Against my better judgement I’ve updated my old version 02 of Blix with AdSense and SEO to WordPress 2.5 compatible. Added widget support, tag support and fixed several code bugs that ruins the original Blix theme when used with WordPress 2.5 (WordPress 2.3+ actually).
Although I’ve updated the SEO version of the Blix theme (download link below) to work with WordPress 2.5 I’ve not added the same SEO improvements I added to my paid for AdSense themes at Google AdSense SEO Themes and Templates. Also the AdSense options are not as good.
Comparatively speaking the new Blix with AdSense/SEO version 03 is as SEO optimized as a WordPress theme can be, version 02 of Blix with AdSense/SEO is around 80% optimized (still really good, but I learnt a lot in the years between version 02 and version 03).
I’m afraid if you want the best, you’ll have to pay for it, so after you’ve tried out version 02 of Blix with AdSense/SEO and see how good it is, (probably the second best SEO/AdSense themes online today) check out my paid for SEO/AdSense themes under WordPress Themes section.
The free Blix AdSense theme below is version 02, my version 03 Blix theme is MUCH better optimised, more AdSense options (including targeted AdSense coding) and Blix code fixes for WordPress 2.5 (includes tags support), full widget ready and can be found at Blix with AdSense + SEO 03.
If you are looking for the very best WordPress SEO themes version 03 are by far the best available today: If you can show me just one better SEO theme for WordPress 2.5 I’ll give you a copy of ALL of mine for free, I’m that confident mine are the best on the market by far today.
Free AdSense Ready Blix Theme for WordPress 2.5
This is my first released WordPress theme, it’s Blix with Google AdSense ads added in what I’ve found the best locations for maximum ad revenue. This took quite a lot of effort to get working, but I think it was worth it.
There’s going to be at least two versions, the first the original Blix WordPress theme with just the Google Ads added (the one below). The second will include some SEO optimization so your WordPress blogs rank higher in Google (I’m an SEO Consultant after all :-)).
The latter theme will be harder to to do than the former since when I optimized the WordPress theme for this blog it involved hacking the WordPress code quite a bit (not just the theme pages). WordPress is brilliant from and SEO perspective (best SEO CMS I’ve found!), but it wasn’t built by an SEO, so there are few areas over looked.
For a WordPress theme to be useful to all I can’t expect novice users to be editing WordPress PHP files just to get AdSense/SEO working with the Blix theme! So will take some effort to get the SEO optimization in the theme files only!
So here it is WordPress Blix theme with Google AdSense Ads
The first screenshot shows the home page of Recycle For The Arts which I used to edit all Blix versions (currently using version 03) of this WordPress theme. You can see two of the three AdSense ad units in the screenshot, the third unit is located at the bottom (336×280 rectangle ad unit).
You will find the same AdSense ad units and placement for all archive type pages used by the Blix AdSense ready theme.
The second screenshot shows a single post page, this is where individual posts are shown. You can see the three ad units, one at the top within the content (best place for a AdSense ad unit), one on the menu and the third at the bottom to catch users who might leave your site after reading a blog post.
In my experience it’s these pages that will create most AdSense revenue, especially the 250×250 square unit within the main blog post content.
Blix with AdSense Installation Instructions
Download the free Blix with AdSense zip file below
Download Blix with AdSense WordPress Theme NOT updated to WordPress 2.5
Unzip and edit the file adsense.php within the /blix-adsense-02/ to include your Google AdSense code (read the readme.txt file for more details). Upload, select theme and you are done.
Search Engine Optimization Blix Theme
If you’d also like to improve your search engine rankings try my SEO (search engine optimization) version of the Blix with AdSense WordPress theme. Not only do you get Google AdSense ads on your WordPress blog for free with little effort you also get a search engine optimized WordPress theme as well.
Download the Blix with AdSense and SEO theme zip file below
Download Blix SEO with AdSense WordPress 2.5 Theme updated July 2008
Unzip and edit the file adsense.php within the /blix-adsense-seo-02/ to include your Google AdSense code (read the readme.txt file for more details). Upload, select theme and you are done.
Drop a quick comment below if you installed this Blix theme, I’d really like to know what you think. And for the best in WordPress AdSense/SEO themes go to Google AdSense SEO Themes and Templates.
92 responses to WordPress Theme Blix with Google AdSense (Now 2.5 Compatible)
Very handy! Thank you very much for the effort. Might need to repack again due to double directory and wordpress say it is broken theme.
