UPDATE #1: Less than an hour from being launched, there’s already a bug. If you’re using Opera, the featured article section is not aligned well. I’ll be trying to figure out the problem and fix it as soon as I can. Thanks Kuya Rhoen!

This one has been long overdue. I’ve been planning and wanting to change my blog theme for several months now but I’ve never had the time to finish it. There are three reason why it took me a long time to finally change the theme. First, I was busy. Secondly, it’s hard to look for a nice WordPress theme. Last but not least, after you find a theme that you like, most of your time is spent in tweaking and customizing it.

Initially, I wanted a custom theme but since custom made WordPress themes cost a fortune, I opted to purchase an affordable ready-made premium theme. I chose the Magazine News theme by Art Culture and designed by Brad Mahaffey. If you’re wondering how much this theme costs, it’s $49 for a single use license and $129 for a multiple use license.

Why did I choose this theme? The moment I saw it I just knew that it was the one. For those of you who have WordPress blogs and spend time looking for the “right” theme for your blog, you know what I mean. Right? Anyways, I liked the design and the overall look and feel of the theme. The only issues I had with the default layout was that the featured article occupied too much space and there was no space provided for 125×125 ad banners. Before I purchased the theme, I already planned what I would do with it and visualized the changes that I would make. Even though I wasn’t sure, I knew it was possible.

If you’ve visited this blog the past few days and noticed that it was often under Maintenance Mode, now you know the reason why. I’ve been busy customizing and tweaking this theme for the last week or so. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and from my previous themes you know that I like my theme to be neat. Although I did most of the tweaking and customization, I wouldn’t have been able to finish this theme without some help. My CSS and PHP knowledge are limited so I had to seek the help of my friends, WordPress theme designer Joni and PHP guru MM. Thank you so much guys for sparing your precious time in helping out a friend!

Aside from the theme, I’ve also made some changes on how the blog works. I’ve added a WordPress plugin called Who Sees Ads? by Ozh. With this plugin, I can configure the ads to display on certain rules. From now on, regular readers won’t see ads unless the post is 10 days old. So who sees the ads? Only those visitors referred by search engines. Other changes include moving the Categories below the content area and the putting the MyBlogLog visitors section down to the footer. Expect to see some minor changes in the next few days as I will be doing some more tweaking and optimizing. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I’ve changed the blog name back to JaypeeOnline. Why? Because I think that it looks and sounds better that way, don’t you think? Hehe

Although I’ve already tested this theme, there might be some things that I overlooked and you could come across some errors. If you do, please let me know so I can fix it ASAP. You can leave a comment or send a message via the Contact page. Feel free to leave your comments, feedback or suggestions regarding the new theme. I’d love to hear them.