Viola: ad-ready, search engine optimized Wordpress theme



It's not a music instrument but can help you share your imagination and creativity. Viola is a copyright-free three-column Wordpress theme offered to you by Nyutech, which gets its name from the dominance of hues of purple in the theme. It is an ad-ready and search engine optimized Wordpress theme that offers plenty of customization options and control.

What Viola has to offer?






Featured posts: Viola has an option to show a list of featured posts using thumbnails and text links. All that you have to do is tick a box while creating the post and assign an image being used in the blog and saved by the Wordpress installation. The thumbnails are created by TimThumb, which fails to work if the image is not on the same Wordpress blog. This feature can be disabled from Viola Settings page that can be found under the Appearance tab in Wordpress admin window.

Image Rotator: When you install Viola in your Wordpress (Wordpress->Wp-includes->Theme->Viola), you will find a folder called imagerotator in the theme folder. This folder contains Matt Mulenweg's image rotator script. All that you need to do is upload as many 160px wide images you want in this folder and they will appear on the left sidebar. The script will keep the images rotating. It can also be disabled from Viola Settings page.

About Me: The theme has an in-built About Me box that can be easily customized without having to tamper with codes. Just go to Viola Settings page and add your name, image, description and title for the About Me box. You can also add HTML codes in it. It can also be turned off.

Custom Footer: In case you want your own text or message in the footer of the theme, just add it in the Viola Settings page. It will also accept HTML codes.

Ad-only Sidebars: Not exactly separate sidebar of ads but just sections on the sidebars that are made only for showing ads. When you go to Appearance->Widgets in the Wordpress settings page, you will find several "Ad Sidebars" apart from "Left Sidebar", "Right Top Sidebar", "Right Right Sidebar" and "Right Left sidebar". These ad sidebars have been created for easily showing ads in sidebars. If you wish to include some ad, just add a "Text" widget in the desired sidebar and paste the ad code in the space for text. If you wish, add a title for the ad box.

How many sidebars does viola have? The left sidebar acts as just one sidebar. The right sidebar is divided into two: the upper half called "Right Top Sidebar" and the lower half. The lower half of the right sidebar is divided into Right and Left sidebars.

Apart from these main sidebars, the theme will have following sidebars for showing ads:

Left_Top_Ad_164px: This ad will be shown on the top portion of left sidebar and can be up to 164px wide.

Left_Bottom_Ad_164px: This ad will be shown on the bottom portion of the left sidebar and can be up to 164px wide.

Right_Top_Ad_300px: This ad will appear on the top portion of the right sidebar and can be up to 300px wide.

Right_Left_Top_150px: This ad will be shown in the top portion of the left side of the lower half of the right sidebar, can be 150px.

Right_Left_Bottom_150px: This ad will be shown in the bottom portion of the left side of the lower half of the right sidebar, can be 150px.

Right_Right_Top_150px: This ad will be shown in the top portion of the right side of the lower half of the right sidebar, can be up to 150px wide.

Right_Right_Bottom_150px: This ad will be shown in the bottom portion of the right side of the lower half of the right sidebar, can be up to 150px wide.

Add ad codes after adding "Text" widgets in the desired slots. The large number of sidebars make it possible to add as many ads in desired slots easily.


Ads on post pages: By default, each post will show ads just below the head line and at the end of the post if the codes have been saved for these ads on Viola Settings page. One can have separate ad codes for the top and bottom slot. If the ad code has been set, the ads will be shown on post pages. These ads can be turned off for certain posts through the options available on the sidebar while creating or editing posts. The control for top and bottom ads are separate, making it possible to turn just on of the ads or both of them.


Better Navigation: The theme uses a modified version of wp-pagenavi plugin for a nice page navigation.

Enjoy the benefits of Viola Wordpress theme. Please don't hesitate to ask me if you face any problem using the theme. I might also be able to customize it for you :)


Demo of Viola Wordpress theme
(Featured posts do not work properly in this demo due to hosting errors.)
Download Viola Wordpress theme

Creative Commons License
Viola is in the Public Domain.

