How To Customise Your Wordpress 2.5+ Log In Screen
Written by Jacob Cass on Thursday, April 3, 2008 – 10:54 am
Here is how to customise and brand your Wordpress Log In Screen for Wordpress 2.5+ (and probably many more versions to come). If you are running an older version of Wordpress you may want to check out this post. You may also want to check out the live demo of my log in screen here.
This post comes after updating my Wordpress to version 2.5 and losing my old custom log in screen. Just a word of warning, I am not the best tutorial writer and this tutorial is for an intermediate to advanced user of Wordpress.
Update:
There are also 2 WordPress plug ins available which can customise your Wordpress 2.5 log in screen.
- Wordpress Custom Admin Branding - This changes the log in screen, as well as the logo in the header and footer of your admin panel.
- Branded Wordpress Log In Screen - This is a plugin that brands only the log in screen.
To change the logo from the Wordpress logo to your logo
- Login to your site via FTP or your preferred method and locate the file ‘login.css‘ which is found in your wp-admin/css/ folder. Open this css file in your favourite editor.
- In the login.css file look for the line:
background: url(../images/logo-login.gif) no-repeat;
and change it to your own image for example… background: url(../images/YOURLOGO.gif) no-repeat;
NB: You will probably want to make the logo around 290 pixels wide. - For the more advanced users this is where you can customise the look of the login anyway you like using CSS which I know you will. I just changed the fonts to Helvetica to match my site.
To change the colour of the background (ie. the baby blue colour)
- Open the colors-fresh.css file which is also found in your wp-admin/css/ folder.
- Locate the TWO #eaf3fa colour’s in this file and replace them with any colour you like. I would recommend a light washed out or neutral colour. I chose my site colour which is grey. (#EAEAEA)
- Don’t stop here, you can customise your log in screen as much as you like! Mine was just a quick example.
Just a note to remember to backup these two CSS files (colors-fresh and login.css) before you do any Wordpress updates as these updates will overwrite these files and you will have to do it all over again!
Once you have finished, upload your login screen to the Wordpress 2.5 Log In Screen Flickr pool.
Why?
This is a a very simple and effective way to customise and brand your wordpress login screen… It would be very beneficial for web designers designing for clients as it’s the attention to detail in your work that makes all the difference when you deal with your clients.
If you have designed a wordpress blog for a client I would highly recommend making this small, yet important, inclusion. For myself, it’s not as important as I am the only one who writes on this blog, however for those with multiple authors it surely is a must.
You also may be wondering about what that OpenID log in is? You should definitely read about it… you will regret it if you don’t.
You may also want to check out WordPress Plugins You Must Have or the Ultimate List of Blog Heading Templates & Titles for Blogging. Also don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already.
If you have any questions (and I am sure you will) please let me know.
What is the best social media website? Digg, SU, Delicious, Reddit … or?
Written by Jacob Cass on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 – 12:31 pm
I am going to share some of my experiences with you on social media marketing to tell you what is the best social media website for your website and why.You may have noticed over the past 2 weeks that I have geared a couple of my posts a little more towards the social media. I wrote mostly listed posts, with short, sharp information and lots of pictures - social media nuts loves these posts! eg.
- 30 Fonts That All Designers Must Own
- 22 Blatant Graphic Design Rip Offs
- 99 Sites All Designers Must Know About
I will share my results from these posts with you, to determine what is the best social media website and why. First off, lets just name the main social media websites out there:
- Digg
- StumbleUpon
- Del.icio.us
- Other Niche Social Media Websites (ie. DesignFloat is a Digg like site for design)
So what is the best social media website for your website and why? To determine the ‘best’ social media website for you it depends on what your after. The usual main reasons for targeting social media websites are for:
- Traffic
- Subscribers
- Regular Readers
- Links / Exposure
- Money
I am going to look at these 5 reasons and will be doing so by comparing stats from Google Analytics and my own experiences. Check out the stats for the three pages mentioned above.
Digg
- Traffic
As you can see, by getting onto Digg’s front page, it will literally bring thousands of visitors usually within a few hours, but how good is the traffic?The average Digg visitor only stayed on Just Creative Design for 1:12 and only 17% of 43, 000 stayed on my website to check out more of my articles. The real value of this traffic is usually not that great as the huge amount of traffic usually brings down most sites (JCD went down for about 1 hour when we were getting 2000 requests per second) however it does boost your Alexia rank, get exposure, and build links.43,654 Visitors is not something you can really get anywhere else apart from Digg so if it is visitors and traffic your after, go for Digg.
