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Since Twitter is yet to offer an alternative to those less savvy with code implementation, I’ve decided to offer you a WordPress plugin to help you include the official Twitter Tweet button in your blog posts. Download the plugin and from this point on, it’s all as easy as 1-2-3.

Current plugin version: 1.1
Supported WordPress versions: Most recent. Pre-3.0 versions not yet tested.

Twitter Button WordPress Plugin Options

To easily adjust and include the Twitter button in your blog posts, you have a plugin administration panel. Here’s a screenshot of the options:

Download the Twitter Button WordPress Plugin

Click here to Download the Twitter Button WordPress Plugin

Plugin Updates

Version 1.1 has been released. Download link is still the same (above). Fixed a bug that prevented recommendations to be displayed. Please re-download and re-upload. No need to deactivate the plugin. Just overwrite the files in order to keep your settings.

Known issues

Since Twitter did not offer an image based alternative to the button and counter, feeds will only display a CSS styled Tweet button without a counter. As soon as Twitter completes their API, I will also implement it in the plugin.

* Support for the ‘Twitter Button for WordPress’ plugin will be offered only through the comments. Thank you for downloading and enjoy your new retweet button!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

With the StudioPress WordPress themes you can really take your blog to a higher level!

Every once in a while I like to scan the plugins directory on WordPress.org and see what beautiful & useful pieces of code the community comes up with. Here’s a selection of 6 of the latest WordPress plugin releases that caught my attention during the last “scan”.

1. Simple Fields

Plugin description: Simple Fields for WordPress lets you add groups of fields to your edit post page. Simple Fields turns WordPress into an even more powerful Content Management System (CMS).

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Simple Fields

2. Simple Mail Address Encoder

Plugin description: Automatically encodes every e-mail address on posts, pages and sidebar widgets to prevent spam. Simply decodes any previously encoded e-mail address by just clicking the mail link.

Required WP version: 2.7+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Simple Mail Address Encoder

3. SEO-Tool – Keyword Density Checker

Plugin description: This SEO plugin automatically generate a keyword density report of used keywords and 2-/3-word keyphrases in the pages’ or posts’ content. The statistics will be updated at a specific interval while the author is typing in edit-post and edit-page dialog.

Required WP version: 1.5+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: SEO-Tool – Keyword Density Checker

4. Anthologize

Plugin description: Anthologize is a free, open-source, WordPress-based platform for publishing. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, pull in feeds from external sites, or create new content directly in Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a coherent volume for export in several ebook formats, including PDF, EPUB, and TEI.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Anthologize

5. FeedBurner Stats by DevMD.com

Plugin description: The plugin enables you to get a great insight into your FeedBurner feed, along with information and statistics about the subscribers, views, clicks, feed item information and chronological statistics right from your WordPres administration panel.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1
Also requires: PHP 5.1 or higher

Downlod & more info: FeedBurner Stats by DevMD.com

6. Members Only Menu Plugin

Plugin description: This plugin allows you to mark a page as “Members Only”. Once this is done, the user must login to view the page. However, you can still add the page to the menu, and it will then ONLY show up if the user is authenticated. That way you can have more items for logged in members on your website.

Required WP version: 3.0+
Compatible up to: 3.0.1

Downlod & more info: Members Only Menu Plugin

Important note

All the above descriptions are provided by the plugins’ authors. At the time this post was published, the latest stable WordPress release was 3.0.1, thus, all plugins are “Compatible up to 3.0.1″. Check out each plugin’s info page to see an updated compatibility as new WordPress versions come out. And remember, always try (if possible) new plugins in a testing environment, on a test installation of your WordPress blog, for safety measures. If anything breaks or you need instructions, please ask the authors for support, I’m simply the messenger.

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The latest major release of our favorite blogging platform – WordPress 3.0 – has brought quite a few new features to the table. Among them, the custom navigation menus and the post thumbnails (featured image), the latter being available since version 2.9 came out. This started a whole new trend between theme developers, most of them rushing to announce WordPress 3.0 ready themes.

In all this rush, some of the themes released suffered from one big problem: backward compatibility. Why is that important and how can we give some backward compatibility to our WordPress 3.0 ready themes?

Importance of backward compatibility

While I feel that generally offering some sort of backward compatibility is just a common sense policy, in this case it’s more than that. Let me explain why.

Not everyone uses the latest WordPress release, and that is for various reasons:

• Failed to update, or waiting to make sure it’s “stable”;
• Doesn’t really get the importance of an up to date software;
• Certain plugins they use are not yet 3.0/3.0.1 compatible.

This doesn’t mean they don’t want to try and use your beautiful 3.0 ready WordPress theme, or that they shouldn’t. But you see, the biggest trick resides right here, in this terminology: “3.0 ready”. The actual meaning of this is that the theme is compatible with the 3.0 version, not that it requires 3.0 or higher to function properly, and this leads a lot of people into a trap that will cause their blogs and websites to break.