Thanks anyway, this is great… it rocks
Thanks Ronn for your kind words and the heads up on the double directory error. Have uploaded a new zip file.
That was quick trying out the theme BTW :-)
Not sure why Wordpress would say it’s broke though?
I’m using the latest version of WordPress 2.0.4 and downloaded the latest (or what I assume is the latest) version of Blix from WordPress popular theme page http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/ today (plan is to ad AdSense to the most popular themes first might have Connections ready by tomorrow)..
I’ve tested the theme just now on two other blogs, one running WordPress 2.0.2 (highly hacked) and another running WordPress 2.0.4 (fresh install, no plugins or anything) and no problems reported.
I take it you got it working OK though?
If anyone else has a problem LMK.
Thanks again for the comment, good to know someone is using it :-)
Found a problem with the original Blix theme zip file I was working from, not sure what happened but all of the images associated with the theme are corrupt!! The theme works, but lacked the finer details of small images at the side of menu links for example. Found it an hour ago as I was making an SEO version of Blix.
I’ve got a non corrupt version of the theme direct from the authors web site, so will be fixing it ASAP, in the meantime hold off downloading the zip file above.
The next version will also make it possible to change the Google AdSense ad colours easily as well. So look out for version 2 of Blix with Google AdSense.
David
I’m happy to report version 2 is now linked from the “Download Blix with AdSense Wordpress Theme” link above. This version of Blix has improvements over the first Blix with AdSense theme.
I’ve fixed the corrupt image problem, so all of the small images work now. Also improved placement of the AdSense units, for example in version two I’ve managed to code the first post only on archived pages (these are pages that tend to show 10 blog posts each) to show a 250 by 250 ad unit (like you see on this page near the top). This wasn’t easy to code, so very happy with this achievement.
You will also find the option to change AdSense ad unit colours globally by editing just one file. So if you don’t like the default blended ad colours it’s very easy to change.
If anyone has any problems/comments please post them here.
Enjoy.
David
Have also added a Blix search engine optimization theme version. This also includes the AdSense ads etc…, but also includes code changes to improve search engine rankings.
This is the type of code I use on my sites.
David
I want to know how to shorten the post with “Continue reading Post title”
Thanks
I use a WordPress plugin called Post Teaser http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/PostTeaser with my own settings (I edit everything I use at code level for SEO reasons).
David
I can’t seem to get my code into the theme because I can’t open the unzipped folders. Do I need a special program?
Do you mean on your hard drive or on the server?
If the former I’ve no idea why when unzipped the files within the folder isn’t accessible (they should be)??
If on the server and you are trying to edit them using the WordPress built in template editor you’ll need to set permissions for that folder and files so they are editable (I use 777 as other settings don’t work on my server).
In Filezilla (a free FTP program I use, search for it with Google if you want a copy, it’s very good) right click the file(s) you want to change permissions on select File Attributes and in the new window tick all boxes so it says 777.
You’ll then be able to edit the files with WordPress. You can find more about setting permissions on the WordPress support forum.
David
Hi David,
Thanks a million for your “Blix SEO with AdSense Wordpress Theme”, it works great!
Jjust one small things, when I insert , on the blog page display like (more…) , how can I modify to something like (read whole article, clicke here). I can not find in PHP code file.
Thanks!
Hi Kelvin glad you like the theme.
I don’t use the more tag for creating an excerpt of a post on archive pages, I use a plugin called Post Teaser http://dev.wp-plugins.org/wiki/PostTeaser which creates the except automatically in the format-
Short section of article
Continue reading “Name of Post”
With “Name of Post” a link.
If it’s a short post no link is added.
Works much better than the more tag since it’s automated and you don’t have to think about it :-)
If you want to use more still there’s info about it here http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_the_Read_More and if more was part of the original Blix template (it is) it will work with my versions as I took nothing like that out.
David
LOL just realised you asked where the more code is in the template :-)
Open index.php (Main Index Template if editing via WordPress template editor)
Around line 40 you’ll see this-
class=”more”>Continue Reading
To have the text “read whole article, click here” as the anchor text change to-
class=”more”>read whole article, click here
Save/upload and that’s it for the home page links.
Repeat with the file archive.php (Archives if using WordPress Template editor, note the capital A as there is a lower case archives as well!). Look around line 64.
