just a quick word to highlight a free wordpress theme i came across today called "grass roots". it is by the designer andrew lindstrom over at the blog called well medicated. andrew is a freelance designer like myself.

i like to point out good design when i see it and andrew has a winner design here. be sure and also take a look at the preview of his almost finished magazine style design theme he calls zinepress. it looks like it will be a very nice design.

it's been a while since i blogged about the "out of work, looking for work" deal, so here's a little update.

about 6 weeks have passed since i was laid off and i have been actively searching for web design and related opportunities/positions.

i have come across some really diverse things. i have landed a freelance gig helping a small company ramp up to the opening of an e-commerce furniture store and am working a bit on that now.

i have been spending some time working on developing some phpBay pro based sites to earn eBay affiliate income. they are wordpress blogs/sites that point to items on sale currently on eBay. if a visitor comes to your site, clicks on an auction or one of the other eBay pointer links, then a 7-day cookie is set on that computer - if an eBay auction win occurs from that computer within the 7-days, then i get a split on the fees that eBay collects for the auction.

it all works through the phpBay pro wordpress plugin i purchased that calls in all the auctions based on keywords/parameters you set in the software. pretty neat. it was only $49 and can be used on an unlimited number of sites.

as of today i have yet to earn any income from that, but i am willing to sit it out and try to build up traffic to the sites (a list of these sites are in the sidebar under "other buford sites").

i am currently participating in a new online blogging contest/course called the thirty day challenge. it has videos that teach you how to learn how to do sites for profit the correct way to not spin your wheels. i just started this and will post more after i get more into the course. the course is free, run by aussie's named ed and dan.

you can sign up for the thirty day challenge (30dc) yourself and try it out.

i'm also looking into various opportunities making partnerships with business owners selling items for them on eBay. it's amazing how many of those are out there.

today i went to a company that had boxes of computer products (new, but pretty old), plus 23 new violins (go figure) to sell. i took home a box full of them (1 of each item) to research the products to see if they will sell.

i have answered a ton of online ads for web site design, graphic design, html, css, web optimization, seo and more. there seems to be a lot out there, but nothing has fallen into place yet.

no prob. i'll just continue doing what i am doing and something will happen. more later.

i was stumbling late tonight on stumbleUpon and came across a neat blog for those of us using the phpBay pro plugin for wordpress.

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it's the blog of melissa eaton and her site is dedicated to talking about the eBay affiliate network program and the phpBay pro plugin.

so the cool thing about this plugin is that once it is installed (in the usual manner) all you have to do is activate it and it will start tracking all of the search terms used in your blog's search box.

you just click to get the report, which tells you which terms were searched for, how many hits each term got and even if terms were losers and got no results.

the losers might be telling you what users expected to find and did not on your site, so maybe it's time to start blogging about those topics too.

the search meter plugin's author is bennett mcElwee and can be found here at wordpress for download.

after many long months of avoiding upgrading my wordpress blog i finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade from wordpress 2.0.5 to wordpress 2.5.1

i was really worried that my site would break or that many of my plugins would not work anymore. well, guess what? i'm still here and so is my blog.

i decided to download and install the wordpress automatic upgrade plugin and see if an automated solution would work easier than me trying to update all the files manually.

wow, this plugin works great. i have a self hosted wordpress blog and the only thing that did not work correctly was the re-activation phase of the plugins. i had to go in and spend 15 minutes activating the plugins i wanted to use.

here is what they say it will actually do...

Wordpress automatic upgrade upgrades your wordpress installation by doing the following steps.

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

It did all this with no hitches except for number 8, where i had to do my manual bit.

I'm going to use this plugin on all my wordpress blogs! thanks keithdsouza and ronalfy.

well, on june 20th, 2008 i was laid off from my e-commerce position with hitchfinder.com.

my family has been wonderful and supportive. i have not been depressed at all due to the upbeat attitude of my lovely wife.

i have no regrets. it was a very good learning experience and i took a lot of knowledge away from the job, plus a really cool 24" iMac computer and the adobe creative suite cs3!

what have i been doing since june 20th you might ask.

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well, i have finished my freelance web site gushindesigns.com and am almost finished with my new business card. i have designed and opened a brand new web site called appleproductsdepot.com, which combines web design, affilliate marketing and eBay.

there is also a second one of these eBay affiliate marketing web sites that i am currently building that is centered around old and new cameras, both film and digital. i am still into photography and i want this one to be a bit more interactive and it will probably concentrate more on vintage camera gear than newer stuff.

and i have been going to a number of meetup.com meetings on subjects like joomla (a content management system for web sites), wordpress, eBay and various internet entrepreneur groups.

i have also been more active selling products on eBay than i have in the past, with 30 current auctions running. i am trying to liquidate a comic book collection i bought many year ago for a good price and have already made my original investment back so the rest is gravy as far as the comic books go.

there are a few opportunities i am checking into for web design work full time as well, but more about those if anything happens with them.