So, the common sense thing to do would be to take the time and apply certain checks and fallback solutions to our themes. Lets see how we can do that.

Adding WordPress 3.0 features with fallback support

Both of the above mentioned features – custom menus and post thumbnails – are based on a WordPress function added once 2.9 was released: add theme support();

Adding post thumbnails support

In order to add post thumbnail support to your theme, you’d write this in your functions.php file:

// Adds support for post thumbnails
add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');

Simple adding this will cause any WordPress installation prior to 2.9 to break, as the add_theme_support() function was not part of the WordPress core back then. The fix? As easy as this:

/* Checks if the installation has the function defined.
If true, continues to add the support for post thumbnails. */
if(function_exists(add_theme_support)) :
	add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');
endif;

Adding custom menus support

In order to also add support for the custom menus feature, you’d normally write this:

// Add theme support for custom menus
add_theme_support( 'menus' );

// Register a custom menu name/location
register_nav_menus(array(
	'custom-menu' => __( 'My Custom Menu' ),
));

In this case, we obviously need to check for core support of both functions: add_theme_support() and register_nav_menus(). Let see how we can do that, also including in this check the post thumbnails:

if(function_exists(add_theme_support)) {
	add_theme_support('post-thumbnails'); // Support for post thumbnails

	if(function_exists(add_theme_support)) {
		add_theme_support( 'menus' ); // Support for custom menus
		register_nav_menus(array(
			'custom-menu' => __( 'My Custom Menu' ),
		));
	}
}

In case you wonder why I chose to add support for menus only after checking if register_nav_menus() is defined, it’s simply because there’s no point in adding support for a feature that you won’t be able to use. Remember, add_theme_support() was added in 2.9, while register_nav_menus() became available only in 3.0.

But how about adding compatibility in the front-end of your theme?

When using post thumbnails, never call them without checking if the function exists first:

// Performs a check to see if the function is available and there's also a thumbnail attached
if (function_exists(the_post_thumbnail) AND has_post_thumbnail()) {
	the_post_thumbnail();
}

For the custom menus, the thing is just a tad trickier, but simple as well. I’m usually using a function that I wrote to specifically check for custom menus support, and even though the wp_nav_menu() function provides a fallback solution, defaulted to wp_page_menu(), this fallback will only activate for 3.0 installations without any menus created and allocated to the reserved space. The fallback won’t set off if you’re using a version prior to 3.0.

Due to my preference of wp_list_pages() over wp_page_menu() – for more customization options – the following function will apply a compatibility fallback to wp_list_pages:

function my_nav_menu() {
	// Check if installation has wp_nav_menu() defined.
	// If true, generate the menu, but don't print it yet;
	if(function_exists(wp_nav_menu)) {
		$my_nav_menu = wp_nav_menu(array('menu' => 'Top Menu', 'container' => '', 'fallback_cb' => 'wp_list_pages', 'depth' => 2, 'echo' => false));
	}
	// If false, generate the menu using wp_list_pages, but don't print it yet;
	else {
		$my_nav_menu = '<ul class="menu">'.wp_list_pages('sort_column=menu_order&title_li=&echo=0&depth=2').'</ul>';
	}
	// Prints out the menu;
	echo $my_nav_menu;
}

Now, in the front end. instead of calling your menu with wp_nav_menu() you’ll now use my_nav_menu() to display a backward compatible version.

Conclusions

Caught in the rush of doing something nice and new, like a child discovering a shiny new toy, we can miss out some of the most basic problems. Most of them are really easy to solve, like the above mentioned and it would be common sense to make use of them.

And remember: if ( function_exists(function_name) ) is your geeky B.F.F.

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There are a lot of bloggers out there that write great content and even if they get a decent amount of traffic, some of them don’t seem to have a lot of interaction with their readers. On top of that, some of them might discover your site from the search engines and never come back again, even if they liked it. Seriously, they could have forgotten your URL or website name.

Your goal is to grow as much as possible with your current traffic. There are many different ways to get more traffic to your blog or website, but why not establish a better connection with your current readers from the start. Master this and then you can work on getting more unique visitors later on. So listed below are some ways to accomplish this and brand your website or blog:

1. Email Optin Newsletter Form

One of my favorite suggestions is to display an email opt in newsletter form on your site. If you’re using a WordPress blog platform, then you can place it in a widget on the side. In order to get an opt in form, you will need to sign up for a email service such as Aweber, Constant Contact, along with multiple others out there.

Another tip is to choose a newsletter form that is eye popping and has a good call to action. Then once you got a large list of email subscribers, you can easily email them about a new post that you made. This is more direct than having them subscribe to an RSS feed because the message is sent straight to their email address. RSS feed subscriptions can also be powerful and should be used along with email newsletters. Also, RSS is free so don’t forget to display a RSS feed on the site as well.