If you are wanting an SEO version of the above link use this instead-
Change-
<a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” class=”more”>Continue Reading</a>
to
Continue Reading <a href=”<?php the_permalink() ?>” class=”more”><?php the_title(); ?></a>
This will use the article title as the anchor text (good for SEO reasons).
David
I found code on your index.php and modify :
post_excerpt != “”)? the_excerpt() : the_content(” …read full article… ” . get_the_title(”, ”, false)); ?>
It works :)
However PostTeaser not working, unless I put <!–more->, then on the blog shows both ( more link and PostTeaser link), so I just use <!–more–> tag.
Thanks a lot!
With the Post teaser plugin it only works when there is a reasonable amount of content.
This post http://www.morearnings.com/2006/09/10/wordpress-comments-and-rel-nofollow/ has enough content, but this one http://www.morearnings.com/2006/03/31/free-seo-advice/ doesn’t.
I think the default setting was around 100 words or something like that before it creates an excerpt. You could change it to say 50 words if your posts tend to be short. On this blog I have it set at 115 words.
Look under Options/Post Teaser for the settings to change.
David
Hi David,
After use your SEO theme for my blog, my site and blog both jumped into top rank of Google search result, thanks a lot for your help.
There is strange things, My site domain.com has PR 3 got first position;
but domain.com/blog got second position by only has PR 0 , how can this happen, is there any way I can improve /Blog PR through inside link from index.html.
Also, is there anyway I can set up all previous link in one page, so people can overview all article at one time.
Thanks a million for your kindly advise again! :)
Kelvin
Hey Kelvin,
Glad the SEO Blix theme helped with your rankings.
Your blog as second listing for a SERP is normal, Google is saying there’s another page on your site that’s relevant to that search phrase.
I’ve found internal links pass close to full benefit right away where external incoming links take about a year to pass full benefit see http://www.seo-gold.com/tutorial/google-sandbox-effect.html so if you’ve linked to your blogs home page from the index page it’s going to rank quicker than if you put the same blog on a new domain or only had links from outside sources. With a PR3 home page the boost won’t be very big, but everything helps :-)
If there’s a link from your home page to the blog it will increase PR of the blogs main page at the next PR update (PageRank updates are roughly quarterly now!!). With a PR3 home page you’ll probably see a PR2 for your blog home page. If there aren’t many links from your home page (to other pages of your site and outside) then it might make your blog PR3, see http://www.seo-gold.com/tutorial/pagerank.html for more details about how PR works.
Not tried to get all blog articles linked from one page, though I bet there’s a way either through the archive pages or a plugin. Take a look on WordPress see what they have.
David
Is this version of the Blix theme widget friendly?
I hadn’t tried the Widgets plugin until today, so new to this.
After following the instructions at http://automattic.com/code/widgets/themes/ I got Widgets working, but the formatting wasn’t quite right, got the category coding right, but lost the small icons associated with menu links.
Only spent 15 mins on this so maybe I haven’t understood the plugin fully, but it looks like you’d loose the AdSense ad unit on the sidebar if you used this plugin since it’s not a widget per se.
So yes you could get it to work, but it would mess with part of the AdSense optimization.
David
Hi!
I was using K2 before, and it automatically resized photos in my posts. Is there a way to achieve same with the Blix Adsense theme?
Fixed it with this plugin -
http://www.blogforward.com/money/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-post-filter-plugin/
>>>>>>>>>>>
Hi!
I was using K2 before, and it automatically resized photos in my posts. Is there a way to achieve same with the Blix Adsense theme?
Hi SEO Dave,
Thanks for the nice Blix modification! Only problem I had with Blix is that I wanted it to be wider, so I tweaked it and you can see a 900px version of this theme here (sorry, thats demo text for now – still tweaking the theme).
http://www.goforty.com/video
I find the theme NOT EASY to tweak, though, and I still need some help with the following:
1. I changed the header graphic, but I am having trouble changing the color of the title. I changed the H1 and H1a in the stylesheet, but it also changes the header of the article.
2. I want to change the color scheme of the boxes in the header, and the titles of the links on the right. Can you point to me where I can access this?
Thanks in advance!
Probably the easiest way is to add some inline CSS like-
h1 style=”font-color:red;”
or something along those lines. You might have to use the style on the link a href rather than the H1 header-
a style=”font-color:red;”
A better solution is work out from the external stylesheets (there’s several with this theme) what affects the H1 header you want to change and make a new copy of them (within the stylesheet), but with a different class name.
