WordPress Planet

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 02/09

Perurry — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:30:39 +0000

New Plugins

Spam is website publishers #1 concern, we wanna share our and our visitors’ emails to those who should have access to them, but don’t want spam harvesters stealing them and sending garbage to us. A lot of techniques had been developed to hide our emails from these delinquents, while having them shown to real people.

Devel

Devel is made up of development oriented administrative components for developers and power users who need more control over their WordPress site. Features are seperated into components which can be enabled or disabled. In addition, devel has an intuitive API for adding your own custom components into the mix using the devel components API.

Adeel’s Zodiac Calculator

A sidebar widget that displays your visitors’ Chinese and/or Western zodiac signs based on their date of birth without reloading the page.

Digital Raindrops CMS Lite

This plugin gives additional sidebars, content panes and templates for your Artisteer Theme.

Disable WordPress Version Updates

WPC Disable Wordpress Version Updates removes the Wordpress update feature.

Updated Plugins

Top 10

Track daily and total visits on your blog posts and display the count as well as popular posts.

Contextual Related Posts

Display a list of contextually related posts for the current post.

WP-PageNavi

Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress site.

WP Super Cache

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.

Historical Comment Count

Allows the website owner to track the number of published comments on their blog over time.

WP-Task-Manager

Wp-Task-Manager is a plugin for wordpress which add a small task manager inside the administration panel.

WordPress.tv: Introducing WordPress.com VIP Hosting & Support

Michael Pick — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:01:37 +0000

WordPress.tv: Noel Jackson: P2 1.1 Theme Preview

Ryan Markel — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 05:30:08 +0000

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress.com Introduces Import from Posterous

Keith Dsouza — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 04:00:42 +0000

Having several blogs can be a bit hard to maintain, and micro blogging services like Posterous and Tumblr provide a quicker way to post content to the web. However, WordPress has added features which are similar to Posterous, in the form of posting by email to WordPress.com blogs.

If you have started using that feature and are looking to import data from your old Posterous blog to your WordPress.com blog, you will now be able to do it using the Posterous importer. To import content from your Posterous blog to WordPress, login to your dashboard and go to Tools -> Import, click on the link for Posterous importer to being the process of importing data to your WordPress.com blog.

More info and details at the Official WordPress.com blog.

Matt: Jay-Z

Matt — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:43:48 +0000

As I noted on Twitter, Jay-Z now has a WordPress-powered blog. It’s bare right now, but hopefully they really start to stretch WP soon. By the by, Jay, let’s grab a bite and talk tech and design. Hat tip: Michael Koenig.

Matt: Seven on Seven – Rhizome

Matt — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:36:57 +0000

In April I’m going to be participating in an event called Seven on Seven put on by Rhizome. “Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new — be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine — over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17th.”

WordPress.tv: Mushon Zer-Aviv: Beyond Sharing – Open Source Design

Ryan Markel — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:00:09 +0000

WP iPhone: WordPress for iPhone Version 2.2 now in the App Store

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:04:12 +0000

Just got word that version 2.2 has been approved and is now in the App Store.

I’m very excited about this new version which is focused on improved comment moderation including:

Reply to Comments
Edit Comments
Highlighting the new items in the comment list

We hope this release will make the comment experience on the go much more enjoyable and useful.

For support and feedback, please head over to the WordPress for iPhone forums. And as always, you can track and get involved with this Open Source development project by clicking over to the Making WordPress for iPhone blog.

Weblog Tools Collection: Where Is The Line Drawn?

Jeff Chandler — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:07:51 +0000

Cory Miller who is one of the guys behind iThemes.com has published a long but excellent piece regarding his thoughts on why there needs to be a commercial WordPress plugin market. Honestly, I think Cory’s post has been the best on the subject and I don’t disagree with much of what he said. In terms of supporting the commercial interest of plugin authors from the plugin repository, there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. We already know that theme authors who sell their themes under the GPL license have been rewarded via a commercial themes page on WordPress.org. Back in July of 2009, the BlogHerald asked Matt if the same thing would happen for plugins:

Commercial plugins are already seamlessly integrated with the plugin directory.