2. Subscribe to Comments Plugin

Another favorite tip is to use a free plugin called “Subscribe to Comments” for WordPress. Quick Online Tips uses this itself as shown on the bottom of the comments section and all they have to do is check the box. This allows readers to get email notifications after they submit a comment. That way they don’t have to keep checking up on the blog to see if someone answered their question.They just get an email that shows any comments placed after them and it gets more exposure to your blog so they are more likely to reply to the conversation. It gets them coming back to your blog.

3. Social Media

This has been discussed before, but you sometimes need to do more than the average person does. Instead of posting to social media sites and expect people to start following you, go out and read other peoples information and leave comments. You should look for targeted and similar subject areas. For an example, in Facebook you can do a search for your topic and register on a fan or group page. Sometimes there are thousands of people registered on one fan page. By interacting with a large fan page and leaving a link to your site in the signature can help get people to notice you.

4. Conversations with Readers

My third tip is to actually interact with your readers on the blog. Write a sentence or two at the end of your blog post telling them how much you would appreciate a comment or tell them to ask a question. Then come and reply to their questions or think of some to ask them. Usually having them ask questions will help lead you to more blog post ideas because some people start to become stuck with new ideas to write about. So this can be a big helper to keep your blog fresh with ideas and the readers will be more eager to come back for the whole post.

I hope this has helped and if you implement these tips you will see your blog grow. With that said, please share your own experiences, or thoughts or any question that you might have. I appreciate any feedback or if you have a tip, leave it in the comments section. Thank you!

About the Author

This is a guest post by writer Eric Woolf from the Pixels and Dots web design team. Please leave him your comments below or on the Pixels and Dots blog.

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Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

The wonderful community of WordPress developers constantly provides us with interesting new themes and plugins. I have scanned the most recent WordPress plugin releases and came up with a list of 10 plugins definitely worth taking a look at.

Keep in might that these are new releases and so, their stability and status should be considered as BETA. You might want to test them on a backup server before going live. The descriptions listed here are those submitted by the plugins’ authors and do not necessarily express my views.

1. WP Content Slideshow

WP Content Slideshow shows up to 5 Posts in a very nice and powerfull Javascript Slideshow. On the left side of the Slideshow it displays an image for every post. On the right side, there are all the titles (and a small description under the title) of the posts. The Slideshow highlights the active post and repeats automatically after getting to the 5th post. You have a powerfull Administration Area to adjust the category, the number of posts, the width and height, and many colours for the Slideshow!

Download: WP Content Slideshow
Compatibility: 2.6+

2. Sidebar Generator

Now you can create as many sidebars as you need for any page you want. Thats right, page/post specific sidebars. You can easily seperate your site into sections, or make every single page have specific sidebar content on it. Great for CMS sites.

Download: Sidebar Generator
Compatibility: 2.8.0+

3. WordPress Tabs Slides

Tabs and Slides (in post/page) Plugin gives you the ability to easily add content tabs and/or content slides. The tabs emulate a multi-page structure, while the slides emulate an accordion-like structure, inside a single page!

Download: WordPress Tabs Slides
Compatibility: 2.5+

4. Custom Login Page

With the Custom Login Page, you can change the background image of your login page, the background image/color of your login form div, the main logo image of your login page, and add custom CSS. All through a simple interface. Remember to view the Help tab at the top of the settings page of the plugin.

Download: Custom Login Page
Compatibility: 2.0.2+

5. Featured Page Widget

Allows you to feature pages on your sidebar using an excerpt of the page and a text or image link to the page.

Download: Featured Page Widget
Compatibility: 2.8 – 2.8.4 (maybe 2.8.5)

6. Ecwid Shopping Cart

Ecwid is free full-fledged shopping cart that can be easily add to any blog. It offers the performance and flexibility you need, with none of the hassles you don’t.

Download: Ecwid Shopping Cart
Compatibility: 2.7+

7. SubHeading

This plugin uses a custom field to allow subheadings to be added to both posts and pages. The custom sub heading field is re-positioned so that it is displayed directly below the main title.

Download: SubHeading
Compatibility: 2.8.2+

8. ShowTime Slideshow

Displays all pictures attached to a post/page as a slideshow. Simple setup. This plugin requires Adobe Flash, reverts nicely to default WordPress gallery if Flash is not found. Choose among high quality transitions. Ken Burns (pan&zoom) and many other effects. Full Screen mode.

Download: ShowTime Slideshow
Compatibility: 2.7+

9. Quick Adsense

Quick Adsense is an Ads management WordPress plugin. It offers a quicker & flexible way to insert Adsense or any Ads code into a blog post. Besides, it can randomly place the Ads anywhere within a post. It comes with a simple setting page, and it does not overwhelm you with complicated customizable options.

