WordPress themes are free by the hundreds, or cheap by the dozens. Or expensive, if custom designed. Usually.

But now there’s a website where you can design your own WordPress themes—for free.

Yep. Your colors. Your design. Chosen from menus. Easy.

Want the sidebar on the left? On the right? Want two sidebars? No problem.

There is a bit of a learning curve. But have you even tried going through free WordPress theme sites, looking for something that works for you? Yep, that takes time, too.

I haven’t quite mastered it yet. I haven’t quite figured out the trick to adding background images. But I did create a plain, clean theme. Want to see? You can view it here.

So why not give this a try? If nothing else, it’s fun. And you might create the perfect theme for you!

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I just discovered this site where you can make a widget of your own blog posts. They call it a “blidget.”

This widget, or blidget, automatically picks up and displays your last few blog posts. It is your very own private BlogRush-type widget, featuring only your own blog!

Others can then get your blidget and put it on their blogs if they want to keep up with your posts (sort of like putting the Digg widget on your blog). Or you can put your blidget on other blogs and/or websites that you own.

Not only that, but when you create a blidget, you can then easily add it to your Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, or other site by clicking a button. It’s all very automated and easy.

Here is an example that I made for this blog:

You can customize your widget, and others who get your widget to put on their blog can customize it to suit their site.

Register, and you can store your widgets and have them listed in a blog directory for others to see (and maybe post on their blogs).

Also, by registering your blog, you get a free link back to your site from what is sure to be a highly Google-ranked site as it catches on. (That’s great for getting traffic and helping raise your blog’s ranking).

This is really fun stuff! Go see for yourself at Widgetbox.com.

Do you want 2000 links to your blog for free? Yeah, I thought so.

In case you are new to blogging and/or search engine optimization, let me explain. A big part of how Google determines the Page Rank (PR) of your site is by how many backlinks (one-way links to your site from other sites) you have. The higher PR the sites that link to you have have, the more they help raise the ranking of your site. (That is search engine optimization (SEO) in a nutshell.)

Brad Callen offers a program called Directory Submitter that you can download from his site at no charge. It allows you to select which directories to submit to (for example, only PR 4 or above). Then it automates directory submission, saving you hours and hours—or days and days—or time.

All you do is provide your email address and register the program. It’s that simple. You can download Directory Submitter here.

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Go, now! Sorry I didn’t mention it before.

By the way, Brad’s other programs are excellent, too. Not all of them are free, but they are great.

Blog design is my priority, but let’s face it. We all have to be constantly on the lookout for good ways to promote our blogs. Especially quick, easy and free ways.

So I was thrilled with the idea of BlogRush.com, and I told you about it a week or so ago in a post called Promote Your Blog Instantly With BlogRush. No Charge!

At the time, the service had no track record. But I was betting on the brilliance of the concept—and of the founder, John Reese, who has made many millions on the Web. The results are in. It works! It is especially good for younger, less-well-known blogs, like this one.

The only thing I didn’t like was the widget itself, which was ugly. It really clashed with some of my blogs, but I used it anyway.

Early on, John promised colors, or “flavors” of widgets, and I could hardly stand the wait. Now they’re here! And they are beautiful, well-chosen colors.

I’ve chosen a conservative dark blue to blend with this blog, and various other colors for my other blogs. (Feel free to go look, please.) Talk Like a Texan got Ice (pale gray) to go with the colors of oaks, bayou and spanish moss.

New Health Ideas got a Plum widget. Art Fun Cheap got a Watermelon (emerald green) widget to match the accent color of the WordPress theme. And so on. It was so much fun.

And here’s (almost) the best part. You do not have to cut and paste any code/scripting/whatever to change the widget Flavors. Let me say that again: No cutting and pasting. No wp-admin.

Once you’ve registered and added your blogs, you can just go to the BlogRush site, log in, and apply whatever flavors you want to. Anytime. It all happens remotely.

Sheer blog design bliss! It’s my favorite new toy!

And the widget works with other blog engines. I have put one on a Blogger blog, Tengsha.com, and it works great there, too, including changing widget colors.

As far as the service itself goes, I’m delighted. There have been problems with cheaters lowering the overall click-through rates, but I’m confident that those will soon be sorted out.

BlogRush is truly a fantastic service! And it is free, quick and easy—three of my favorite things.

It may not seem like a free, online PowerPoint-style presentation program would have anything to do with blog design. But it does.

Preezo is an Ajax web application that lets you create and share professional-looking, PowerPoint-style presentations over the web without software or plugins. And there is no charge to join the site or to create presentations.

The best part from our point of view as bloggers is that the presentations are then stored there at http://preezo.com, and you can embed them in your blog. That means you can create video presentations that add great appeal to your blog, easily and cheaply.

The only cost is your time to create the presentation, and the interface makes that easy. No, I haven’t made one yet (but watch for one soon!). I wanted to let you know ASAP.

Please come back and tell us what you did with this great new free blog design tool.