I don’t know exactly what that means but if we take a look at the page that lists the restrictions and qualifications to be hosted on the repository, there are no rules against commercialization. Since commercial plugins/authors ARE indeed part of the WordPress community, how should the plugin repository reflect that, if at all? All plugins within the repository are free of charge, so how do you make a business out of that? Although it’s not listed, up-selling appears to be an acceptable practice within the plugin but there are still no rules on how up-selling is considered acceptable. Unfortunately, this is subjective so I’m not sure there will ever be a concrete guideline. But users of the software can certainly be vocal about it to have it changed if they don’t like it. Other questions I have regarding the repository:

If plugins that were freely available on the repository switch to a paid model, can they link to the paid model from their repo page? Post Templates is a good example of this. *UPDATE* Apparently, this is not accepted as Post-Template has been removed from the repository.

Can a plugin author link to a specific place within the readme.txt file that tells users where they can get paid support?

Can a plugin author state that if the end user will be using the plugin on a commercial website, that they HAVE to buy it?

If there are enough signs that the plugin is commercial, will donation links be removed from that plugins repository page?

I don’t know the answers to any of these questions and your guess is as good as mine since the answers are not clearly written down in the repository guidelines. What I’m anxiously awaiting for is a post by Matt himself weighing in on this sector of the WordPress contributor community and his thoughts on how resources of WordPress.org can be used or not used to support those efforts. He’s made it clear in the past that he loves to see people making a living from WordPress but he’s also been vocal about having a completely different opinion of paying for themes versus paying for plugins.

BuddyPress: BuddyPress 1.2 RC2

Andy Peatling — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:29:24 +0000

A second release candidate is now available for testing on WordPress 2.9.1 and WordPress MU 2.9.1 and above (zip / svn).

If you are upgrading from an earlier pre-release version then you can just overwrite the BuddyPress plugin directory. Instructions for upgrading test installations from previous versions of BuddyPress are also available.

As before you can find a list of known issues and a place to post bugs via the BuddyPress Trac installation.

Please do not post bugs in the comments as they may be missed.

Donncha: WP Super Cache 0.9.9

Donncha — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:14:19 +0000

Well, the new WP Super Cache is available now.

This release adds experimental object cache support. Don’t go looking for it unless you have an external object cache already. It won’t show up. I recommend using the Memcached object cache.

Some of the other major changes include more translations: Chinese (Pseric), Ukranian (Vitaly) and Japanese (Tai). The Italian and Japanese translations have since been updated but not included in 0.9.9. You can grab them from the languages directory if you don’t want to wait until the next release.

If you have WordPress Mobile Edition installed the plugin will grab the list of mobile user agents from that and warn if your .htaccess is outdated.

And, a small but significant change is that the PHP cache loader will use the static “super” cache if necessary. This might happen if your rewrite rules aren’t working properly and not serving cache files. At least your anonymous visitors will see some sort of cached file. Use the debugging system built into the plugin to determine where the cache comes from.

See the changelog for the complete list of changes.

Related Posts

Mike Little: WordPress Started Seven Years Ago

mike — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:45:27 +0000

Another year has passed for WordPress, and for me my first year as an independent WordPress developer whose sole income comes from WordPress.

It was seven years ago that I made the the comment on Matt’s blog that started the whole thing off.

These days WordPress celebrates its birthday on May 27th, the anniversary of the first WordPress release.

I’m really looking forward to the future WordPress, especially the new merged with mu version.

Update: I accidentally left this post in draft mode, so I guess it didn’t appear at the right time.

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 02/07

Perurry — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:24:30 +0000

Neoclassical

Two column revamped version of the Neoclassical theme with support for automatic thumbnail generation and 125×125 ads

ProSmooth Series

A professionally designed classy and clean design with a smooth and elegant accented color scheme. Designed to be light weight and fast loading, featuring a fixed width centered layout that’s compatible with the latest wordpress and widget ready.

Unfocus Green

Two column, fixed width theme in simple shades of green

Dark Forest

Dark Forest 02 is a simple free WordPress Theme with two Sidebars a 160px (Adsense) and Widget Support. There is an Option Page to populate the Footer. Page in German.

