I’ve got the Woopra Analytics plugin installed – which is awesome, by the way – and was just looking at the list of visitors’ countries for the last month. We’re so international! Visitors from Canada, England, Germany, India and many more countries, even Indonesia, where I used to live.

When I was a child we traveled extensively, and I became familiar with other cultures early on – when we finally settled down in Georgia, when I was in my teens, I felt like a stranger in a strange land!

I’m an old broad now, and have settled in the Pacific Northwest – I’ve been in Oregon for 9 years now, and I’ll probably never make the journey to Europe or Asia again. But looking at my stats, I realize that I actually have been traveling in cyber-space, or rather cyber-space has been traveling to me!

So, Hello World! Don’t be strangers – post a comment and say Hello back!

I haven’t been visible around the Garden lately, but I’ve busy behind the scenes, readying and upgrading all my WordPress themes for 2.7, and working on a new, magazine style theme.

Daisy Gray has been released and can be downloaded at WordPress.org. This was submitted right before the 2.7 release, but will work with 2.7 if you don’t use threaded comments. If you do, wait for the 2.7 version (coming tonight or tomorrow).

I’ll also be releasing a very nice magazine-style theme very soon, with a dramatic black and white theme and plenty of ad real estate in the wide, tabbed sidebar. I’m working out the kinks now, and should be ready to release by the end of the week!

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In addition to free WordPress themes and advice, Rose City Gardens is now offering web design and hosting.

Pay for one year’s hosting in advance, and get a website customized to your business or specifications, FREE!

Your site will include:

• One year of hosting on a lightning fast Dual Xeon server, with the space and bandwidth you need to run your site.
• Email and cPanel control panel
• WordPress or other CMS installed on your webspace
• Extra care taken to secure your WordPress install, and keep it secure against spammers and hackers
• Your choice of theme, customized to your specifications
• Your theme, no matter if it’s one of mine or another open source theme, will be optimized for best search engine results.
• Your installation will be customized with essential plugins to be search engine friendly and a pleasure to use!
• Daily virus scans and backups of files and database
• 24/7 customer support
• On site help with link building, networking and miscellaneous issues

For a limited time, I’m offering all this for $75.00. On Monday, the price goes up to the normal $150/year.

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I like it, I do! But I won’t be using it and here’s why:

While it’s very convenient, I would have to go back into the admin control panel anyway – to enter tags, and most importantly – to use All-In-One-SEO for custom titles, meta description, etc.

Those who manage many blogs might find this software indispensable – I’ll stick with the admin panel, thank you!

I built an Amazon store and stocked it with the latest WordPress and blogging books – check it out! I didn’t use a plugin, but instead made a modified template file and included my aStore in an iframe. I’ll make a video or screencast tutorial soon on how to do it – it was super easy!

I am also getting VERY CLOSE on completing the Tickled Pink theme – you should expect an announcement in the next few days. I don’t know if I”ll submit it to the Theme Codex or not – or even whether they will accept it, but I’ll have it available for download soon. I have to finish the accompanying Simple:Press theme, Pinkish, as it will be part of the package.

I’ve also got another theme in the works that uses NextGEN Gallery – right now it’s just a bare outline in Photoshop and I’ll have to flesh it out but it won’t be long before it’s a nice theme for a gallery or portfolio site!

And – nothing to do with WordPress or with the Gardens, but: Congratulations to Senator Barack Obama on winning the Democratic nomination!