Download: Quick Adsense
Compatibility: 2.5 – 2.8.4 (maybe 2.8.5)

10. Members

Members is a plugin that extends your control over your blog. It’s a user, role, and content management plugin that was created to make WordPress a more powerful CMS. The plugin is created with a components-based system — you only have to use the features you want.

Download: Members
Compatibility: 2.8+

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

Loving WordPress is SO easy! You got thousands of great looking blogs, custom themes, free themes, premium themes and designers go beyond that by using WordPress as CMS for their non-blog projects. A while back I showed you 10 non-blog websites powered by WordPress, and now it’s time to take a look at 10 more!

If you have any additions to the list and wish to suggest a website for a future post, do so by adding a comment.

1. ProBar

Visit ProBar

2. Krispy Krush

Visit Krispy Krush

3. The Salon

Visit The Salon

4. Imaginaria Creative

Visit Imaginaria Creative

5. Lyndsey Hamilton Events

Visit Lyndsey Hamilton Events

6. IOKON Media

Visit IOKON Media

7. Loja Birds

Visit Loja Birds

8. Bug Interactive

Visit Bug Interactive

9. Ville de Falaise

Visit Ville de Falaise

10. Cow Says Moo

Visit Cow Says Moo

Yes! WordPress is fun. And easy!

If you’re looking to have a site built on WordPress, I can help you through my WordPress focused design studio.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

Setting up correctly the permalinks in WordPress is one of the things that contribute to your blog’s better search engine optimization (SEO). Using relevant slugs for categories, pages and posts will help improve your general ranking. Those looking to get the most out of these permalinks will want to remove the ‘category base’.

There are about a dozen tutorials out there, telling you how to handle this job on your own, editing PHP files, the .htaccess file and adjusting WordPress settings, but what you actually need is one small and efficient plugin that does it all for your, with no extra effort, other than the download and installation process.

WP No Category Base

The WP No Category Base plugin will remove the category base from all your linkd in a SEO friendly way, using 301 redirects for all your old permalinks to the new ones. Also, it is compatible with other Sitemap plugins and works with multi-level categories.

There’s one downside to this method (actually the reason why WordPress decided to use the category base). If you’re going to use the same slug for both a page and a category (‘news’ for example), clicking on a link similar to http://yourdomain.com/news/ WILL take you to the category archive, and never to the page. So, be careful when choosing you permalink slug by keeping them unique.

For those using WordPress as CMS and not as a blog engine, this downside might prove useful when creating a page based navigation. Adding a page with a slug ‘news’ will redirect that menu link to the news archive, which is indeed useful.

Download the plugin: WP No Category Base

The plugin works with WordPress versions from 2.3 up to 2.8.4.

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There’s a huge hype these days around WordPress and the (infamous?) GPL license. Out of the “big guys”, first Brian Gardner of StudioPress (ex-Revolution) decided to distribute his themes as GPL. Later, iThemes followed, and now it’s time for WooThemes to adopt the license.

The discussion around this always seems to evolve into “open source” versus “author protection”. As Alex King pointed out in one of his posts, theme authors should be aware of what the GPL license exposes them too, while it provides freedom for basically everyone else.

I’m not by any means against freedom and open source. I’ve been preaching about the power of WordPress and the wonder that it is, but what I love more is to see a protection system for those authors that make a living out of releasing quality themes and plugins for WordPress. Somewhere along the way, in our quest for “freedom” we forgot how hard it is to earn our living, how hard it is to learn the things we now use to feed our families.

With all the respect I have for Brian, Adii and Alex who have been more than an inspiration for so many people and their contributions to the world of WordPress changed our lives, I fail to see how this sudden change of heart (or maybe “dictated” by Matt Mullenweg’s recent reactions) will help other developers.

The problem does not reside in the GPL license, but rather in the fact that by using WordPress you have to also release your “products” under this license. In theory the GPL license is an amazing thing that allows people to improve and build upon other people’s work, and thus contributing to the development of a bigger, better product, free or paid.

The problem comes when commercial work can be distributed for free, once you get your hands on it. Brian and Alex both agree on the fact that most times, people come back to get support after getting pirated or unsupported versions of their work. Is this a good business model? Yes, if you are Brian, or Alex, or Adii. For those thriving in this poor economical moment the GPL license and its enforcing is like a hammer in the head.

While I totally agree with the ability of being able to contribute and improve software, I can’t stop thinking about those who will try and benefit for the work of developers, and not in a GPL-ish open source friendly way. Some developers don’t have the brand and support of thousands of bloggers that Alex, Brian or Adii have to fight these entitled-to-be pirates.

Can’t get the reality of this comment Alex received on his blog out of my mind:

But me, being an unknow guy from Mexico who is trying hard to make a living and if I released my work under GPL and you, The Alex King, repost my work for free, nobody will care who I am or if I’m having difficulties paying the rent.

Sure: “GPL ftw!” “Yay freedom” “That’s the spirit of the opensource” that is all b*****it if somebody use that freedom to take away food from my table.