- Subscribers
You would think after 43,000+ visitors to your site you would get at least some subscribers but after my experience only about 1% of all the visitors subscribed to JCD, 430 subscribers from 43,000? But I can’t be sure that they all came from Digg. About 100 had unsubscribed by the next day.
- Regular Readers
This is something I have not been able to track, but usually if you want regular readers I would target smaller social media sites in your niche as they are more interested in what you have to write about. An example is DesignFloat, which is a Digg like site for designers.
- Links / Exposure
This is something you can’t control but Digg sure does bring exposure to your blog, links were scarce but you do pop up on other social media sites such as popurls and jimmyr which also bring a good amount of traffic.
- Money
Not worth having PPC (Pay Per Click) ads on your site with Digg, after 60000 page views, only 4 people had clicked on my Google Adsense ads. Digg users generally do not click on ads and they have ad blockers installed. If you have a CPM (Cost Per Mile Impressions) ad system installed this would be more beneficial. Affiliate marketing on Digg is a bit questionable, but generally not successful.
- Other things worth mentioning:
Digg does bring a mad amount of comments both on your site and on the digg site, for example my recent article 30 Fonts that all designers must own brought over 350 comments to Digg and 50 here on Just Creative Design. Be aware that comments are not always nice but just ignore these!
StumbleUpon
- Traffic
The traffic from SU is steady, and in general pretty good in turnover for regular readers. Although it does not bring in huge amounts of visitors all at once like Digg nor in as huge numbers. SU users stayed on Just Creative Design for longer in general and visited at least 2 pages before leaving. You will also notice that it had a very low bounce rate compared to other sites, with 58% of visitors staying on the site!SU users are generally more inclined to stay on your website plus the visitors are steady and usually new (94% new).
- Subscribers
Also hard to track, but generally it has a bit better turnover of subscriber numbers after a good stumble post. I would say about 4% subscribe.
- Regular Readers
A little better than Digg however not as good as targeting niche social media site as I said before.
- Links / Exposure
Exposure is good, and usually you get links back to people that do posts on ‘the best of so and so’ or link love. If your post is getting stumbled it may be a good idea to submit the article to other niche social media sites.
- Money
Usually SU users do not click on ads, so this is a bit tough, try using a CPM (Cost Per Mile) advertising solution, something I am going to try soon.
Del.icio.us
- Traffic
Traffic usually comes in short bursts, however they are usually more interested in finding out who the author is and what the site is about and they also stay on the site for longer than Digg and Stumble Upon users. Not as many visitors as Digg or SU however a bit better quality traffic as they explore your site more.
- Subscribers
Have not been able to track this for Del.icio.us users but if they are interested in your blogs topics and sees your site has value, I imagine a small percentage would subscribe.
- Regular Readers
Also hard to track so can’t really comment on this one.
- Links / Exposure
Your website is shared amongst all the other users in Del.icio.us which is always great, as you get more exposure and traffic as people bookmark you for future reference.
- Money
More likely to click on ads however only a small percentage do so as you can imagine, a lot better than SU or Digg in this respect.
- Other things worth mentioning
Generally if your post makes Digg and it is a resourceful post, your post will also make Del.icio.us and other social media sites.
Reddit
- Traffic
Not as many visitors as Digg, SU or Delicious but any traffic always helps! Generally they visit just the page that was posted, hardy ever look around your site, and hardly stay on your site at all. Not that valuable traffic, but traffic none the less.
- Subscribers
Close to nil.
- Regular Readers
Hardly any at all. They usually are interested in the one page that is being linked too.
- Links / Exposure
Exposure is good as you will get nearly all new visitors to your blog, however they won’t stick around or write about your post.
- Money
A CPM (impressions) ad system would work best here.
Niche Social Media Websites
When I say niche social media websites I mean ones that are targeting at your niche, for example DesignFloat is a digg like site for design related subjects only.
- Traffic
Less traffic but a lot more valuable in turn of turnover. Visitors are very targeted so are more inclined to subscribe to your blog and explore your site. Design Float has been great for sending visitors my way and is also a sponsor for this site, but I do notice only about 40% of them are new visitors which means I do get a lot of returning visitors.
