As I already said in other posts replying to similar questions, there are not fixed rules (it much depends on how you used to working) but there are some simple guidelines which can be follow to proceed with method and work more efficiently.

Draw a sketch — Before having a hand in writing the code (html, css, php, and so on) of your WordPress theme I always suggest to draw a sketch of the layout on paper. This is a good practice you should adopt every time start to design a website. In my opinion, if you don’t want to wast your time, you should never start writing directly the code without a precise idea about how your theme will look like.

Thinking with a blank paper helps you focus on ideas and is an useful way to identify the main sections which will compose the final layout. At the same time, in this phase, you can define on paper some general CSS attributes for each section such as weight, margin and padding.

Start coding — The default theme of WordPress is a good base from which to make a custom theme. As you know WordPress themes are composed by several PHP files which represent each a specific page or a portion of page. As first step, I suggest you to start customizing these files in this order: header.php, footer.php and single.php. In this way you’ll have quickly enough a first idea of the final look of your theme. Then reuse the code you already used in single.php to customize all other pages (tags.php, categories.php, search.php,…). Leave index.php (the home page) to last.

Optimize the PHP code — When your new theme is almost finished take some time to optimize the PHP code. If you have a code snippet repeated in different pages you can think to create a new PHP file which contains that portion of code and include it in every page where it recurs. A typical example is a “popular posts” section to repeat in many pages such as home.php, single.php, tags.php, and so on. In this way, every time you need to change something in that section you’ll have to modify it just one time in a single file.

Optimize the CSS code — Another important step before releasing your theme is to clean up the CSS code in order to remove unused classes and unifying common statements with same attribute values. Lastly use a CSS compressor to create a lightweight version of the CSS file.

Test and publish — After a session of test with all major browsers, your theme is ready to go live. In that regard if you are a Mac user and you need to test your website on IE7 and IE8 I suggest you to download WineBottle a free application which emulate Windows based systems and allow to install several IE version directly on your Mac.

Do you have any suggestion about this topic? Share your though, thanks!

Before even getting my hands into the CSS code I identified five guidelines for the new layout, the same I want share with you in this post.

1: Rethinking the home page as a set of focused information readily available at a glance and not as a long vertical list of posts organized by date.

For the home page of Woork Up I wanted to create something different from the typical blog layout we’re used to see. The result is a “compact” home page with a main section which contains the current featured article and a left column that lists some less recent featured articles.

2: Organizing the page elements so that their disposition quickly directs the readers to the contents which must have greater emphasis and visibility.

On the post page I added a section on the left of the text which contained a list of articles related to the current post and some recent featured articles.
The sidebar contains a “popular posts” section whit a list of the most recent popular post on Woork Up. The main section contains only the text of the article and the comments area.

3: Optimizing the number of links on pages
Too much information is equal to none. Do not fill your page with links.

4: Reducing the number of social buttons to share posts on social networks and integrating them harmoniously with the design of the page.

Social buttons are useful to make articles popular on social networks and drive more traffic on a website. The only problem is not all social network are appropriate for all websites. In my experience Twitter, Delicious and Facebook are the best sources of traffic for Woork Up. That’s why in the new layout of this blog I decided to add only three social buttons, integrating them with the style of the page.

5: Making advertising elements minimal and deleting every kind of advertising from the body of the articles.

Advertisement is fundamental to monetize the contents of websites. But I admit, as a reader, I hate pages full of banners and in general all kind of invasive advertisement on a website. So I decided to limit advertisements only on the sidebar: this position is perfect for your advertisers and your readers will love you!

What do you think about this topic? Do you have other useful suggestions to improve blog layout? Share your ideas with a comment.

Some days ago I bought an iPad (3G+ Wi-Fi model). I used the tablet for two days without any problem until this morning, when I noticed several issues with the connection to the web with both Wi-Fi and cellular data networks.

I read this is a common problem and in a note on the support site, Apple reports that a small number of iPad users are experiencing similar issues connecting to Wi-Fi networks and suggests some workarounds to solve it.