From the above you’ve already found them, so make a copy, give them a new class name and then give the H1 header that class via the header tpl file.
h1 class=”newh1″
That will mean only the H1 header at the top (logo type area) will be styled with that class and so none of the other headers/links will be effected.
You’ll probably only have to copy the link (a) styling for colour changes (didn’t look).
The images are under-
images/spring_flavour/
Though some colours are from the CSS files, there are 2 files to edit-
layout.css
spring_flavour.css
style.css just loads the two stylesheets above.
David
Hi David! I use this theme on my site walmartassistantspeaks and love it. I decided to use it on my homemaking site and ran into a problem with link categories – it doesn’t show them. Is there something I can do to get them back? I still show them in wp dashboard but not on the site view – it only has one “links” green bar and then they’re all listed after that in alpha rather than divided by categories.
My apoligies if you’ve already answered this. I’m so new to doing this stuff myself and it takes me 100 times longer to learn how to do something! Heck it was almost 3 weeks before I learned how to change the adsense code to my own! LOL
Hi Dave,
Need some advise from you again:)
1. I try to put more Google Ad inside each article,
modify index.php code:
current_post ==0) include(“first-ad.php”); ?>
current_post ==0 change to current_post >=0
but only last three post showing AD. How can I make each post
contain Ad.
2. I use to make Blog Homepage short, but when I click category link, all post are still full size long. How can I make it display like Blog Homepage.
Thanks a lot!
Sorry for the mistake!
2. I use –MORE– to make Blog Homepage short, showing “click here the see full article”.
But when I click category link, all post are still full size long. How can I make it display like Blog Homepage.
Thanks! :)
David, thanks for the free template .. i am playing around with it for my 1st wordpress blog. I would like to ask you how can i change those ad format that u have preset, because i would like to change the first ad into a horiztonal one.. Anyway, the template is awesome.!! :)
Great, I was searching something like this beauty and the beast power! Thanks.
I have two question:
1 – What is the actual differnce between the blix-adsense-seo-02 and blix-adsense-02 ? I tried both but could not find major difference?
2 – I need to place the 1st unit on top of the first title, how can I do it?
WZ – Glad you like the template, to change the ad format you’ll need to edit the code of the template, they are relatively easy changes made via the WordPress Template editor or a text editor. The first AdSense unit is within the file first-ad.php for post pages (pages like the one you are reading now). For archive pages it’s within the code of the relevant page, just look for 250×250_as as that’s the size of the ad unit.
Ahamed – The SEO version is the AdSense version with search engine optimization changes, things like better use of headers, better title element etc… for example if you look at this page where you add a comment you’ll see a header “Leave a Comment for WordPress Theme Blix with Google AdSense” the original theme is something like “Leave a Comment” so by using the SEO theme the title of the post is used more often, so if it includes relevant keywords the page is more likely to rank for those keywords.
David
Thanks for your clarificaions. I m using the SEO one. and following is one of my pages header source:
» Hyundai Motor signs deal to sell Sonata taxis to Singapore
First of all I don’t know why all the data starting with »
And I also assume that the keyword should have comma?
Sorry, the header source that I cut and paste is not appearing in my earlier post, here is the file http://www.quickfiles.net/570316
The » is the >> characters you see on WordPress post titles etc…, basically a separator like a – or : Don’t worry about it, does no harm.
The meta tags copies the content of the title element, which is why they are identical to the title, basically a quick way to get a meta description and meta keywords without having to write them via a plugin (there’s a plugin for unique meta tags). I do it this way even when writing static pages (not for WordPress) as they aren’t important to rankings (abused in the past).
Since Google ignores the meta keywords tag and doesn’t use the description for ranking purposes there’s little point going to the trouble of writing unique ones.
And no you don’t need commas for the meta keywords tag, spaces are acceptable. Again though Google ignores the meta keywords tag – http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/meta-tags-optimization/
David
Thanks for your usual prompt and detailed reply.
My site is ranked as follows:
MSN Search 3
Google Not Found
Yahoo! 17
AltaVista 17
Naturally, I don’t want to upset the MSN and Yahoo ranking where I am now and to get in to Google.
My question is adjusting the meta information will it effect my MSN and Yahoo ranking?
