "All IN SEO "as well as the easy privacy policy plus SEO friendly images (got some good results with it)and last but not least pretty links (great for cloacking) affiliate links...
  2. Usama says:
    Love the new look, the themes, the plug-ins, everything.
  3. Noor Azlin says:
    Hi Hesham, I agreed with Ryan that the new theme is clean-looking! By the way, I've entered the Sugartone contest that you've mention! Hope you can vote it at http://bloggertone.com/sales/2010/09/06/how-to-amazingly-sell-yourself Hope you like the post ;)
    • Hesham says:
      Thank you Noor! nice post on Bloggertone.com, I have voted for it earlier :) and I will promote it as well on Twitter! I wish you good luck!
  4. Tinh says:
    Congrats friend. I have done this last week and I am happy with Thesis 1.8 now, much better than 1.7 :-)
    • Hesham says:
      Good for you! I love your blog design!
  5. Hicham says:
    Hesham, The upgrade seems great. I've one note about the footer: the color for the titles of the three widgets "Top Commentators", "Popular Posts" & "Latest contributors" is almost the same as the background, which isn't readable unless a user highlight it. Keep it up :)
    • Hesham says:
      Hicham my friend! First of all I wish a Happy Eid :) Second, I feel guilty now being extremely busy involved in so many things and not having the chance to connect with all my great friends and brothers! but I am sure you will forgive me, I am sure you know life better than I do! Many thanks for your feedback, the blog is getting better and better everyday because this great feedback! I working on the footer and I will put this notes in mind, more great enhancements is coming :) P.S. I feel great after hearing from you, really great feeling, thanks a lot!
  6. ismujono says:
    I am new to blogging, ..some people like to know blog rank? .. alexa ranking?.. alot of space in right hand column ...sorry can only give short comment
    • Hesham says:
      Plz, use the search on the very top of the blog header and you will find some interesting topics to read, there is lots of articles written by our community members, it will inspire you for sure and give you tones of tips!
  7. Robert says:
    I like the new look of the site in general, but it does seem to take a little bit longer to load than usual. I also recently updated to thesis 1.8 as well, an after a little hickup I got the whole thing up and running again, and now I have a new adsense revenue sharing program which I'm sure your readers would love to check out, see the link below :-)
    • Hesham says:
      Most of feedbacks says that blog load more faster than before, for me I agree with you :) It's good to use AdSense revenue sharing if you have enough traffic that could allow your guest bloggers to earn good money! I don't think I will use it unless I double traffic of this blog during this month and next month!! hopefully we can do something good!
  8. Melinda says:
    I love it! I really like the home page since you can see more recent articles. The recent authors, top commentators, etc. that you added in are great. I really don't seen anything I don't like...except flashing ads..but that is just my personal opinion. ;)
    • Hesham says:
      I agree flashing ads are annoying, I am working really hard to reduce the number of ad spots and increase it's price! Thanks Melinda, I am heading to check your interesting presents ;)
  9. cam says:
    I like the new look. It took some getting used to but overall I think it works great.
    • Hesham says:
      Some time? yes.. for me to!
  10. Claire says:
    This is the first time I have stumbled across your blog so I can't comment on what it looked like before but it looks great now. Love the logo, especially the way it changes when hovered and the Thesis theme looks professional and apealing. Well done, keep up the good work.
    • Hesham says:
      Thank you for stepping by! more work is on progress :)
  11. Deepika says:
    Hi Hesham, After a very long gap i am seeing your blog. You are doing a great job.Then new look is awesome. I am thinking to come up with my blog again with a fresh design. For that this post really helpful. Is there any contest going to be held??
    • Hesham says:
      Hi Deepika, thank you for the visit today, and looking forward to your fully return! Contest? yeah... I was thinking of it yesterday, planning..... ;)
      • Deepika says:
        Yeah sure... Planning?? Expecting a good news about contest from you soon:-)
  12. Joanne says:
    Great revamp and cool contributors on the right side.....