I like opensource, but I prefer my three meals a day.

I’ve already release 2 of my works for free, the Simple Balance theme and the Latest Posts by Category plugin, plan to release another one pretty soon and I for one believe in helping as much as I can the others. But that’s the whole point: AS MUCH AS I CAN or AFFORD TO.

Developers are “forced” to find different business models: donations, updates, support. Again, all works well when you’re on top, otherwise the donation/support model is worth nothing. I’ve never expected huge donations for Simple Balance and I was right. 15.000 downloads later (with no promotion through the WordPress.org directory) the amount of donations is… $75. I can celebrate by renting a 3* room in a hotel in my city. At the same time I’ve lost count of the support requests, some of them starting like this: “This is URGENT, you must help me do X”. No, I don’t, especially if your communication skills are well below ZERO.

The only feasible business model under GPL is making a name for yourself. Don’t doubt it. As long as people will have the possibility of getting something for free. WordPress has to come up with a way to support ALL honest developers, not just the big names and those looking to make a quick buck. Even if that means an additional commercial license for WordPress, for those looking to be able to sell their products without the “limitations” of GPL. May it be a single-usage license or percent of the sale, this could be a good alternative and if I’d ever decide (which should be my decision) to release a commercial product, I’d gladly share my profits with this amazing platform that is WordPress.

Until then, some will only see the joys of GPL while others will see their own failure to make an honest living with the skills they’ve trained so hard and for so long. Unfortunately, there’s no middle way, at least for the masses, but I’m definitely looking forward for what Matt is preparing for those who embrace the GPL license.

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For a long while the option panels where something that people could only find in premium (commercial) themes, and for a good reason. The pricing of their licenses allowed the premium theme developers to invest more time in giving theme users the ways to do through these panels what they could not do through coding.

With the buzz created around these themes, regular users became aware of what could really be achieved, and thus, those that could not afford the license of a premium theme, became more selective with the free ones. A good-looking theme was not enough anymore, and WordPress developers realized it.

A good premium theme would bring its developer not only a good amount of money, but also recognition in the community, and this is where the free theme developers scored their biggest points. Now that their “turf” was endangered they had to react, and they did. For premium themes like Thesis or WP Unlimited, users have now alternatives like Thematic, Hybrid, Carrington, WP Framework or my own (even if not a framework) Simple Balance.

Why should free theme developers consider adding an options page?

Because being “cool” is just not enough anymore. Theme developers need to learn how to be useful. Free stuff can be either useless and ignored or useful and praised. I’m yet to see the developer offering a free theme without gaining something from it, be it awareness, expertise, backlinks, donation money, you name it! But none of these are achieved through an uncompetitive – even if free – product.

5 Most looked for options in a WordPress theme

“Stand out from the crowd!” If I had a penny for every time I read this I’d laugh at Shoemoney’s AdSense check image sipping a chilled cocktail somewhere on a tropical island, but you know what? This saying is so true that it cannot be repeated enough, and users KNOW IT! Theme users want to be able to have their own identity online. They need to be able to customize their themes and make them express who they are and what they believe in. And this is where options pages come into play. What are the most looked for options? Let’s see…

1. Logo and / or header image update / replacement

It doesn’t matter if it’s a professionally designed logo or a simple Windows Paint play. If it gives the blogger satisfaction and he wants to display it, let him do so. Add either a file upload box or an input box where the user could enter the full URL to the logo image to use. Same goes for the header images.

2. Layout structure

If you’re developing a 2 column theme, give the user the option to choose to display the sidebar either on the left, or on the right. With 3 column themes, you can give them even more options, like having the content centered, between the sidebars, or having both sidebars on the same side (right or left) of the content. If only takes a couple of PHP conditions and some “visionary” CSS coding.

3. Custom navigation menus

Don’t expect users to want every page that they publish to show up in their blog’s main navigation area. Give them the option to select which pages should show up there, and why not, add their own links, even if external.

4. Custom RSS URLs and email subscription forms

Implementing a FeedBurner email subscription form is fairly easy for any developer, and I’m pretty sure that any dveloper knows how to customize such a script. The fact that it functions mostly based on a simple user ID should make the customization even easier through a theme options page.

5. Advertising management

Not everyone uses services like BuySellAds, or is affiliated with an advertising network. Some users actually prefer to take care of the advertising themselves. So, why not give them the possibility to do so by adding a few more field to the options page. Let them select the number of banners they need displayed, do-follow option, position of banners and so on. It takes a bit to develop, but the user response to it is amazing.

