All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

If you’re a WordPress.com user, you’ll notice the huge improvements Matt and his crew have made. For awhile, themes were just slowly released, with not much customization. Widgets came along, so that helped a lot. Now, I just realized that the Regulus theme offers one of the biggest customizations people will ultimately want: their own header image! (The default Kubrick theme allows you to change colors in that header image, but this is so much better.)

So how do you create your own header image? I know little when it comes to image editing, so Paint.NET (freeware) is my choice of software. It’s supposed to be MS Paint super-sized, and then some. If you want more power, then Gimp is a Photoshop contender (except it’s not as pretty). Remember: the dimensions of the image has to be 730 pixels wide by 140 pixels high.

Why am I writing this? Well, at the moment, two of my friends are using Regulus [because of that feature], but one of them created another WP.com blog to link to the image. So if you didn’t know, you can upload the image into your own account and link to it. (The file doesn’t need to be on some other server.)

• When you’re done creating the header image, upload the image to your WordPress.com blog.
• In the “Write Post” page, click the “Browse All” button to find the header image you uploaded.
• Click it and make sure its options are “Using Original” and “Not Linked“.
• “Close Options” then drag the image into the post area to get the URL to the image.
• Copy that URL.
• Go to the “Presentation” tab, and make sure you’ve already selected Regulus as your current theme<./li>
• Go to “Current Theme Options“.
• See the “Header Image URL”? Paste the URL you just copied.

In the header I created, I think it’s best to just type in the title of your blog into the image. It’s more personalized, especially since you can be using your own font. If you do this, uncheck “Header Text” so it doesn’t display your blog title for you. Lastly, pick a color scheme that doesn’t clash with your header. Gorgeous!

I just noticed at my admin CP at WordPress.com is now using SSL. How cool is that? (I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I do know that logging in is now encrypted. Encryption is good.)

Matt, Donncha, and whoever else that’s behind WordPress.com is now open for signups without needing an invite or using Flock. Very sweet. If you don’t have one, and you’ve been wanting to blog without setting up your own host, this is a good one to use.

Additional links: Wordpress.com FAQ, WordPress Documentation

Angsuman explains how to get a free WordPress.com account without having to install Flock (or getting an invite). For Firefox users, it’s a matter of installing the User Agent Switcher Extension, pasting a User String, then selecting it as your User Agent as you browse to the WordPress.com Flock URL. Nifty!

I wonder if Matt will get upset at this. I’d like to hear his take on why he gives out invites like this.

Want to know a secret? If you have Flock you can get on WordPress.com without an invite. Enjoy!

Thanks Matt!