I followed all the steps described on that article but the connectivity problems were still there because as I said, my issue is not only limited to the Wi-Fi network but also involves 3G connection. So, after many attempts, I found a way that works in my case in order to reactivate the connections when this kind of problem occurs.

If you have the same issue try to follow this process to fix it.

First of all if you want to use a Wi-Fi network to connect to the web you need to turn off the cellular data network (Settings > Cellular Data) and the Wi-Fi connection. Than you have to turn on only the Wi-Fi connection to make it work again.

The same process applies if you want to browse the web using a 3G connection. Turn off both cellular data and Wi-Fi connections and then turn on only the cellular data connection. If the problem with the cellular network persists, after doing this process, you have to connect the iPad to the power adapter (it won’t work via USB only) and than wait a few seconds. This way, your 3G connection will work again.

Please share your story here adding a comment, tell us if you have any problem with the connection and if this solution works for you too!

When I started this blog on Blogger, just a little more than a couple of years ago, I was going through the darkest period of my life.

A series of personal events had undermined my balance and completely screwed up my projects of the previous six years. All the things I cared the most suddenly crumbled. So quickly that I couldn’t but let myself be overwhelmed by that storm, unable to react. I sat back and watched the wave sweeping away my life and then slowly going, leaving nothing on its way back.

Until that moment I had always been a positive-thinking and resolute person. From then on I found myself facing the quintessence of misery. I couldn’t sleep, I began to lose weight, and spent a lot of time blaming myself for mistakes no one ever made.

The worst part of the day was night. It never ended. It was a long and distressing monologue between myself and the ceiling. The nightmare lasted for more than one month. If I look back now it feels like an eternity. When I reached the bottom, a part of me decided not to persevere with the recent nihilistic attraction towards self-destruction.

I began devoting myself to my blog regularly, mainly at night. Writing helped me to focus on something else. It was a small personal success. This blog worked as a real rehab program. Things improved over time, with the same speed with which they fell a few weeks before. It was a kind of tiny and unexpected miracle.

Starting today, Woork Up changes radically in style and content and thanks to the collaboration with Nicola Armellini, new executive editor of the blog, it will lead a path we hope you’ll enjoy. Nicola and I will have a more journalistic, more personal and opinion-driven approach to the articles that will cover various topics, from business, to social media, to tech trends and innovations.

If I look back at what already happened, it feels like it could work.

And I know it will.

It was the summer of 1989. For my tenth birthday my parents gave me a portable dual plate cassette recorder.

It was an old model from Sony, it was black with green and purple stripes on the sides. Anything but attractive on the design side, but doing his job nonetheless.

I spent my afternoons with a classmate of mine duplicating tapes with the tunes of our favorite cartoons. We sold them to our friends at low prices, typically the cost a blank cassette or even free if the request came from a girl we liked.

One day we got our hands on the album “Foreign Affair” by Tina Turner. We duplicated it but we also kept a copy with us. We did the same for “Like a Prayer” by Madonna and “Money for Nothing” by Dire Straits. At the time that stuff was incredibly popular on the radio. A guy asked us a dozen copies of each album. We sold them with a 30% markup over the price of the blank tape. In mid-July, a month after the start-up of our business, we had sold more than a hundred tapes. By the end of the month we had gained the equivalent of one hundred dollars. It was enough for us to enjoy our summer holidays. We split the revenues evenly and quit our activity.

In the late Nineties, with the lightning fast growth of the Internet, Major record labels invested heavily in the online market in order to address the crisis, significantly affected by the piracy of physical media. The web, however, proved to be an endless nightmare for the entire entertainment industry from then on, rather than the opportunity everyone was foreseeing.

Just for the record industry, according to the latest figures published by the Institute for Policy Innovation, the losses from digital piracy score around 13 billion dollars every year. Statistics show that 95% of the music downloaded from the web is illegal. On the average teenager’s iPod there are about 800 dollars of illegaly downloaded music. If you multiply this value by the number of iPods in circulation, excluding other devices, the total is easily done.