- Subscribers
As touched on above, users from niche social media sites are more likely to subscribe as they are interested in what your blog is about and won’t want to miss out on what you have to say.
- Regular Readers
The best out of any social media site as they are pretty much guaranteed to be interested in your blog.
- Links / Exposure
The best also as you will get link backs from other blogs who write on the same topic as you.
- Money
This depends on the type of advertising you have, if you have targeted ad words for instance then what you write about will reflect what ads are shown. This means if I wrote about design, design related ads are going to show up, and if people are coming from a niche social media site, they are more inclined to click on the ads as it will reflect their interests.As for affiliate ads, it depends on what your trying to sell. CPM would also work but I am in no way a monetizing expert, as I am not in this for the money.
Conclusion:
- If you want lots of visitors and traffic, lots of comments, and thousands of visitors (and maybe your site brought down) and a big batch of subscribers go with Digg.
- If you want good steady traffic go with Stumble Upon. You will also get a small number of subscribers and they will explore your site at least on average 2 pages.
- If you want short bursts of traffics and a bit of site exploration and link ups go with Delicious.
- Reddit users come and go, so this is pretty much only good for page view numbers.
- Niche social sites are the best way to go if you’re after subscribers and targeted traffic.
What are your experiences with social media? What works best for you? This post was another submission for Vivien’s Social Media Group Writing Project, a project where you can learn more about Social Media. And also Randa Clay’s Ad Group Writing Project which is based around writing a post on a advertising slogan. I based my post on “Make yourself heard” by Ericsson. What better way to get heard than by social media?
Ultimate List of Blog Heading Templates & Titles for Blogging
Written by Jacob Cass on Sunday, February 17, 2008 – 11:07 am
Below I have collected a huge list of great blog heading templates and titles for blogging. You can use these templates to customise your blog title and is a great resource if you ever have writers block.
I have compiled them onto one page to make for easy printing or viewing rather than going to separate pages which I found so annoying. I no way claim to have made these headlines and I have showed the source of each of the headings respectively.
How to get onto Diggs FRONT page in 8 steps
Written by Jacob Cass on Thursday, February 14, 2008 – 11:53 am
This article will show you how to get onto Diggs FRONT page in 8 steps by writing a Digg tutorial that appeals to Apple users, Firefox users, Microsoft Haters,George Bush haters and Global Warming Nazis all at the same time. 
You in?
If you didn’t notice I just mentioned the top 8 things you need to mention to be able to get onto Diggs front page, hence a tutorial that will appeal to 100% of Diggs whole market.
So how do you get onto Diggs Front Page? Use these simple 8 steps.
1. Mention Digg
Yup, they love themselves as much as we love them. If you digg a story about digg, who knows you may get a job with them or some bonus points or a place on the front page!
2. You may as well make it a tutorial while you’re at it.
Social Media geeks love tutorials and how-to articles such as this one. They feel like they are learning something (and don’t forget they have to know everything about the article in just 10 headlines or less and within 30 seconds). Remember, Digg users have to get onto the next dugg article to up their all-so-important profile.
3. Make the article appeal to Apple Geeks.
Did you know this is the most popular word to get attention for anyone that uses social media networks? Any news that comes from Apple, Digg licks up faster than you can say geeeeeks.
4. Insult as many groups as you can, yes you heard me you Apple Geeks.
Insulting people is a great way to get attention or for them to go “this guy is a smartarse so I am going to digg him.” Funny thing is that its true. Piss off your readers and they will digg you for it.
5. Talk about Firefox, because EVERYONE loves firefox.
Everyone has heard that Firefox has every addon in the planet… did you know you can even get a firefox plugin that goes to the toilet for you? But seriously, mention anything new to do with firefox and Digg users will lap it up. Just don’t mention Firefox’s memory leakage problem.
6. Tell people how much you HATE Microsoft .
Everyone hates Microsoft for some reason, why? Jealousy? Who knows, but they sure like to read articles about it. Maybe they want more proof to the proof that they don’t have. Microsoft rules. (See Step 4)
7. Talk about global warming or scientology as they are all the rage.
We are all going to dieeeee. The water is rising, the hole in the sky is depleting, we need scientology. People love fear. Talk up any story and glorify it to the max. Mission completed.