PS: Find some more free Wordpress themes offered by Nyutech on this page.

OnCloud: Another free, minimal Wordpress theme

OnCloud, Free Wordpress theme

I love simplicity, maybe you also do. If yes, here is a Wordpress theme for you.

OnCloud is a minimal Wordpress theme released by Nyutech available under GNU Public Licence. With a static background of clouds in sky, it soothes your eyes. To add to its charm, the background will fit any screen size, even if it's metres wide.


The theme has its own archives and author pages. It has been tested to work fine with Internet Explorer 7 and above, and the latest versions of Firefox, Safari and Opera. Google Chrome? I'm just assuming it should. If not, please let me know.

OnCloud in Internet Explorer 6
In the last two themes (Undedicated, Rainbow Fairy), I had taken care of obsolete Internet Explorer 6. Not anymore. If anyone loads the blog in this browser, a nightmare for Web designers, he gets to see a note at the top of the page, urging him to download and install the latest version of any popular browser. I am too lazy to design the entire theme for a thick-headed Web browser.

Download OnCloud Wordpress theme

Additional resources:
Undedicated: Free, minimal Wordpress theme
Rainbow Fairy: A colorful Wordpress theme

Hide files and folders on your PC

Hide folders and files

Do you have a friend who would not only use your computer but also look into various folders? And you have a file that you don't want others to know about. Now what?

WinMend Folder Hidden is a small Windows application that will quickly hide files and folders on your local drive or removable flash drives. Once hidden, these files and folders won't be visible even if the drive is accessed through a different computer or operating system. It can only be unhidden by the application. To make the files and folders available only to you, a password can be set for the application.


WinMend Folder Hidden is available as a free download for home use.

If you want a more secure solution, you may try TrueCrypt to create encrypted and hidden drives which can be mounted only after providing the requisite password. It creates a virtual drive that behaves like any other local drive but vanishes on being unmounted. The only trace left is a chunk of file that can be made to appear like a word document, image, movie or just anything by adding appropriate extention during creation of the encrypted disk space.

Folder Hidden

Additional resources:
Use TrueCrypt to create hidden, encrypted folders

YouTube grows to fit XL

YouTube XL

If you watch lot of videos on YouTube, you will be pleased to know that the Google's video-sharing site has launched a new interface for large screens. YouTube XL interface has more in common with music and video options available on TV screen when using a DVD player. YouTube XL seems to be a step towards entering television screens.

YouTube fans are surely going to enjoy using the new interface which automatically plays next video as soon as the current one ends, even if you haven't added any video to your playlist. YouTube XL's continuous play feature allows you to search for a topic and then start play once to watch all of the videos on that topic.

Though the interface is actually meant for high quality HD videos, it presently shows the regular videos only. So if you switch to fullscreen mode, you get a very blurry video.

See YouTube XL in action [YouTube Blog]

Turn off your PC automatically on scheduled time

Automatically close your PC

Have you ever used your laptop to sing a lullaby for you? I do, thanks to GShutdown, an Ubuntu application that turns off (or log off, or hibernate) your computer on a time or schedule set by the user. [GShutdown is also available for Fedora and Open Suse, and other Linux.] How to do that in Windows?

WinMend Auto Shutdown is a Windows freeware (1.5MB) that can shut down your PC automatically. Just set the time or schedule using a simple interface, and it will shut down, hibernate, stand by or log off the computer unattended at a scheduled time. It can come really handy when you need to turn it off after, say, the ongoing download completes, but you can't stay there to turn it off.


Automatically shutdown computer

WinMend Auto Shutdown will display a 30 seconds countdown before initiating shutdown. Once it has been set, it gets minimized in the system tray, leaving your desktop uncluttered.

If you are having trouble going to sleep, you can play some soothing music on your laptop, and set WinMend Auto Shutdown to turn off your PC after, say, one hour.

Download WinMend Auto Shutdown [Download from Cnet]