See the title above. I don’t use WordPress.com very much, instead preferring to stick to my own website – Binary Moon . But sometimes I like to log in and see how things are changing here, so I’m always interested to see what is happening with the traffic stats, and it’s amazing to see that binarymoon.wordpress.com (ie this tiny little blog) still gets around 30 visits a day.

Ok, in the grand scheme of things 30 visits isn’t much, but it’s cool that it get’s anything!

So what am I working on at the moment?

Mostly a brand new WordPress theme framework which will form the backbone of future themes on Pro Theme Design. My plan is to make the “ultimate” theme, but only time will tell if I’m actually capable of such a feat – there’s some pretty strong competition around, with more frameworks being developed all the time.

I am also working on an updated version of TimThumb – my image resize script. TimThumb is a fantastic automated way to resize images without having to create loads of thumbnails manually.

I have recently been spending some time adding a web games arcade to my gaming site, Binary Joy.

There are only a few games available at the moment but I hope to add more at pretty regular intervals. The design will also be tweaked in the coming weeks, but as a quick and dirty solution I am quite pleased with what I have created.

Not really a wordpress article but I recently launched a single page website where I talk link to all the sites I run (this one excluded).

You can check it out here – bengillbanks.co.uk

I have recently been working with Darren Hoyt on a new version of his popular theme, Mimbo, and it is finally released to the public (release post here) as our first Premium theme, Mimbo Pro

The theme is available on the new blog design website – Pro Theme Design

So far the feedback has been really positive and we’re overjoyed at the reception. Hopefully things will continue this way

If anyone is interested in making some money out of our hard work then you can check out the affiliate page for more info.

I have spent some time recently working on an update to Regulus. In short the new features are…

• New colour scheme
• Various Bug Fixes
• Header link
• Home tab alterations (adjust the text)
• Support for tags

I have been talking to (pestering) the kind folks at wordpress.com to update the theme here, hopefully it will be online in the not too distant future.

You can read the full release post on my main site. If you have a self hosted blog then you can also get the download from the same page.

Over on Binary Moon I recently published 10 top tips for reducing your online readership.

In brief the points are…

1. Snap.com
2. Excessive Ads above the fold
3. Overlay & Expandable Ads
4. Inline Ads (those double underlined ones)
5. Del.icio.us/ Twitter in feeds with no opt out option
6. Bad/ No navigation
7. No/ Hidden archives
8. Tiny/ Low contrast text
9. Long lines of closely spaced text
10. No individual post information

You can read the my thoughts about each of these points on Binary Moon

I have recently made a couple of posts on Adens and optimising it, over on my main blog. Thought it might be worth a look for some of you bloggers out there, so had to mention it

• My top 5 tips for increasing adsense earnings (without increasing traffic)
• How to Optimise : Time based Adsense

Any questions? Just ask over on the relevant post(s) and someone is sure to respond.

I published my first wordpress plugin today. The plugin is very very simple. It’s basically a way for you to customise the look and feel of your wordpress login screen. The best use for this is on sites that you design for other people, where you wish to add that extra touch of personalisation and polish.

You can see examples of my custom wordpress logins on the custom wordpress login flickr group. You can also read the release article, and download the plugin for yourself.

I have recently finished reading the new Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows book, and have written a review over on my “other blog”. To save the click I think that the new book is really rather good and finishes the series off nicely. I wish there was a bit more coming but, well, you can’t have it all.

I am constantly amazed by the sheer amount of spam that is showing up on wordpress.com. Surely the spammers realize that all the blogs on the site use Akismet? I am currently getting around 100 spams a day, despite the fact I only blog here once every month or so. It’s absolutely crazy!

WordPress.com is actually surprisingly good when it comes to spam on the site. Very little gets through, although there are occassionally the odd one that slip under the radar, but those are trivial to deal with.

I really wish the spammers would just give up