Simple Magazine Purple

Three column, fixed width, gravatar and widget ready theme with a theme options panel and support for thumbnail Images with auto-scaling

Publisher Blog: The Carter Center Joins WordPress.com VIP Hosting

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:42:55 +0000

Exciting to see that former US President Jimmy Carter’s organization, The Carter Center, has just launched their blog, which is part of the WordPress.com VIP Hosting program:

The site will focus on covering:

…updates on the Center’s peace and health efforts around the world. Our blog will feature news and video from the field, photo essays, articles authored by our experts, and more.

[ Visit The Carter Center Blog ]

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 04/02

Perurry — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:30:40 +0000

New Plugins

To do list

This plugin provides users with a to-do list feature. You can configure the plugin to have private to-do lists for each user or for all users to share a to-do list. The shared to-do list has a variety of settings available. You can assign tasks to a specific user and have only those tasks that were assigned viewable to a user. You can also assign different permission levels using capabilities.

Leave-a-Note Visual Commenting

Leave-a-Note is a plugin for Wordpress, that transforms your comment section into a visual representation, making each comment a little post-it notes.

PHP Browser Detection

This plugin provides a number of template tags to get browser info, including conditional statements to test for each browser, versions of Internet Explorer, mobile browsers, and iPhone visitors.

Technical Support

Technical Support for WordPress is a way to provide quality support to your clients. After setting up a WordPress powered website for your client, install the Technical Support plugin, which will enhance your client’s Dashboard with a new widget for submitting support tickets directly to your e-mail.

Geolocator

This is a plugin that displays a “worksheet” for verifying and researching addresses with Google Maps.

Updated Plugins

WP Table Reloaded

WP-Table Reloaded enables you to create and manage tables in your WP’s admin area. No HTML knowledge is needed. A comfortable backend allows to easily edit table data. Tables can contain any type of data and additional JavaScript libraries can be used to extend it with features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more. You can include the tables into your posts, on your pages or in text widgets by using a shortcode or a template tag function. Tables can be imported and exported from/to CSV, XML and HTML

Store Locator

Effectively manage and display your important stores, locations, or other points of interest on a website in an easily searchable manner using Google Maps.

Twitter Goodies

Twitter style Twitter Goodies Profile Widget + Twitter Goodies Search Widget + Twitter Integration (wp to twitter) plugin. All in One plugin for Twitter Goodies.

DG Auto Login

Auto-login as guest or any other user you wish in your wordpress blog from your friend, ally or network website.

WP htaccess Control

Provides an interface to add custom htaccess rules to the htaccess file generated by Wordpress. It also includes Custom Author Permalink.

OnlyWire for WordPress

OnlyWire syndicates your blog posts to over 30 social networking sites *simultaneously* with one button click. Increase your blog traffic overnight.

WordPress.tv: Andrea Rennick: WordPress MU

Ryan Markel — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:30:08 +0000

WordPress.tv: Raphael Mudge: After the Deadline

Ryan Markel — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:45:10 +0000

Alex King: WordPress HelpCenter is Hiring

Alex — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:44:36 +0000

I’m very pleased that we have reached the point with WordPress HelpCenter where we need to add another developer to our team.

We’re looking for someone with a broad range of WordPress, PHP, XHTML and CSS experience, basic server configuration experience, and in particular someone with outstanding communication skills.

Ideally we’d like to add someone who lives on the west end of the country¹ in order to have better coverage throughout the work day across all US timezones. However, we’re definitely looking for the best person for the job.

Providing great service is our number one priority, and we need someone who understands this inherently. Not only does the HelpCenter team reflect on Crowd Favorite, but we also have a responsibility to every affiliate plugin and theme developer who puts their trust in us. It’s also important to continue receiving good press and word-of-mouth recommendations.

See the job posting on the HelpCenter web site for more details and to apply. The position is open immediately and we hope to fill it within the next 30 days.

Questions? Post them in the comments and I’ll try to answer.

You can work remotely. [back]

Weblog Tools Collection: My Thoughts on Premium Plugins

Ronald Huereca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:15:22 +0000

Most of you have heard by now of the departure of Lester Chan from WordPress plugin development. While he will continue to update his plugins as needed, all support will be terminated.