Additional options you could consider implementing

While the 5 options above are the most looked for, some users might also find the following options useful:

• Overall switch between serif and sans-serif typography;
• Theme color adjustments. Here are a couple of web-based color picker scripts you could use: one, two, three and four;
• Alternatively, you can offer a built in color schemes system;
• Custom “featured” areas;
• Additional, customizable widget areas;
• Twitter updates area;
• And the list could go on and on…

The limits are set by your knowledge and enthusiasm

While the enthusiasm is not something you train, but rather have it or not, knowledge can be trained. Remember that the WordPress Codex is your best friend, and the support forums can be of tremendous help. Additionally, Stefan Vervoort of DivitoDesign and WPToy has put together a very useful PDF called the “WordPress Theme Development Checklist“. Do take a look (and use it!).

So, the next time you think of releasing a free theme, ask yourself this: Is you theme competitive enough? If it’s not, it will not stand a chance when the alternatives are so smart!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Do you need quality design resources? Graphic River has them. Tons! And cheap...

Recently I came across a relatively young WordPress plugin that allow WordPress users and designers to use basically any TrueType font you have on your computer on your WordPress blog, replacing post titles, widget titles, links and so on with automatically generated SEO-smart images using your desired font. The plugin is called AnyFont and it has been developed by Ryan Peel

The generated images have a very good level of clarity, way better than the classic SWF replacement and the plugin is really easy to administrate and customize.

AnyFont plugin management

See for yourself how easy it is to set up the output style:

And the output is really good:

As I said, the output is SEO friendly, each image being given an ALT and TITLE attribute that either automatically take content from the original text, or you can set your own values.

The plugin also uses an image-caching system to ease the server load.

Click here to go to the AnyFont plugin download page.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

My friend Adrian Diaconescu has released a new free WordPress theme called Empty Canvas. Those familiar with his previous theme, Corporate Sandbox will observe the similarities between these two themes, but as Adrian says: “[...] don’t download this theme and expect the Mona Lisa. It’s only a simple theme, that does wonders for me.“

I’ll tell you what to expect. Expect a clean design, an update of his old theme, ready to be adjusted as you see fit for your future project and mostly for corporate blogs. The name says it all. This is a clean, empty canvas waiting for your creativity spark!

Empty Canvas

Empty Canvas is a two column widget ready WordPress theme, compatible with WordPress 2.7+, cross-browser tested and valid. It does not feature support for threaded comments by author’s decision (probably to preserve the comment styling). As the author says, the theme is “following a ‘want more stuff? add it yourself!’ philosophy“.

Preview here
Download here

Looking for more free corporate WordPress themes?

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The time when WordPress was used strictly as a blog platform is long gone. WordPress has evolved into a mature CMS that gives designers and developers the right tools to create amazing non-blog websites for their clients. As proof for that stand these 10 beautiful websites powered by WordPress.

FernWoodCoffee.com

Visit website

Herout-Caves.com

Visit website

SearchInsideVideo.com

Visit website

Discounted.ro

Visit website

Healogix.com

Visit website

Emploi-Manche.fr

Visit website

HotelParadiso.it

Visit website

Typechart.com

Visit website

P41Studios.com

Visit website

EnrouteFilm.com

Visit website

Do you know more?

If you have more samples of beautiful non-blog WordPress websites, feel free to leave a comment linking to them, and I’ll create a follow-up to this post to include them.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

While working on a couple of WordPress projects these days, I’ve been on the look out for some new WordPress plugins. During my searches I’ve come across some really cool and useful plugins that you might want to check out too.

Manual Related Links

Tired of the old and sometimes irrelevant automated “Related posts”. This new WordPress plugin allows you to hand pick the links to be displayed at the end of your posts. Also works with off site links. Some might think that it’s a waste of time, other like me will see the value in giving the reader really relevant, hand-picked links.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Aaron D. Campbell

WP htaccess Control

No need to access the FTP or the cPanel anymore to add rules to your .htaccess file. With WP htaccess Control you get to do that from the comfort of your WP Admin screen.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: António Andrade aka Dardna

Magazine Columns

This is a cool WordPress plugin for all you “magazine-style” fans out there. Ever wanted you posts to be displayed split into 2, 3 or more columns, just like in a newspaper? By adding a shorttag – <!–column–> into your posts you’ll be able to do so. Easy to use, nice result.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Chris Bavota

Pretty Links

“Pretty Links” is a nice little plugin that allows you to setup custom URLs on your blog to act as either short URLs or affiliate marketing links. Also features click statistics.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7.1+
Author: Blair Williams

Template Tag Shortcodes

Justin Tadlock, author of the cool Query Posts plugin gives us yet a new useful tool for our blog. The “Template Tag Shortcodes” does exactly what the name says. It takes WordPress’ template tags that you usually use in your hardcoded templates and transforms them into shortcodes that you can also use in you blog posts and pages, in the admin screen. Really cool, and supports over 40 template tags and growing.
Download hereWP Version: 2.5+
Author: Justin Tadlock

Post Snippets

This plugin comes in handy when dealing with post series and recurring snippets of code and text in your blog posts. Setup new snippets of HTML code via the plugin admin page, then call them in you posts through a small button that’s added to you post edit TinyMCE editor.
Download hereWP Version: 2.7+
Author: Johan Steen

Important

As all of these plugins are recently released, I would advise some testing before going live. If you have access to a local server of test version of your blog, try using these plugins there first.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?

