The best option for your WordPress blog is to get a custom theme, but this may not always be practical or affordable. Thankfully, there are literally thousands of free themes for you to consider. Neo Theme is one of the newer ones to hit the block.

Released earlier this year, the Neo WordPress theme is quite clean in its layout, but is very robust in its feature set. Its basic color scheme is silver and grey, but there are some nice spots of light blue too. There is a featured post slider toward the top, as well as several custom social media icons embedded “behind” that.

Below that is the main content area where your blog posts will be shown. The date is highlighted to the left. Just below the post title are your categories and tags, as well as a space for an image or ad placement. The four 125×125 ad blocks in the sidebar provide good monetization opportunities too.

Check out the screenshot of Neo WordPress Theme on Web Design Lessons, which is also where you can find the links for a live demo and a free download.

What’s happening in the blogosphere this week?

The Simple Dollar discusses the concept of frugality and what it means to save money on your off-time. He equates saving a certain amount to earning a certain hourly wage, but shouldn’t that “extra” time be spent living and not “earning” more money?

Stacey Higginbotham of GigaOM continues along these lines by approaching how billable hours may not apply in the age of social media and multitasking. It’s much harder to break up your work day into distinctly separate hour-long chunks, so how do you bill your clients accordingly?

Laura Spencer of Freelance Folder reminds us of situations where attitude makes a difference. It’s all about how you think about the world and the circumstances that you encounter. Suddenly hit with a costly expense? Have you saved up an emergency fund? Can you work with your creditor?

Greg McFarlane of Control Your Cash has a guest post up on ProBlogger discussing the importance of proper, comprehensible English. It amazes him that in this day and age, there are so many people who don’t understand why plurals don’t need apostrophes. Correct English matters.

KISSmetrics marketing blog finishes off this week’s collection by providing seven tips for creating killer product pages. Each of the tips is accompanied by a screenshot to help illustrate the point, like clearing your calls to action and including concise copy with conviction. Are you doing it right?

There are more and more advertising opportunities on the Internet with each passing day. You can purchase advertising directly from a number of websites, just as you can advertise on Facebook and Twitter too. YouTube is another intriguing channel to consider.

There are two prominent video-based ad placements that could prove to be valuable parts of your overall marketing campaign. First, there is the pre-roll. Many popular videos on YouTube allow for a “pre-roll” video that is played before the main video. Some of these can be skipped after a few seconds, while others must be played through in their entirety.

The other big option is direct advertising with the content creators themselves. They can then promote your product or service in the middle of their own videos. You can see the Netflix interstitial in most of the newer videos from Epic Meal Time, for instance.

The question of which option is more effective is a tricky one. The pre-roll is played right away, but sometimes can be skipped. The interstitial can also be skipped by the very nature of fast-forwarding through that section. And both can be perceived as an annoyance by some viewers. What do you think? Which ad placement is more effective?

There are many different ways that you can go about displaying your blog. Some people like to have the full text visible right from the main page and main archive, much like what you see here on the BlueFur blog. However, for blogs with longer posts, this may not be as appropriate.

Depending on the theme that you are using, there may already be an automatic function to create excerpts, but this may not be the case. That’s why something like the Auto Read More Generator plugin can be so simple and so useful.

It serves a single function. For every post that you publish, it will automatically insert a “read more…” link after the first image and first paragraph. If there is no image, then the “read more…” link will be placed after the first paragraph. This creates the excerpt and streamlines the main page.

You can find the Auto Read More Generator through the WordPress Plugin Directory as normal. And also as normal, this plugin is available as a free download too.

There is absolutely something to be said about maintaining a strong online presence for your company. This could involving maintaining an active Twitter account and an active Facebook page, for example. You may even have a good YouTube channel.

However, you have to build these with a certain set of goals in mind and these goals will oftentimes lend themselves to meaning one thing: channeling those Internet users back to your own portal. In other words, you want to attract people to your website, whether it be a content-based site, an e-commerce site, or what have you.

There are two big take-home messages from this. First, make sure that the URL for your main website is easily visible and accessible across all of your social networking efforts. Most users are not going to be motivated enough to search for your site. Make it easy for them.

Second, make sure that your main website is well designed, well laid out, and properly maintained. There’s no point in channeling users to a site that is not optimized. Consider your goals — making sales, generating leads, building an audience, etc. — and design accordingly.

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is one of the more popular Android tablets on the market, partly because it comes with an optional keyboard dock that also extends the battery life. Now, another variant from Asus is hitting store shelves by the end of this month.

What you see here is the Asus Eee Pad Slider. Unlike the Transformer where the keyboard and tablet can be separated, the Slider has the keyboard integrated into the whole unit. This makes it slightly thicker and heavier, but it makes for a more unified approach too.

Many of the other features will be largely similar to the Transformer. There is a dual core processor, Android Honeycomb, and an assortment of ports to go along with the 10.1-inch touchscreen display. The 16GB model will ship at the end of this month for $475, while the 32GB model is $575.

That makes it slightly cheaper than the Transformer, since the keyboard and Transformer sold separately would run you about $550 for the 16GB. Some stores are selling it as a combo for $500, but that would still be $25 more than the equivalent Slider.