Without widgets in the footer, you know the problem … You read a good post, get to the bottom of the page, then wonder where to go next.

BUT, if the page footer contains widgets, chances are you will immediately see other post titles or enticing comments, which help you to find other posts you may enjoy.

So having realized this from my own blog reading behavior, I thought I really should put widgets in my own footer, here at KevinSBrown.com

I’ve just done it and you can see the new widgets in the footer here (if you page down). I have added three side by side widget areas to the footer.

So having worked it out, I think I should share my “easy how-to guide” to widgetizing your WordPress footer.

Here goes…

STEP 1: Tell WordPress you want to use three more widget positions, and they should be called “footer 1″, “footer 2″ and “footer 3″)

Use the theme editor for your current theme, to add an extra line of code to the functions.php file (it’s the 3rd line below, beginning register_sidebars(3,array…

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar();
    register_sidebars(3, array('name'=>'Footer %d'));

STEP 2: Add the extra widget positions to your theme’s footer

Again using the theme editor, add this to your footer.php file…

<div id="footerwidgets">  
  <div id="footer-left">               
    <ul>      
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
   || !dynamic_sidebar('footer 1') ) : ?> <li>                                                                                     
      <?php endif; ?>                
    </ul>    
  </div>   
  <div id="footer-middle">               
    <ul>        
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
   || !dynamic_sidebar('footer 2') ) : ?> <li>                                                                                   
      <?php endif; ?>                
    </ul>    
  </div>    
  <div id="footer-right">               
    <ul>       
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
   || !dynamic_sidebar('footer 3') ) : ?> <li>                                                                                  
      <?php endif; ?>                
    </ul>    
  </div>
</div> 
<br /> <br clear="all">

STEP 3: Style the new footer divs, by adding div styles to your style.css file
(note: you will probably need to adjust the width parameters and other style elements, to suit your particular theme)

/* Footer Widgets */
#footerwidgets {
	display: block;
}
#footer-left {
	width: 210px;
	float: left;
	margin: 15px 10px 10px 30px;
	padding: 10px;
	background-color: #f3f3e7;
}
#footer-middle {
	width: 210px;
	float: left;
	margin: 15px 10px 10px 15px;
	padding: 10px;
	background-color: #f3f3e7;
}
#footer-right {
	width: 210px;
	float: left;
	margin: 15px 10px 10px 15px;
	padding: 10px;
	background-color: #f3f3e7;
}

I hope that helps. You will need to adjust to your particular theme and requirements, but that is exactly what I have just done here and you can see the result.

It’s an iPod Touch, so it’s one of the wi-fi internet enabled ones. I do realize I’m somewhat late to the party!

However, what’s more important is it led directly to me creating a product.

The product is a book called “Blogcasting Blueprint” and it’s now selling at a low price as a Launch Offer. It’s about linking a WordPress blog to the iTunes Store and creating podcasts to reach a wider audience.

Here’s the process I followed. Hopefully it will give some insight, into how the iPod purchase led to product creation…

I started to use iTunes (obviously) and was astonished by the loveliness of the whole set-up.

My Channel at the iTunes Store

But what really caught my eye, were the “privateer” Podcast channels, there in the full iTunes Store.

Small information publishers like me (and probably you, too). I thought, how can I do that? These guys have their publishing in front of goodness knows how many millions of people, who search at the iTunes Store for interesting stuff to enjoy.

Well, being me, I started to investigate and I discovered that I (and you) can get our own channel at the Store, with a bit of organization.

Plus, joy of joy, my WordPress blog already had suitable content (my posts) AND it could handle the technicalities of RSS feeds etc, automatically.

All rather interesting!

So I tried it out.. And it works. I got my own podcast channel at the Store and now, publish my blog content to this much wider audience.

So then, I started thinking… How could I help other blog publishers, do the same thing?

Well, of course, I had to write a report all about it. It shows how to do it step-by-step, short-circuiting all the research I had to do.

As I mentioned, the report at a Launch Offer price is currently available.

So if you’re at all interested, I’ve worked hard to make this report clear and useful, showing how to setup your blog with the wonderful (free) plugin I use. And then podcast, to your own channel at the iTunes Store.

‘You need to make this file writable before you can save your changes’

Here’s a short video on how to solve this problem, by setting the theme file permissions so editing is allowed.

PS..  It’s also the first time I have used the Viddler video hosting service, so I am trying that out, too.

I was not writing new posts… Just editing existing posts to add new images I’d found, plus tidying a few bits to improve readability.

Then it struck me.. the DATE at the top of the posts, still showed the original creation date. For some of my posts, this was more than 12 months ago..

Not very fresh-looking!

On your blog, you may not show the post date at all (like here on kevinsbrown.com).

But, IF you recognise this problem, here’s a quick freshen-up fix, which I found today and implemented. It can transform the fresh look of your blog.

Login as the administrator and go into the Theme editor (hold on, I have to say take a backup of your existing theme first, just in case it all goes wrong…)

Select the template, such as “Main Index” (index.php) or “Single Post” (single.php), or both..

Find a line of code containing <?php the_time(

and replace it carefully with something like..

last updated: <?php the_modified_date(

Then, when you save the edited post, instead of the original post date showing, the last edited date will display – making it look so much more fresh and up to date.

Just like the major, online news websites…

This one quick change has certainly improved the look of the blog in question. It now looks current again and emphasises the worthwhile updates I made today.

It’s the sweet-looking, small speech-bubble image, with the letter “K” inside.

And if you add this blog to your favorites or bookmarks (and I hope you will!), you’ll also see the image appear in your list of bookmarks,

This should help my blog to stand-out from the other sites.

If you would like to add a favicon image to your Wordpress blog, here’s how to do it.

STEP 1

Make a 16×16 pixel image and save as an “ico” image. Call it favicon.ico

You can use the free graphics program GIMP to do this, if you don’t already have suitable graphics editing software.

If you don’t want to make your own image, you may download and use this favicon I’ve made.

Just right-click and choose “save image as”, to save it to your desktop.

STEP 2

Upload the favicon using an FTP program to your server, at the top level of your blog.

Rename it to favicon.ico if necessary.

STEP 3

Login as admin for your blog. Ensure this line of code is in the header.php file, of the theme you are using.

Add the code line using the theme editor, if it’s not there already.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo get_settings('home'); ?>/favicon.ico" />

Here’s an image, showing the theme editor being used to edit the file header.php … (CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE)

Adding the favicon icon code to the WordPress header.php file

STEP 4

Refresh your blog and check the favicon shows as expected.

Hope you like it!

It should also help you customize other WordPress themes to your requirements.

The video shows how to insert image links into the offer box in the header area, and make it display correctly.

Video tip on showing product offer links in the header of the Wordpress PowerBlogger theme

Do please leave a comment.

Other times, you might just want to use your own custom header, displaying your blog’s name and characteristic logo etc.

This short video demonstrates an easy way to customize a Wordpress theme header image. I am showing PowerBloggerTheme because I use it on this blog.

But the same crafty technique works for many Wordpress themes.

Video tip on easy customization of a Wordpress theme header image

Please leave a comment and let me know if it helps.

Here is a short video tip, on changing the number of posts that show on the front page of your WordPress blog.

Creating a database on your webhosting can seem difficult, but it’s really not too scary or technical.

Hopefully this short video will show exactly how it’s done, if you are using a cPanel web hosting service.