Hey friends, as you might have noticed, yesterday I’ve released the 1.2 version of the Latest Posts by Category WP Plugin. As the time was short and the update was needed, I decided to leave the localization of the plugin for the next update.

As I’m typing this, the plugin is set to English as default, and I’ve already created the Romanian translation file.

How can you help?

If you’re proficient in any other languages than English and Romanian – like Spanish, French, German – and you’re willing to give me a helping hand in translating 19 short phrases, contact me via email. Tell me which language are you willing to help with and I’ll send you a text file with the required translations.

Not to be picky, but native speakers would be preferred, as each language has its own little tricks.

Each translator will receive a link to his/her website on the plugin download page and in the info files in the download package.

Already in the works: Croatian, German, Spanish, French, Bulgarian.

Thank you!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

Today I’ve exchanged a few emails with one of Simple Balance’s users which made me think about several things that users could do to help out WordPress themes and plugins developers.

This article is written purely for the purpose of giving you an idea on how to give back to those that invest time and knowledge to give your free quality WordPress resources.

So, here are a few things you can do to help them out:

Offer to test out their themes and plugins

If their project is still in Beta stage, ask to join the testing group or register we’re this is permitted. Test out the product in whatever environment you have available and report bugs and unusual behavior to the designer / developer. They are only humans and most of the time work on too many project and might miss out things, being so closely involved in the project. An outsider could observe things that they can not.

You can also test the projects after the official release. Help is welcome anytime.

Advice: Before reporting a bug, make sure that it is a bug and not something that you’re doing the wrong way. Read the documentation and be sure of what you’re doing, otherwise, the so-called bug could turn into a time-loss for the developer, instead of a helping hand.

Give feedback, ideas and solutions for improvement

Do you think that a theme or a plugin could benefit from a feature that has not yet been introduced? Talk to the developer. Present them your ideas and argument them. If you also have a solution in mind, present it to them. Feedback and the collaboration between developers and users has always been the backbone of open-source and freeware.

Spread the word

It takes a few minutes to write a short post about the resource you enjoy. Do a quick tweet about it or submit it to your favorite social media websites. Help the resource and the developer gain exposure. The more help and feedback he receives, the better the chances for the resource to become even better with future releases.

Financial support

Most of the times, the developers of free WordPress themes and plugins don’t count on any financial income from their work. In most of these cases, they only rely on backlinks from their branded themes or announcement posts on others blog.

To some (those that don’t make a living out of this) that might be enough, but for others it’s not. I know that the economy is not great this times and I know that many don’t have the possibility to make a donation with PayPal or in any other way that the developer could accept.

But from where I stand I also know one thing. If I come across a resource that improves the way I blog, that makes me more efficient, that resource deserves my donation. You choose the amount, as long as it keeps you financially safe and the developer financially happy.

Final considerations

None of the above are mandatory, and each one of you could do all, one, or none of them. What I can guarantee you is that doing them will get you in return the developers respect, and in most cases, even better support than you would receive from premium developers.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

With the StudioPress WordPress themes you can really take your blog to a higher level!

Justin Tadlock has recently released on cool little WordPress plugin that works miracles for those with little PHP knowledge. As the name says, the plugin is a visual reconstruction of the query_posts WordPress template tag.

So, what does the plugin do? It basically allows you to setup an infinite number of widgets in you widget-ready theme, widgets that will display posts from your blog, defined in the widget option area. You can display posts with a certain tag, posts from a certain category or published in a chosen month. You can display them in full, excerpt or under the form of a list, and many other really cool options.

Adam Warner has also released a video overview of this nifty plugin that you can view here or on WordPress.tv.

More info on this plugin you can find on Justin’s blog.

And you can download the plugin from WordPress.org.

Note: While PHP knowledge is not required in order to manipulate this plugin, a basic understanding of how the query_posts template tag works would turn out to help.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

With the StudioPress WordPress themes you can really take your blog to a higher level!

By now, you should know that I’m a WordPress fan. While most people regard it as a simple blogging platform, some see beyond that and realize that WordPress is a very capable CMS.

While working with it as a website CMS will not allow too many customizations for entry-level developers or users, in the hands of a pro WordPress is ready to perform miracles.

The advantages of WordPress powered websites

There are quite a bunch of advantages when developing websites using WordPress as CMS, but the most important are:

• Productivity – A lot less time spent on development, which guarantees a lower cost and still high quality;
• Ease of use – Both client-side and developer-side. The amount of tutorials, plugins and support groups available out there is a divine gift;
• Updates – The WordPress community is very involved in keeping the project up to date and bug free and the updates are so easy to apply.