DRM systems are just worthless gibberish. They are an easy mechanism to be bypassed and they prove totally useless if a simple search on any search engine or file sharing client grants you the access to an unlimited amount of illegal data. Despite the efforts by the agencies responsible for fighting online piracy, the phenomenon is not
directly controllable and involves, on a larger scale, the regulation of the Internet at a supranational level.

Meanwhile, I actually wonder if excluding sites hosting illegal material from search results, thus making it more difficult for users to get to the files, could be a first shy step towards downsizing the problem. It wouldn’t be the solution for sure, but it would at least make the match between supply and demand more complicated.

Some days ago I saw a young girl who was showing the entire discography of Lady Gaga contained in her iPod to a friend in the subway. Her friend asked: “Where did you download it?” The girl replied: “From a site I found on Google!”

While we’re waiting for what will be the impact of the iPad and Apple’s iBook store on the e-book market, according to a Digitimes research, the global e-reader sales totaled 1,43 million units in the first quarter of 2010, and will hit 11,4 million units to the end of the year with a 298% increase from the prior year.

Amazon Kindle remains the favorite device for reading e-books and accounts for about 60% of the market. In a recent note Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, commenting the significant growth of Amazon sales in the first quarter of 2010, said Kindle is the Amazon’s #1 bestselling product with over 500,000 available titles.

Nook, the Barnes & Noble’s ebook reader launched in November 2009, is filling the market gap with Kindle and in March 2010 the B&N device accounted for about 53% of readers shipped to the U.S. Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble, said “in addition to the accelerating online sales trends, nook sales have been strong at our bookstores since the product became available”.

Sony with its readers family could be an interesting alternative to the Amazon’s Kindle. The Sony’s readers (Touch and Daily model) have a touch interface, while Kindle uses buttons, 3G connectivity and are cheaper then the Amazon’s device.

Borders plans to release its Kobo e-reader in June. This device comes with a 6-inch display, 1GB memory and an elegant design. The price is considerably chaper than other e-readers ($149) and the E Ink display gives a book-quality printing with no backlight, glare, or reflection.

Samsung announced the launch in the next months of its E60 e-reader, an E Ink based device that allows to read e-books, list your favorite music with the integrated MP3 player and save handwritten notes with the stylus pen included.

Probably someone is thinking the iPad isn’t the most appropriate device for my needs and I could buy a powerful netbook at a smaller price.

This is true – in part – but I can’t deny I was look forward for some time to have in my hands the last Apple product and experience if and how it’s can be used effectively not only to enjoy contents but also as a device to create them. If you have my same needs but, for several reasons, you prefer something more traditional, the best choice remains without doubt a netbook which offers a good balance among performances, portability, connectivity options and price.

Market offers a variety of products for all needs and different consumer groups.

Nokia Booklet 3G

Recently Nokia launched its Booklet 3G one of the best mini laptop on the market with a beautiful design and, broad range of built-in connectivity options including 3G and Wi-Fi, and with an exceptional battery life up to 12 hours. It comes with a powerful Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor, which ensures high performances, and Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium. This netbook is perfect for people who need to stay always connected. The only negative aspect is the price €699 (or $549 for US market).

Dell Inspiron Mini10

A more affordable alternative is the Dell Inspiron Mini10 (starting price $279.00) available with Windows XP Home edition or Windows 7. Its comfortable keyboard is perfect to work on your documents (text files, spreadsheets) and the model with optional built-in GPS ($399.00) is perfect to navigate and stay connected with your coworkers, friends and family.

Acer Aspire One 532h

The new Acer Aspire One 532h is another interesting and powerful netbook which provides up to 10 hours of battery life, good performances and good connectivity options (3G optional). It comes with Windows 7 and a multi gesture touchpad which simplify the way you interact with your laptop (starting price $300.00). The only weakness in my view is a low appeal of its design but overall is a good compromise between price and performances.

If you have any suggestion about other netbook model leave a comment.

Fink – Sort Of Revolution

Goldfrapp – Utopia

Madonna – Substitute For Love

Cinematic Orchestra – All That You Give

Naomi – White

Loner- Lights Which Pass

Tina Dickow – All I See

Mozez – Feel Free