Thanks for trying out the Contender theme by WhyPad.com

Tips for Customizing the Contender theme:

1.  Add widgets or go with the defaults - there are 2 sidebars that can accept widgets...In your blog's Admin/Design section select the Widgets page for the Contender theme.  There is a dropdown on the right side that you can select the 2 sidebars...be sure to click Show to get your selected sidebar to show...don't forget to click Save when you're done with each one.

2.  Sidebar.php:  Add your image to the top info box on the sidebar by replacing the infobox_pic.jpg image in the theme's images folder with your own...keep its size to 115x115 or less for best results.  Though you can do more as you like.

3.  Sidebar.php:  You can alter the Tag Cloud in the Infobox where the image and search bar are.  Just change the # values for smallest, largest, and number on line 11.

4.  Sidebar.php:  If you have a gravatar associated with the Admin user of your blog, you can set the info box image (see step 2 above) to use that gravatar by uncommenting the PHP function
//echo get_avatar( get_option('admin_email'), $size = '80', $default = '<path_to_url>' ); 
on line 5 of the sidebar.php file (delete the '//') and then comment the echo function in line 6 by adding // in front of the echo statement.

5.  Sidebar.php:  Add your disclaimers or other HTML text to the bottom of the sidebar.  Do a search on <h2>Disclaimers:</h2>.  Customize it with whatever you like.

6.  Sidebar.php:  Add some blog bling to the side bar by adding the code between the li tags...search for <!-- add Bling here --> for a couple of default places.  Add as many li tags + bling as you like.

7.  Header.php:  Add your logo to the header.  In the header.php file on line 26, change the text: 
<?php bloginfo('name');?> 
to
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/logo.gif" alt="" style="border:0"/>

8.  Adsense***.php:  Add your Google Adsense code to the adsense*.php files.  These are already set up to be included in pretty good places in the theme.  Just add your code to the files and you're ready to go.  Be sure to choose the right size AdSense blocks or you might get some funky layouts.  Feel free to experiment.