As a plugin author myself, I’m not surprised by this news. With the world economy still in the pits, more plugin authors are feeling the crunch. While they would like to release free plugins for all, at the end of the day, there are bills to pay and mouths to feed.

Within this article (rant?), I will go over the types of plugins I would pay for, an argument for paying for plugins, and go over several business models I see popping up.

Plugins I Would Pay For

Here are several categories that make a plugin something I would pay for (yours will undoubtedly be different).

The plugin is a timesaver – Plugins such as Akismet and WP Spam Free save me from having to deal with SPAM.
The plugin provides peace of mind – Plugins such as WordPress Database Backup and W3 Total Cache provide peace of mind. My data gets backed up, and my blog is protected from an influx of traffic.
The plugin helps my readers – Plugins such as Subscribe to Comments, PageNavi, Related Posts, Popular Posts, and many others that improve the reader experience.
The plugin makes something complicated simple – I’m thinking of creating XML Sitemaps, creating forms (cformsII or Gravity Forms), or listing podcasts (PodPress).
The plugin fills a unique niche – An example includes the WP Touch plugin, which is for mobile users of your WordPress-powered site.

An Argument for Paying for Plugins

In 2009, we saw the premium theme market jump into the stratosphere.

Jeff predicts the same for plugins in 2010.

One thing that has always confused me is that a lot of the “free plugins forever” advocates have a different opinion towards paying for themes. Why is that so?

Unless you purchase the theme’s developer license, you only get to use the theme on one site. And if you’re like me, you probably go through three (sometimes four) themes a year (I’m never satisfied!).

A plugin, however, is there before, during, and after the theme switch. I can use it on more than one site (if the license permits), and upgrading it is much less of a hassle than themes.

On my personal site, I’ve pretty much had the same plugins for 3-4 years running. If I were to pay for those plugins, that’s a good return on investment in terms of mileage.

For those who would never consider purchasing a plugin, remember, as the economy gets worse, your favorite plugin may be the next to get abandoned by its author for financial reasons. It’s not at all uncommon, and I would argue that this is the rule, not the exception.

Plugin Business Models

Over the past year, I’ve observed several plugin business models crop up. I will go over these briefly and weigh in on each.

Donation Model Only

Some plugin authors still choose to rely on donations for plugins. For a minority of plugin authors, the amount of donations is sufficient.

However, I haven’t experienced success with the donation model, even after pushing it heavily. My most popular plugin received 1-3 donations every six months.

Free Plugin – Charge for Support

While some plugin authors have been successful in charging for support, for the most part, users download the plugin and move on.

An example is providing a download link for the plugin, and charging the user a subscription fee for support forums.

One thing I don’t like about this model is that it reinforces the fact that the time to take coding/updating the plugin is trivial. Sure, support takes up time, but maintaining the plugin takes up a lot of time also.

Free Plugin – Charge for Add-ons

Another model I’ve seen is a plugin being provided for free, but add-ons for the plugin are an extra fee.

If the plugin proves popular enough, and the add-on is a must-have, you’ll likely find great success with this model.

The time you spent coding the “base” plugin will be offset by the income you receive from the add-ons.

One-time Fee for Plugin – Extra for Support

Another model I’ve witnessed is the user being charged a set fee for the plugin. If the user wants support, the user must subscribe to a forum of some sort.

I personally disagree with this model as the user often pays more for support than what the actual plugin is worth.

It’s also my opinion that if you charge for a plugin, support must be included.

One-time Fee for Plugin – Support Included

A model I’m fond of is just outright charging a fee for the plugin with support included.

The downside of this model is that the user should expect a higher price. Since the user is paying only one time, the higher price compensates for all the support the user is expected to have over the lifetime of the plugin.

Typically the price goes higher for additional site licenses, as support is expected to increase.

Subscription Based Model

A subscription-based model allows you to spread costs across all of the subscribers. The goal here is to gain as many subscribers as possible by charging a low price.

As a result, support and upgrade costs will be spread amongst all subscribers, where each subscriber gets the overall benefit. And since some subscribers will stick around for the next billing period, there is constant revenue.

One thing to include is to have a “Buy Out” option, which will allow users a lifetime subscription for a set fee. This is the One-time Fee option, so the price will be dramatically higher than a subscription cost.