8. Mention George Bush, The Nazis or any other controversial figure or topic.
Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, Steve Irwin, Black People, Racism, Sexism. You name it. How many can you think of? People love these figures and topic. Trust me.
Note
None of the words above are my beliefs or opinions and is purely for fun. This article was published for Vivien’s Social Media Mega Project focused on Digg and Reddit. Check it out, you may will learn a thing or too.
If you have anything else to add, feel free. Also don’t forget to subscribe 
BE AWARE OF: Your Host, WordPress Plugins, CPU Load and being BANNED from your own website!
Written by Jacob Cass on Monday, January 21, 2008 – 11:12 pm
This is something all bloggers and webmasters should really know about so you do not have to live through what I did - 7 days of your website(s) being offline.
This is the story behind how I was banned from my own website, Just Creative Design, and how it was brought down or ’suspended’ by overloading my host provider’s CPU through the over use of my website and Wordpress Plugins and I want to raise awareness of this, so this does not happen to you.
I will recount the story as it happened of JCD being suspended and then restored along with commentary and advice along the way.
Jan 14th - All my websites are down!
When I realised my sites were down (they went to an advertising page instead of my page) I really did not know what was wrong and in the back of my mind I thought that I had been hacked just like how David Airey was, last month, but it wasn’t because I had taken his advice and checked my Google Filters and all was clean.
After this I went pretty frantic and emailed all the people I could (my hosts, their support them, my domain name host provider and also their support team - in total 4 emails).
I received pretty instant replies (between 2mins and 4 hours) from 3 of the 4 contacts however none of these could help me and told me to contact my hosts (of which I had already done). I had to wait 1.5 days for their first reply.
Jan 15th - First Contact, 1.5 Days Later
They sent me this email (see below) on the 15th of January with a very brief and vague reason telling me why the site was down and what I had to do to rectify it - they did not tell me HOW to do it and this is where the problem was and what took up so much time.
It has come to our attention (by the server not responding due to a high load) that your domain is in violation of our AUP/TOS by way of the following domain: justcreativedesign.com
justcreativedesign.com was disabled for overloading server with index.php processes.
justcreativedesign.com had to be disabled in order for the server to work. If justcreativedesign.com was not disabled, all domains on the entire server including your own domain would have remained inaccessible.
To get your site enabled, contact Emailed Removed and state your plan of action to resolve this issue and prevent it from reoccurring.
If this should happen again after the site has been enabled, the domain will need to be permanently removed in order to maintain the integrity of the server that hosts many other sites.
If you don’t know how to fix your script from using so much of the CPU, you should begin looking for a dedicated server or virtual private server.
As you can see, I really had no idea what the problem was so I went out and did a bit of research.
Jan 15th & 16th - 303 Redirection & Lots of Research
At this time I really had no idea what the problem was so I put a 303 temporary redirection on my website to point to an error message, hosted on a friends account, telling my readers that I was having some technical difficulties - doing this took 2 days for the nameservers to propagate, meaning, for 2 days I still had that annoying advertising message on my site.
Naturally after I received the email above, I wondered what it was all about, so before I replied, I set off and did a bit of research. I came to realise a small handful of people have had the same problem. The best resource and where I learned the most on CPU Load and Wordpress, was on the forum of HostGator (A leading hosting company) on Blogging, Wordpress and CPU Load. I would highly, highly, recommend to everyone, to read this whole article as you won’t regret it - I sure wish I knew about it before my site went down.
Research Conclusions & What You Should Know!
Nearly All Hosting Providers have rules about database usage (CPU Load).
This is something that nearly all hosting providers do not display anywhere on their site, and generally keep it quite disclosed unless specifically asked. You should ask your provider about your CPU Load limitations.
What is CPU Load you ask? Generally it is the amount of open maximum connections that your site can have and how much of a servers resources you may use by having all these connections used at one time. These open connections can come in a number of ways… For example, having a large spike from a social media site like Digg or by having a script or plug-in ‘go crazy’ or by having an error in your programming.
When one of these things happen you use up a lot of your host providers resources and as an example; if you use 90% of your server’s resource for over 30 seconds (a long time) your account would be suspended because this leaves no resources for the hundreds of other sites that are hosted on the same server. If this is unclear, read this article.
Wordpress Plugins are bad for CPU Load
Using too many plugins on Wordpress is a very bad thing… even if you try them out then deactivate them, it still leaves bits of code in your programming which chews up bandwidth and loading speed, so the solution to this is to have a spare Wordpress blog that you can test scripts and plugins out on.