    • Hesham says:
      I wanted to make sure to give more backlinks to contributors allover the blog! The links on the footer widget (LATEST CONTRIBUTORS) will remain for 6 weeks, and there is tones of other backlinks everywhere ... I can not even count them ;) Thanks Joanne, missing you :)
  13. Fran Aslam says:
    Hi Hesham: Here I am looking at your site and at word press 3.0 thesis theme 1.8.HTML Well the home page is well organized, brighter due to color scheme,and articles dominate there which I love. On this page where you have written this blog post, I loved the idea of space ad in the middle of the page. That brings real business. Planning and doing everything in one day is also outstanding. And you love your thesis theme it is great. I like the page where you have listed guest writers giving them some promotion by links to their site and credibility. Now I am thinking and thinking and I can not come up with something that I do not like. You know you get to know the drawbacks when you own it or when you almost use it every day. So, give me some time and if I find something that is not good for the blog I will let you know. Can you do me a favor now, please go to my blog read one of the latest posts and leave a real comment. Thank you Fran Aslam
    • Hesham says:
      Thank you for the kind words Fran and this awesome review!
  14. Aaron says:
    Love contributors listing at the footer, and many of the changes. All of it goes a long way toward making this a great place for guest bloggers and to build a good community. Awesome job and good how to guide Hesham.
    • Hesham says:
      Focusing on community is our main goal Aaron, thank you for your feedback, much appreciated!
  15. Samuel says:
    Congratulations Hesham, As almost everybody has told you what they like, and as you ask us in the mail. I will tell you what i don't like, ok? in wichloadsfaster.com tested your home page against this page: average load time 10,ooo ms both pages. Then you can test any of those pages selecting "more" leads you to gtmetrix.com test. The scores are Yslow F and Page speed C. Those are not so good :( On the design side, i think there's too much advertisment: In the post page the only part related to the post is the title and the image, the rest is advertisement. In the home page it's almost half&half. This makes me think on a parked domain page. This are my honest and i hope they'll be usefull.
    • Hesham says:
      You are right about the site load speed! But what I am focusing on is the load of content, I am sure that you can open any post here on the blog so fast and enjoy the read of content while your browser still uploading the rest of images and other stuff! The thing is I wanted to make the blog load faster for readers, not for sites that measures load speed! Anyways, I just want you to look at this example to see by yourself that FamousBloggers.net is much more faster than ProBlogger.net , then you can give me your thoughts! FamousBloggers VS ProBlogger (site spead)! Advertising is something I can not do anything about it as this blog is meant to earn money, I mean who is going to pay me :) mmm... home page is not the article page, it's where we feature articles for readers, it's where we highlight our interesting stuff and we want to make money from it! and come on Samuel .. half & half is not fair :) Many thanks for being honest, I really appreciate that!
      • Samuel says:
        Hesham, I really like your site. As a consultant (i'm not a blogger, yet) i tried to give a different opinion. What i like of is 99% against 1% that i don't :) Saludos!
  16. SenseiMattKlein says:
    Hesham, the design is pretty cool. I particularly like the footer.
    • Hesham says:
      I like it to :) thanks for the feedback!
  17. Kimi says:
    Finally! Glad to hear you already upgraded your wordpress blog, i know the feeling :) I am always scared to upgrade haha, but as long as we back up stuff, we are safe i guess. Keep on blogging :) wordpress rules!
    • Hesham says:
      Yes.. Finally :) I actually had a few problems on the server, database, and a few missing design elements, but I am so glad to solve the main problems in the same day, now we just need some small tweaks! Backup is so important!
  18. Colleen says:
    Looks very good Hesham. I like the new skin. One of the things I like is the featured recent bloggers in the lower right side of the footer. Regarding the upgrade. Did you experience any problems with the upgrade? I ask as I have upgraded to the most recent release of WordPress, but I have not upgraded Thesis yet.