I personally chose this model for my first premium plugin and it has been fairly successful so far.

Conclusion

Within this post, I went over the types of plugins I would buy, my reasons for purchasing a plugin, and the various models I’ve seen crop up.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any of these topics.

BuddyPress: BuddyPress 1.2 Release Candidate

Andy Peatling — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:57:35 +0000

The release candidate version of BuddyPress 1.2 is now ready for download and testing (svn link). Thank you to those who have contributed so far, we’ve closed over 125 tickets since we released the beta last week.

We’re almost there, but we still need your help with this final testing phase. We’re looking for testers on both standard WordPress and WordPress MU version 2.9.1 and above. You can also test the release candidate without installing on our testing community site.

As before you can find a list of known issues and a place to post bugs via the BuddyPress Trac installation.

There are also instructions for upgrading test installations from previous versions of BuddyPress on the codex.

Please do not post bugs in the comments as they may be missed.

Update: If you’re upgrading from 1.2 beta then you can simply overwrite your existing BuddyPress files, you do not need to follow the official upgrade instructions.

WordPress.tv: Introducing WordPress for BlackBerry 1.0

Michael Pick — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:34:09 +0000

Weblog Tools Collection: Easily Add Multiple Content Columns

Jeff Chandler — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:30:13 +0000

Craig Buckler of SitePoint.com published a neat guide today on how to split WordPres content into 2 or more columns. The explanation dives into various functions and parameters with use of the Read More tag but within the comments of the post, someone mentioned a plugin called WP Post Columns by Sam Burdge. I downloaded the plugin and to my surprise, it works very well and does not require any code editing. The magic lies within the shortcodes that need to be inserted into the content. For example, if you wanted two columns within your content, you would use the following shortcodes.

[column width="47%" padding="6%"] Column 1 content goes here. [/column]
[column width="47%" padding="0"] Column 2 content goes here. [/column]
[end_columns]

There are shortcodes for up to four columns within the content. I’ve rarely come across a theme or a WordPress powered site displaying content in this fashion but I imagine it would work well for Magazine or Newpaper type sites. For more information on plugin usage, read the official plugin page.

Joseph: WordPress for BlackBerry

Joseph Scott — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:23:03 +0000

It’s a mobile app kind of week :-)

The WordPress BlackBerry App is out of beta and ready with it’s 1.0 release.

Just like the other WordPress mobile apps it’s open source and free. You can find more help and info in the FAQ, forums, and Trac site (for tickets and patches).

These mobile apps use XML-RPC to communicate with your WordPress blog, so make sure you have that enabled first. You can find that in wp-admin under Settings -> Writing in the Remote Publishing section.

WP Blackberry: Version 1.0: VideoPress Support, Improved Comments, and App World

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:08:32 +0000

Very happy to announce that the Open Source WordPress for BlackBerry app has wrapped up the beta phase, and version 1.0 is now available. Thank-you to the tens of thousands of beta users who have provided invaluable feedback and feature enhancement ideas these past few months.

We submitted this version to the BlackBerry App World and that’s been approved and is now ready for download.

So what’s new in version 1.0:

Ability to record and upload videos from your phone. We now support both 3gp and 3g2 formats on older generation BlackBerry devices.
Introducing support for the HD video service VideoPress.
Streamlined UI and functionality relating to comment moderation
Overall enhancements to the speed and stability of the app

Here’s a quick video overview of the app with all the latest features:

For suggestions and support, please visit the forums, and for developers who want to get involved, please check out trac.

Matt: Start Project

Matt — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:27:34 +0000

As reported on BoomTown, I’m joining some cool folks including Biz Stone, Chris Sacca, Mike Tatum, and David Liu as an adviser to The Start Project.

WordPress.tv: Stephane Daury: Using Press This

Ryan Markel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:00:08 +0000

WordPress.tv: Beau Lebens: IntenseDebate

Ryan Markel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:15:11 +0000

Weblog Tools Collection: Good Luck Lester Chan

Jeff Chandler — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:59:08 +0000

How many plugins do you run on your website that were created by Lester ‘GaMerZ‘ Chan? I’m guessing at least one or more. On WPTavern.com, I use three of them. I’ve been a huge fan of Lester ever since I discovered his assortment of plugins that provided functionality I didn’t think any WordPress site would want to be without. Features such as polls, easy page navigation, and nifty stats. I learned today that Lester is unable to provide support for his plugins due to a full time job he recently accepted. However, he states that he will try to keep the plugins working with newer versions of WordPress as time allows while also keeping the forum open to enable the community to help each other.