Another thing I learned is that some plugins can conflict with one another and cause the script(s) to go crazy and repeat on itself and cause an enormous CPU Load on your server. This is why testing on another blog is perfect!
During my research I also found out that some plugins use more CPU Load than others and make your website slower to load. In particular; Recent Comment Plugins, Top Commentator Plugins, some spam protection plugins and even WP-Cache use a lot of CPU Load.
Serra from HostGator comments on CPU Load and account suspension…
“Most of the suspensions I’ve seen have been the result of scripts that have gone nuts or sites that are simply too big to be on a shared account. Shared accounts are geared toward sites that see a moderate amount of traffic, with few peaks in traffic. Those with heavy database operations or traffic spikes don’t really belong in the shared environment. Basically, for $6.00 a month, you need to have a normal website. For $78.00 a month, you can go crazy, but you need to pay for the craziness with the higher fee.”
So just be careful with wordpress plugins and test them out on a spare blog first.
Jan 18th - I Reply to Host Provider & More Waiting.
Anyway after 303 redirecting and all of my research (about a days worth) I replied to my host providers stating what I would do to resolve the issue and then 1.5 days later they came back with an email saying “Your website has been enabled“. I had to change my nameservers back to their original position and then I had to ‘wait up to 3 days‘ for my website to propagate back again.
Jan 20th, 21st - “Website Enabled” but not for me.
As I said above, they emailed me saying my website had now been enabled and it was, my website was now back up and running! (yay) - But unfortunately not for me - It was not working on my own computer at all so I emailed them again asking why everyone else was getting the site and I wasn’t. They replied:
“Propagation is the process in which the nameserver information in your Registrar’s database is passed to the 13 international root nameservers and then on to millions of ISP’s, routers, and DNS cache engines all of which will update their own dns tables with the new information whenever they choose to update. As you can see propagation is not controlled by any one company. Please wait about 3 days.”
But I knew this was not the problem so I contacted them yet again and this time they said they needed my IP, and for me to do a trace route.
I did what they asked and then they replied saying.
“121.210.114.XXX was blocked by firewall. It has been unblocked.”
Hey presto, I am now allowed back onto my own website! But this meant only one thing… I had just been banned from my own website.
Jan 21st - Banned From My Own Website and Why?
So after receiving the last email, I realised that I was just banned from my own website! The reason behind me being banned is a mystery however after my research I could only bring it down to 3 things.
- I was visiting my own website too often and was considered a spammer. (I was doing a lot of plug in testing and unfortunately I was not on a spare blog so this could be a valid reason.)
- A plugin went crazy in conflict with another plugin and caused an over load of CPU power.
- A social media spike (my stats don’t show this though).
As an educated guess, I believe it was a combination of the first two points but only god knows the real answer.
Anyway, now Just Creative Design (and my other website - E-mail Signature Designs) are online again and I have full access to them and my emails and hopefully this ordeal is completely over.
What you should do now.
After this week long ordeal I want you to learn from my misfortunes so that this does not happen to you, so I believe you should be doing these things;
- Share this article with as many people as you can (a blog post would be great - if not, any submissions to social media sites would be just as fine.)
- Contact your own host provider and ask about your CPU Load limitations.
- Uninstall the plugins you don’t need and declutter your blog for faster loading times. Remember the plugins that I said cause the most CPU Load.
- Create a secondary identical blog for you to test your scripts and plugins in.
- If you have not already, as stated above, I highly recommend you to read this article on blogging, wordpress and CPU load.
- Make sure you know ALL the contact details of your host provider, domain name provider, and their support teams and have them easily on hand. Ensure that all your contact details are correct in each of these places (I had a wrong email in one which delayed the process by half a day).
- Ensure You Backup Your Blog - Luckily I had been doing this automatically every day.
Thanks
Thanks everyone so much for those who have emailed / contacted me at the start and throughout this ordeal: Lauren, David, Vivien, Niyaz PK and for those , who followed my progress in the comments of these two posts.
I know some other people have tried contacting me but seeing though I had no access to my domain or emails I haven’t received everyone’s emails so sorry about that.
Anyway, hope this helps you avoid this problem in the future and if anyone has had this happen or know someone who has, I would love to hear about it.
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