If your sites relatively new and low on backlinks it will be in what has been called the sandbox http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/google-sandbox-effect/ basically Google relies heavily on links and currently it delays the FULL benefit from new links for a period of about a year.
MSN and Yahoo don’t have a sandbox, they can take time to rank, but as they rely less on links things move quicker.
Not checked recently, but Yahoo uses the meta keywords tag, MSN does not. So for Google and MSN what you do to the meta tags will have no effect, Yahoo a very small effect.
Meta tags have been so abused in the past Google no longer uses them and Yahoo gives them very little weight that you could get away without using them. That said if there’s benefit to be had and it’s not going to take a lot of time you should use the meta keywords tag.
Since the benefit to Yahoo is very small I doubt you’d notice a SERPs change if you removed or altered them.
This is why I copy the title and forget about it.
David
My site is new, so I think the SEO optmized theme is a better fit than the regular version. I just started using blix-adsense-seo-02 now. Unfortunately, the links to static pages don’t look on the home screen. In fact, it uses the blog title as the link text for the main tab while Links to all static pages are visible only when moused over. Is this by design? Or just my Firefox/1.5.0.9 under Linux is not supported?
Hey Jerry,
The page links on the green search/navigation bar is part of the Blix theme. I don’t use pages like those much so haven’t looked into changing it so it adds the links to the menu (so this is Blix default behaviour).
If you look at sidebar.php template file at the top you’ll see-
* Pages navigation. Disabled by default because all new pages are added
* to the main navigation.
* If enabled: Blix default pages are excluded by default.
I think to put the links on the menu only remove the
/**
and
above and below the text above (in that file).
If it doesn’t work leave a comment and I’ll do some testing, got to pop out right now kids have a music lesson and I’m the taxi service :-)
David
Thanyou for this excellent theme + SEO Dave. It took my a while to sort them out but atleast they are working now! GREAT!
I install your template yesterday and have a question. I noticed that the catagory section is appearing twice on my bloh. Oce at the top (above) my post and at the right side colum. I like the right side colum, how do I get rid of the category section appearing above my posts?
Secondly, my adsense ads dont seem to be relevant to the theme of my blog. Can Dave or anyone help? the site is www winatmoney.com
Thanks, Gary
Hi Gary,
Looks like you fixed the category problem, though none of your deeper pages work. Did you make the .htaccess file writable (777) and save the file created when you set Permalinks?
The AdSense ads not matching content is normal at first, takes time for AdSense to learn your sites content. That said sometimes you can get some strange ads even 6+ months in, all depends on who is advertising at the time and if your content is matching what advertisers want.
BTW liked your first post, sound a little like me about ~10yrs ago looking for someway to make money online, though I wasn’t working due to health problems (had to drop out of University just before final exams, back problems literally couldn’t SIT exams!). Will look forward to reading more when you fix the permalinks.
I use AdFormat wordpress them on one of my websites. Quite handly, too. Just change the publisher ID and voila!
Hello David.
I was trying out a couple of adsense themes and I think yours is pretty good. But personally I prefer fluid width themes. I think these fixed themes are bit of a waste of space. do you mind if I try to make it fluid ?
thanks,
alex
Hi Alex,
Feel free to edit the AdSense themes to your needs.
David
hi,
how to change the size for total page?
i cant any in .css file..
thanks
Thanks so much for offering this theme! I installed it, but do have a question… is there anyway to prevent the header from getting cut-off at the bottom?
Thanks again!
Where do I find and add a search engine affiliate to my website?
I used to install blix to my blog .Sometime I ‘ve change to
use other themes.Now I ‘m using blix for 1 years because
it ’s very easy to use.
Finally i’ve found an interesting theme! I was exactly looking for something like this for my blog.
Thanks you so much!
Just installed your AdSense Connections on one of my blogs. No problems so far, but I changed the top image to suit the content (hipefully you don’t mind).
But I can’t figure out how to add a favicon. As far as I know it needs to be added into header.php in between head tags, but this particular theme has nearly empty header.php so I don’t know where to put a link to favicon…
Thanyou for this excellent theme + SEO Dave. It took my a while to sort them out but atleast they are working now! GREAT!
I just love the way you’ve integrated the adsense code into your posts. Only showing it for the first post, but still being able to display it for individual post pages using one line of code. Brilliant!
Its not actually coding it, but coming up with that concept, however simple it might seem in hindsight that makes me truly admire you!
great theme. i left you adsense id in most of the day, hope it helped
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