As you all know, I have been doing WordPress plugins and supporting it for the past 6 years. These 6 years of my life, I have been through my polytechnic education, my national service as well as my university education. I just graduated from university in December 2009 and have been looking for full-time jobs. I am offered a full-time job and will be starting work on 1st February 2010.

I regret to say that I am NOT ABLE to provide support for my plugins anymore due to my full-time job commitment. I will leave this forum open and let the community help one another. However, I WILL still update my plugins whenever I can and you still can report bugs to me via email and I will try to fix it.

I’ve donated a chunk of change to Lester in the past, something he was very much appreciative for but there are quite a few vocal members of the community that argue Lester could have placed all the plugins behind a paid support model that might have negated the need for a full time job. I would not have paid for each individual plugin, but I would have paid a yearly fee that would cover the support costs of all of his current and future plugins. No one should be upset at Lester for pursuing other endeavors related to his career path. Also, it’s not as if he is completely abandoning development and support for his plugins so if his full time job doesn’t work out, we may very well see some sort of plugin club membership option from Lester in the future.

So I wonder, what type of business model would Lester have to set up in order for you to consider paying for both the plugin and support?

WordPress.tv: Introducing WordPress for Android

Michael Pick — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:24:33 +0000

WordPress.tv: Daryl Koopersmith: Elastic Theme Editor

Ryan Markel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 05:30:06 +0000

Matt: WPtogo is now WordPress Android

Matt — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:29:53 +0000

We’ve just released WordPress for Android 1.0 which is a continuation of the WpToGo development now under an official WordPress banner, and of course as Free Software. Congrats to Dan and the team on making this happen. Mobile stuff is really starting to come together for WordPress. I’ve been playing with this on my Nexus One for about a week and loving it.

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress for Android 1.0 Release

Mark Ghosh — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:28:58 +0000

WordPress for Android 1.0 Release: The Open Source WordPress for Android application is now available for download. This is in addition to the WordPress for iPhone and WordPress for BlackBerry applications that are already available. It is built on top of the wpToGo application which has been taken over by the WordPress team and released as this Open Source Application. You can follow the development of the application at dev.android.wordpress.org and look for support on the support forums.

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 02/02

Perurry — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:15:18 +0000

Paintbox CMS

Paintbox-CMS is a grid based CMS theme layered on Tipografo’s Paintbox. It comes with a smooth 960 grid layout plus some creative jQuery effects for content loading. It outuputs some very light w3c valid xhtml\css code.

Rock Guitar

Two column theme with electric guitar graphics built to suit a blogger who writes about guitars, or just about rock music generally.

PointSixCity

Single column, fixed layout, gravatar and widget ready theme

Black Stone Theme

Fixed width, two column, widget and gravatar ready theme

5 Baby, Mom and Dad WordPress Themes

Two column, widget-ready and gravatar-enabled

Joseph: WordPress for Android

Joseph Scott — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:59:34 +0000

Today the WordPress Android App is out the door and open to the public ( download ).

Like the other WordPress mobile apps this one is open source, and we’re excited to have other people contribute and help. There’s a developer blog, support forum, and Trac install for tickets and patches.

Publisher Blog: How-to: Nginx as a front-end proxy cache for WordPress

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:06:13 +0000

From Harvard Law’s Dan Collis-Puro, a how-to on optimizing your WordPress MU install, using Nginx as a front-end proxy cache for WordPress:

We put an nginx caching proxy server in front of our wordpress mu install and sped it up dramatically – in some cases a thousandfold. I’ve packaged up a plugin, along with installation instructions here – WordPress Nginx proxy cache integrator.

You can read the full details on Dan’s blog and grab the plugin from the WordPress.org plugin directory.

