Christmas is just around the corner. Shopping and decorations have already started. So why should webmasters stay behind. All are decorating their homes and i guess webmasters would like to decorate their websites and weblogs as well. With this thought in mind i started searching the web to find out some good wordpress themes for the festive season. Then i thought why not collect all the popular themes we have for the season. So here are some of the popular wordpress themes for Christmas.

Christmas Days : It is one of the my favorites among the Christmas themes. It’s a two column wordpress theme named “Christmas Days”. It is designed and distributed free by Design Disease. It’s coded for the latest version of wordpress and thus support the “tags” feature. It’s also a widget ready theme. Another good feature of the theme is that there is space in sidebar for your Flickr photos. You will have to use Flickr plugin with this theme, but the feature add lot of grace to your blog. The color combination is great and goes well with the mood of Christmas. This is one theme that you should definitely have on your blog, at least this Christmas. Visit Author’s Page – Download Link.

Hot Screensaver’s Christmas Theme : While writing this post, i searched for more themes on net. And this new theme came up after much searching. And i am glad i found it. This theme really rings the bell this Christmas. I will put it right in the best free wordpress themes available this season for Christmas. Do checkout the theme. Full credits to the designer. Gosh, they went in so much detail, even the “Submit Comment” button is designed for Christmas. I guess this one is perfect for Christmas. It is designed by Hot-Screensaver. A three column theme with two right sidebars. Widget and tags supported. Striking features includes easy change of header image via wp-admin and pretty nice adsense or any other publisher ads integration. Yup, adsense ready theme. I have made up my mind. I’m going to use this theme for Christmas on few of my blogs. You can visit Author’s Page – Download Link.

Christmas Gift WordPress Theme : It’s a great looking wordpress theme for Christmas. The header part is very well designed. The first look at it will tell you that’s it’s Christmas in the air. The rest of the theme is sweet and simple. It’s a three column theme with a left sidebar and a right sidebar. The Christmas Gift theme has been designed by Rahmat Blog. The heading parts for categories, blogrolls etc. has been well designed as well. Theme is compatible with latest version of wordpress. Also it is CSS and XHTML valid. It is widget ready theme. I would say that overall it is a very good theme. For more details and live demo you can visit Author’s Page.

Merry Christmas WordPress Theme : Ahh! Finally a dark colored theme. 1 Column theme, literally.I mean there are no sidebars etc, just a footer bar as one can call it. It’s a dark colored theme. Probably one can say that the theme depicts the Christmas night. What matters more is that there is Santa Claus, there is moon and there are colors in this theme. The theme is well designed. It’s a good looking theme with different concept than the other themes that i have listed. Propbably that’s the reason i chose it in this list. I have no info if the theme is widget ready or if support tags feature of wordpress as the author didn’t mention that on his blog. You can visit Author’s page for download links and demo.

I just came across these quality themes till now. If you know about more themes that are free, for wordpress and are quality themes, then please let me know and i will add them to the list. Until then, enjoy the themes and Christmas shoppings

Recently, WidgetBucks announced that they will only be entertaining US and Canadian traffic for clicks etc as they thought they are the only customers who will likely buy a product from their advertisers. At that moment it looked an end for WidgetBucks as far as the international traffic was concerned. The only alternative that was left was to geo-target your websites. Geo-Targetting would have been lot of pain for some website owners. On my side, i stopped using WidgetBucks simply because i didn’t had any website which only targeted US and Canadian citizens. But i guess all are troubles are over with the very recent development by WidgetBucks or in more general by Mpire Corporation.

Today, WidgetBucks launched it’s new International CPM ads that would be included in our widgets itself. It’s basically a CPM ads for non US/Canada traffic. Of course this is going to help publishers in a big way, specially those who have blend of traffic from many different countries. The new CPM ads will give you revenue per impressions, for the site visitors. There system will itself Geo-target the ads for you. For example, if your site visitor comes from US or Canada, the widget will display the normal pay per click program. However if the visitors are from other countries, the widget will display ads which pays per impressions. This is going to be great. I recommend you to join WidgetBucks today. The future seems bright.

By the way, just for your information. You will need to recopy your widgets code in order to make the widget work as mentioned here. Once you have the new code on your site, WidgetBucks’ system will itself take care of rest of things. Frankly, WidgetBucks is back on many of my sites. If you still haven’t signed up with them, well i recommend you to sign up instantly and enjoy the benefits. You can visit WidgetBucks here.

AGLOCO “Own The Internet”

You may have seen it’s banner somewhere on my blog till few days back. Official news is that AGLOCO is dead. We’re done with AGLOCO. The only reason i know of is that they did not have enough left to support AGLOCO’s operating costs. According to email sent to all AGLOCO’S memebers, they were using their savings to fund the operations. And now since they cannot use their savings anymore, it’s an end for a very unique concept by AGLOCO.

I’ll have to agree with John Chow. He says that AGLOCO was a good idea that was poorly executed. Yes, that the bottomline. R.I.P. AGLOCO.

Update: (December 13, 2007)

I just received the mail from AGLOCO’s team. Here is a copy of it:

Dear Sharat,

We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at *email not displayed* .

We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.

AGLOCO Development Team

Well, after carefully going thorugh the mail, i think the intentions are clear. AGLOCO’s team has no intentions to end AGLOCO. They are going to carry on operations if they could find some supporter or sponsor. So basically, it all comes down to finance. Hopefully, they will get someone to keep AGLOCO on the move!

Sharat Jaswal, the name appears on SEOLogs. Why? Well i participated in SEOLogs $2000 MyBlogLog Contest. In past i had never been lucky with such contests. I decided that i would give it a shot. And i guess my “being not so lucky” streak finally ended. I was one of the winners and got myself a link in dnscoop directory worth $45. Not a big amount, but sometimes it really does not matter. What matters is that i won and i am glad i did. WooHooo….

Here is a screenshot from SEOLogs:

I am thinking of starting a contest as well. I do sponsor many of the contests with recent being the contest at iGuides for the month of November. I think it would be lot better if i leave sponsoring and start the contests, right here on my blog. What Say?

Finally, i think it’s all been done. The designing and coding part has been over. I had a pretty tough time making the theme work on Internet Explorer 6. All the coders must be knowing, how difficult it is to get your theme right, specially adjusting the alignments and css problems one faces, in Internet Explorer 6 web browser. Anyways, now i can say “Been There, Done That!!!!”.

I guess the sidebars and header will continue to fill up day by day. That’s a dynamic thing and would take it’s own time to complete. Rest all is finished. *I Think*

Now i guess it’s time that i officially announce the new design on my blog. I would like to invite comments, feedbacks, tips and suggestions from my friends, colleagues, wannabe friends and new visitors on the blog design and the way i blog. Also let me know if you face any problems with navigation or colors or anything. Critics to a certain extent would be welcomed as well.

So please let your comments flow in! That would be much appreciated. Great thanks!

BTW, Now that you’re here, i would appreciate if you join MyBlogLog Community. Thanks!

Credits For The Theme:
Design By Atif. You can find him on Ally Creations. He is the best designer i have known.
Coding By: Dr. Gauresh. (igauresh at DP). Really very helpful and talented.

Great Thanks to both of you!