    • Hesham says:
      Colleen, The featured recent contributors is something I wanted to add since long time back, it will give a link to all bloggers on the list in case they publish a new post for the blog :) Oh! yes... I was having a big headache when I first upgraded to WP 3 and Thesis 1.8 but I didn't know what was the exact reason because I did the upgrade to both of them at the same time! The problem was database connection error, the blog was eating server resources, but I fixed the problem by created a new database and importing data to it! I will blog about this issue soon in case someone had the same problem after upgrading! although in my case I didn't know what was the problem, but I got the solution :)
      • Colleen says:
        "I will blog about this issue soon in case someone had the same problem after upgrading! although in my case I didn’t know what was the problem, but I got the solution :)' Thanks Hesham. Our host has limited access, so knowing the issues up front is very good for us. :)
  19. Rahul says:
    Nice article. But all people are using thesis theme. What is new in this theme?
    • Hesham says:
      mmm.. ? I don't understand! although a short visit to Thesis Theme site could answer to your question!
  20. Lennart Heleander says:
    “Upgrading to WordPress 3.0 and Thesis 1.8 in A Weekend”. Hi Hesham, I borrow your title and keywords; Upgrading to WordPress 3.0 and Thesis 1.8 in A Weekend, in a new SEO project I working with, it’s a combination of longtail, keywords, titles, comments in blogs and some new things with; Upgrading to WordPress 3.0 and Thesis 1.8 in A Weekend, and I hope in a couple week that I can write about the result for you and the reader of Famous Bloggers. //Lennart
    • Hesham says:
      Just make sure to bring my title and keywords back when you are done ;) (just kidding) Looking forward to it! that would be great Lennart
  21. Lennart Heleander says:
    Hi Hesham, Its look good, not so much Christmas tree over it with ads, is nice for eyes too read.
    • Hesham says:
      Winter will come soon :)
  22. David Bain says:
    I upgraded my blog to Thesis 1.8 quite recently as I was looking forward to testing the new WordPress menu system which isn't compatible with previous versions. The only thing I'm a little disappointed with is that if you decide to use the WordPress menus, the RSS Subscribe link to the right hand side of the menu disappears. Does anyone have a fix for this?
    • Hesham says:
      I am sorry David, I didn't use WP menu! I did a fast search trying to find something helpful for you but it seems no good results! mmm.. I really didn't had a chance to dig, but what's the difference between the 2 systems? why you prefer WP menu system?
      • David Bain says:
        I think I prefer the WP menu to be honest, it's much easier to create completely custom drop-down menus. However, at the moment I've reverted back to the Thesis version because of the non-display of the Thesis RSS subscribe link in the Wordpress menu version. I'm sure it's a fairly easy work around. I'll get round to looking at that sometime.
  23. Bryan says:
    Hesham, I was kind of expecting some kind of blog post when you made the changes a few days ago. I like the new design you have here. It does load faster then the previous designs and there are more articles featured on the front page which I think is good. The author section is great and things does look a little more organized now. The only thing I will comment is that your FamousBloggers Logo on the Header section might be a bit small. Otherwise, a job well done :D
    • Hesham says:
      Yes Bryan, and expect more tips in the coming a few days, weeks :) Yeah! I miss the big shiny logo, I a really thinking to bring it back, but for suture planning sticking with the small logo could be the best choice! not sure yet although working on the blog is not finished yet, so let's see how thing will work out at the end! Many thanks, and let me know if there is something you really don't like :)
      • bryan says:
        sure no probs. I really admire the work you put into this blog. I just came back and noticed that your top navigation bar has changed the number of subscribers and followers have changed into icons. I think i kind of prefer the old style with numbers and all
        • Hesham says:
          The code I was using was not saving the numbers, and when tweeter API goes down or has a delay I lost the numbers for a few hours sometimes, so I will go with icons for the mean time till I find some awesome working codes ;) Also I heard your voice, followed your advice.. logo size changed! Many thanks Bryan for the really good feedback and support!