[ Visit http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/djcp ]

Matt: Better Firefox Checker

Matt — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:58:09 +0000

After the Deadline, the enhanced spelling and grammar checker, has just released a new extension for Firefox that enables AtD functionality on any textarea on the web, which is really killer. This is one of the possibilities I was most excited about when we acquired AtD. For more check out the coverage on Download Squad and Lifehacker.

WordPress.tv: Daisy Olsen: Child Themes

Ryan Markel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:15:11 +0000

WordPress.tv: Ted Mann: Hyperlocal Journalism

Ryan Markel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:00:11 +0000

WordPress.tv: Jim Doran: Using jQuery

Ryan Markel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 21:30:11 +0000

WordPress.tv: Introducing After the Deadline for Firefox

Ryan Markel — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:47:54 +0000

Weblog Tools Collection: An Inside Look At Organizing WordCamp New York

Jeff Chandler — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:43:04 +0000

WordCamps are great events. It’s where users of WordPress that are local to the area can all get together in one place to share tips, talk strategy, and share knowledge with each other. However, putting these events together takes time and an incredible amount of hard work, as shown by Steve Bruner’s post on the WCNYC blog:

When you have 70+ speakers and volunteers working for gratis, you start out $2,500 in the hole. And when attendees started registering like crazy, it really was a double-edged sword. While registration was beginning to reflect the fruits of our labor, and the hype was building, my little budget spreadsheet was blinking red with every registration. I was laying out money for shirts, bags and food, and the sponsors weren’t showing up

For those that are willing to go through all of the trouble of putting a WordCamp together, I salute you!

Weblog Tools Collection: 24 Plugins for Stats Junkies

Mark Ghosh — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:06:32 +0000

The name of the linked post is actually 24 Noble Wordpress Plugins To Determine The Performance of your Blog, but it is safe to say that you would artificially kill the performance of your blog if you were to install of them (read: don’t install them all). However, if you are a stats junky like me, you might be interested in some of the plugins mentioned in the App Sheriff post such as Feed Statistics, Live, Post and Comments Time and Social Traffic Monitor. Now most of the information provided by these plugins can be derived from regular statistics sources but the filters can be interesting for some folks. Head over to the App Sheriff and see what you *might* have been missing!

We use WordPress.com stats, Statcounter and Google Analytics on this blog. I know that is two too many, but what can I say, I am a stats junky!

Publisher Blog: WordPress as a CMS Case Study: WNET.org

Raanan Bar-Cohen — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:45:18 +0000

Back in July we posted about the remarkable project that WNET (PBS of NYC) put together with Tierra to launch 50 sites in ten months using one CMS, WordPress.

Dan Goldman and Jamie Trowbridge who headed up that project, were kind enough to present a case study of how it was all done, at the recent WordCamp NYC:

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Theme Releases for 01/30

Perurry — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 17:57:04 +0000

Elegance Lite

Elegance Lite is a 2 Column light weight theme with right sidebar. This stylish theme has Admin Options to easily change the Header Logo and Background Color of Theme. Apart from all regular features, it also has support for Threaded Comments and Sticky Post. Comments have Gravatar Support.

Gunungkidul

Two column, widget ready grid based theme with 960.gs framework

Clear Blue Sky

A modern sky blue, two-columns theme with a clear, fresh look.

TweetPress

Two column theme to make your blog look exactly like your Twitter profile

Weblog Tools Collection: Plugin Review: WordPress Advanced Ticket System

Jeff Chandler — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:28:26 +0000

The other day, I had asked plugin developers to dish out their wish list for the plugin repository. Olivier published a comment recommending a plugin called WATS or WordPress Advanced Ticketing System as a way of handling support on your own website.

After installation, users need to visit the Wats Options page within the Settings menu to configure the plugin. The top of the settings page has a donate button if you want to send a little coin to the plugin author which is not intrusive or bothersome. While configuring the plugin, you can click on each menu title to show detailed information about that settings group.

The only problems I met when configuring this plugin is the user interface. Like I mentioned above, you can click on the settings title to show a hidden message that gives more details for the settings group but it’s not obvious this can be done. Also, while adding and editing the ticket priorities, I noticed that there is an icon to edit existing priority levels but the icon did not have a tool tip so it was not obvious that it was used to edit entries. Last but not least, the first button I see under the listings is REMOVE. The ADD button is further down below a status indicator. I think things could be rearranged to make a little more sense. For example, place the ADD, REMOVE buttons next to each other with a text field only appearing after the ADD button has been clicked. Directions for how to use this area of the configuration page also need to be added before this group of settings.