          • bryan says:
            sure thx no probs! :)
  24. Shiva says:
    Hey Hesham, Sorry but this question is totally out of topic but I see that you are using both AdvertiseSpace and BuySellAds together and I too was thinking of doing that but I was quite reluctant because I did not knew they would allow or not. So I just wanted to ask does advertisespace and BuySellAds allow to use together??
    • Hesham says:
      Oh! well.. the answer is on the sidebar :) Yes, you can use them together along with AdSense as well!
  25. Shiva says:
    Hi Hesham, The redesign looks totally awesome. I just love how the author box went to the top and also the Great Pens and Latest Contributors sections you have added. Great going bro :D
    • Hesham says:
      Actually the author box was on the top since last design modifications, and I like to keep it there to give more SEO power to authors links while it's on top of the post! Thanks Shiva, let me know if there is anything you don't like on the blog :)
  26. Julius says:
    This is such a nice redesign. Congrats on the wonderful work Hesham. I like this look more than the previous one. It's all seems organized and it loads up more quickly than before. :)
    • Hesham says:
      Great to know it's loading faster than before :) Let me know if there is something you don't like!
  27. Pumama says:
    Great News!Wordpress 3.0 is good but it have some trouble with plugins but I upgraded.
    • Hesham says:
      Yeah! there is some plugins still not upgraded, I have only one lucky me :) I appreciate your feedback about the new blog layout, let me know if there is anything you don't like!
  28. Mani Viswanathan says:
    The navbar looks kewl. I still miss the sidebar links pointing & describing to various pages in or of Famousbloggers. If you can add that again, it would be great. I love the link hover affect bg though :-)
    • Hesham says:
      Mani, I miss that nice sidebar buttons as well, probably I will add it again, but maybe at the end, let's see how thing are going to be :) Many thanks!
  29. Hieu Martin says:
    i can see famousbloggers sidebar is cool. Good job
    • Hesham says:
      Thanks Hieu, I hope to hear about something that you don't like on the blog, this will help a lot!
  30. Sourav says:
    Hi Hesham, The new design looks great. It's very compact, yet not cluttering. The "Great Pens" list is nice and please keep it short. The popular posts list in the previous design was too long and had too many articles in it. Btw, in the morning I had seen that there was the FB logo beside the tags, but now they are missing. Are you still doing changes?
    • Hesham says:
      Sourav, The "Great Pens" has some posts and also including links to the author's blog, this will give more exposure and possibility of increasing amount of traffic sent to their own blogs! (this is why I want it to be a long list) if you know what I mean! so I will try to keep it not so long only 16 or maybe 20 will do it :) P.S yes I am still working on it, probably today I will finish, but as you know.. work never ends! Many thanks for the feedback! I also want to take the chance to thank you for the awesome retweets you are doing all the time for our articles, I really can not thank you enough!
  31. element321 says:
    I love the new changes! The author article show case rocks! I also like the contributor icons at the footer...
    • Hesham says:
      I added some more enhancements.. and work still going :)
  32. Jarret says:
    Hesham, overall I like the new look better. It seems like it gives you more ad space while still giving your site a clean design. The only thing I miss about the old design was the super cool looking author box that you used to have. It's been toned down a little bit, but it still looks good now. I've always been amazed at how fast this site runs with all of the features that you have. Have you started using a CDN or have you just done a great job of optimizing the site?
    • Hesham says:
      Jarret, Glad to hear that! and yes I miss that bloody cool author box! so.. let's see if I can retouch the one we have now a little :) This site still on shared hosting -bluehost- no CDN! so... yes.. I am trying my best to enhance page load, and probably I will move it to a faster server soon!
  33. Abhishek says:
    Hi This is awesome theme and which makes everything clear and easy to understand for user.I love it :P Great Theme -Abhishek
    • Hesham says:
      Thanks Abhishek , plz let me know if there is something that you don't like :)
  34. Dev says:
    Hesham, New layout looks great and i really like the sidebar and footer contributors widget. Btw. The Top Navigation menu is too small :).
    • Hesham says:
      Thanks Dev, top navigation need work! I will probably fix that today!
  35. Ben Lang says:
    Nice job Hesham. Some feedback: -On the homepage I know that you like Topsy, but having the text that says "Top 1K, Top 5K" etc. makes it look very complicated. I would stick with the Twitter retweet button on home page. -Wordpress admin text in footer, its always been like this, but for some reason its blurry, maybe "unblurr" it somehow. -Under the category, the PopupDomination ad next to the sign up for newsletter looks a bit confusing, seeings so many fields isn't great.. -On the menu I dont understand why Twitter: 7429 and RSS: 1495 -On homepage next to author gravatar, the FamousBloggers sign is kind of covered up, you may have done it on purpose but I think it looks a bit strange like that... Other than that, props. Great job, looks really good. Hope that my feedback helped, I always appreciate feedback when given. PS: I'd also very much like to know how you made the LATEST CONTRIBUTORS widget... Best regards
    • Hesham says:
      You are the man, I wish all people is like you Ben! The best thin you did is that you talked about what you "don't like" :) I really appreciate that as you speak my mind! I have done changes yesterday and hope the blog layout looks better now! (more work today will be done as well!) P.S I will share codes very soon in a blog post, so stay tuned!
      • Ben Lang says:
        Thanks! Haha, yeah, I know, when I did some redesigns it was such a pain when people told me which thinks were good. It doesn't help! I feel that pointing out what could be improved is much more helpful and I'm glad you agree. Can't wait to see the codes... Cheers
  36. Kharim says:
    Congrats on your upgrade. I always do my upgrades as soon as they are released
    • Hesham says:
      I just couldn't do it before! Is there anything you don't lie on the blog new layout? plz let me know!
      • Kharim says:
        It's looking great. Almost like the old one, but this is cool
        • Hesham says:
          Awesome man, many thanks!
  37. mijie says:
    your theme loke nice, but i can buy now because of the budget, maybe soon i will buy for my new niche blog project, hopefully
    • Hesham says:
      mmm.. I am not selling this theme design or (skin), although I have some other skins for Thesis in my ThesisAwesome.com site, price is so affordable and I have a good offer running this month!
  38. Costa says:
    Great job and looking great! Very professionally done!
    • Hesham says:
      Thank you Costa, let me know if there is something you don't like on the new layout! P.S. Missing your bloody awesome SEO tips :)
      • Costa says:
        Yes, kinda busy lately. :-) Will try to contribute something when time permits.
        • Hesham says:
          Plz, take your time.. and let me know if you need any help!
  39. Sajib says:
    By the way I was wondering how did you put that latest contributors widget at the lower right corner? Any plugin or hand-coded?
    • Hesham says:
      The code I am using works only on Thesis Theme! I see that you are using different theme! Anyways, I am going to release a plugin soon that has the code, probably you can grab it and modify it to work on your blog!
  40. Sajib says:
    What I liked is the reduction of page loading time. I was so sick of this. Almost all high-class blogs and websites load too slow in average bandwidth. Today I felt Famous Bloggers loaded much faster. Thanks. :) This is my favorite upgrade. ;)
    • Hesham says:
      WOW! that's great then! I will -for sure- work more on increasing site load in future!
  41. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Hesham, Congrats on your upgrade and new look! I like it. It's clean-looking with a good deal of content, yet not cluttered. You seem to have the proper mix of value-packed, usable content and ads to me. I also enjoy the Great Pens feature. Creative :) Ryan Biddulph
    • Hesham says:
      Oh! Rayan, Glad to hear that my friend, many thanks for the feedback! if there is anything that you don't like or you think I should change, then plz let me know! Good day :)