If you want to use WATS in conjunction with your main WordPress install, you can add new categories that can be configured to be open to submission. WATS has a front end ticket creation tool but the information for how to add this to a site was no where to be found until I browsed the plugin authors page. You can use the following shortcode to add the form to a page or post: [WATS_TICKET_SUBMIT_FORM].

Once I approved the ticket, I was able to login and view its status.

Overall, the plugin performed as expected. My only complaints lie in the user interface but those could be addressed in an update. For those looking for a ticketing system that bolts on easily to WordPress, this plugin looks like it could be what you’re looking for.

Weblog Tools Collection: WordPress Plugin Releases for 01/28

Perurry — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:12:54 +0000

New Plugins

NdB Currency

This plugin is used to exchange currency values online. Main use is for American weblogs to convert their Dollar amounts into Euro currency values. It’s an easy to install, activate and forget wordpress plugin.

WordPress Loop

The WordPress Loop widget was written to allow users that don’t know their way around PHP to easily show their content in any way they’d like. The widget has over 35 options to choose from. Customize your WordPress loop by one or more post types, categories, tags, custom taxonomies, authors, dates, custom fields, and a whole lot more!

Q2W3 Screen Options Hack Demo

This is a demo for WordPress plugin developers. It shows how to create your own form for Screen Options panel.

CMS

A collection of plugins to make WordPress feel more like a CMS. It has some small adjustments and some bigger ones. Also includes some other plugins like Multiple content blocks, Page manager and a FAQ plugin.

WP Post Footer

Easily create a library of code snippets that can be inserted at the end of blog posts. Perfect for adding ‘Call to Action’ content at the end of a blog post to ask readers to take further action.

Updated Plugins

Table of Contents Creator

Table of Contents Creator automatically generates a highly customizable dynamic site wide table of contents that is always up-to-date.

iRobots.txt SEO

iRobots.txt SEO is a fully customizable, optimized and secure robots.txt virtual file generator.

List Pages at Depth

A more powerful version of wp_list_pages() which allows you to specify a start depth.

Branded Login Screen

Replace the default login screen on your blog with a custom branded screen

Edit Author Slug

This plugin allows you to change the Author slug, without having to actually enter the database.

SEO Ultimate

This all-in-one SEO plugin can handle titles, meta, noindex, canonical tags, 404 monitoring, linkboxes, robots.txt, and more. Version 1.5 adds more built-in documentation.

Twitter Tools

This plugin that creates an integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account. It allows you to pull your tweets into your blog (as posts and digests) and create new tweets on blog posts and from within WordPress.

Alex King: Twitter Tools 2.2.1

Alex — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:24:53 +0000

I’ve released a new version of Twitter Tools, my WordPress plugin that creates a full 2-way integration between your blog and your Twitter account.

This release addresses two bugs:

The use of the native json_decode() function, required by the changes in WordPress 2.9 (version 2.1) created a problem for users with servers running 32-bit PHP. The json_decode() function treats the tweet ID field as an integer larger than it can handle, which causes the issues. Thanks to Joe Tortuga and Ciaran Walsh for sending in the fix. Of note: I haven’t had a chance to set up a 32-bit PHP install so I can’t reproduce this, but it appears to work for many based on forum feedback. Yep, I’m still dealing with the ramifications from this.
Typo-fix that should allow resetting digests properly (not sure when this broke). Thanks lionel_chollet.

The download and more information are available on my WordPress Plugins page.

If you have any trouble with this, please contact the WordPress HelpCenter (303-395-1346) or you can try the WP Support Forums.

WordPress.tv: Scott Kingsley Clark: The Pods CMS Plugin

Ryan Markel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:00:06 +0000

WordPress.tv: Jeremy Clarke: Writing PHP with IDEs

Ryan Markel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:45:09 +0000

WordPress.tv: Lin Chen: Harvard Gazette Case Study

Ryan Markel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:15:08 +0000