It’s enough to run a search on Google and you’ll see how many people praise the power of WordPress but instead of using words, this time I’ll use results.

The real deal

If in the past weeks you’ve seen less activity on Blogsessive is mostly because my design studio, QBKL Media has been working on delivering top notch quality for one of its clients that chose WordPress as the platform for their website redesign.

The client is one of Romania’s oldest post-revolutionary hotel – Caro Hotel – and today we’re pleased to announce the official launch of their website.

So, instead of going on and on about the power of WordPress, I invite you to see for yourself what can be achieved. And believe me that this is only a small part of the real deal!

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

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One technique that is most common with WordPress magazine or news style themes is the display of an archive of the latest posts by category, as simple titles or with post excerpts. This is useful for the previously mentioned theme styles, but not only. It can be used to set up custom blog homepages, 404 pages, landing pages or even a special archive page.

This tutorial will help you build a ‘Latest Posts by Category Archive‘ in a very easy way. The widths in the CSS styling presented below have been calculated based on the default WordPress theme, assuming that is the most common theme available to anyone.

If you are looking for a plugin to generate such an archive, please check out: WP Plugin: Latest Posts by Category Archive.

Setting up the page template

Open up you favorite code editor and create a blank document. Save the document as ‘category-archive.php’ (or any other name you’d prefer) in the default WordPress theme directory (wp-content/themes/default).

The first step is to asign our new template a name and a page-like structure, so based on the default theme’s page template, the code you should paste in your new document is:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Category Archive
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

	<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
	<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
		<div class="entry">
			<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page &raquo;</p>'); ?>

			<?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>

		</div>
	</div>
	<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

	<!-- Category Archive Start -->
	<!-- Category Archive End -->

</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

The template above will make sure to display the page name you set up, and also, any additional content you might want to add before the archive, from you WordPress page editor. We will be adding our ‘latest posts by category’ code between the ‘Category Archive Start’ and ‘Category Archive End’ comments.

Adding the archive’s PHP code

Simply put, the code below will cycle through the first-level categories of your blog (parent categories), check for the ones that are not empty and if this condition is met, return an unordered list of the latest 5 post from each category. Empty categories will not be displayed.

<?php
/*
Template Name: Category Archive
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">

	<?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
	<h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2>
		<div class="entry">
			<?php the_content('<p class="serif">Read the rest of this page &raquo;</p>'); ?>

			<?php wp_link_pages(array('before' => '<p><strong>Pages:</strong> ', 'after' => '</p>', 'next_or_number' => 'number')); ?>

		</div>
	</div>
	<?php endwhile; endif; ?>

	<!-- Category Archive Start -->
	<ul class="catArchive">
	<?php
	$catQuery = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->terms AS wterms INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy AS wtaxonomy ON ( wterms.term_id = wtaxonomy.term_id ) WHERE wtaxonomy.taxonomy = 'category' AND wtaxonomy.parent = 0 AND wtaxonomy.count > 0");

	$catCounter = 0;

	foreach ($catQuery as $category) {

		$catCounter++;

		$catStyle = '';
		if (is_int($catCounter / 2)) $catStyle = ' class="catAlt"';

		$catLink = get_category_link($category->term_id);

		echo '<li'.$catStyle.'><h3><a href="'.$catLink.'" title="'.$category->name.'">'.$category->name.'</a></h3>';
			echo '<ul>';

			query_posts('cat='.$category->term_id.'&showposts=5');?>

			<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
				<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
			<?php endwhile; ?>

				<li><a href="<?php echo $catLink; ?>" title="<?php echo $category->name; ?>">More <strong><?php echo $category->name; ?></strong></a></li>
			</ul>
		</li>
		<?php }	?>
	</ul>
	<!-- Category Archive End -->

</div>

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

You should now save your file, because we’re done editing it. As you can see, the archive code has been added between the ‘Start’ and ‘End’ comments. Now let’s go through the code and dissect it.

The PHP code explained

The first thing we do is to set up a database query to cycle through the non-empty parent categories:

$catQuery = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->terms AS wterms INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy AS wtaxonomy ON ( wterms.term_id = wtaxonomy.term_id ) WHERE wtaxonomy.taxonomy = 'category' AND wtaxonomy.parent = 0 AND wtaxonomy.count > 0");

You can further tweak this query to exclude categories or specify categories to be listed based on their ID, with the use of the MySQL comparison functions NOT IN or IN.

Let’s say that you’d like the archive to exclude the categories with IDs 2, 5 and 6. Your query would become:

$catQuery = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->terms AS wterms INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy AS wtaxonomy ON ( wterms.term_id = wtaxonomy.term_id ) WHERE wtaxonomy.taxonomy = 'category' AND wtaxonomy.parent = 0 AND wtaxonomy.count > 0 AND wterms.term_id NOT IN (2,5,6)");

Similarly, if you want to display only the categories with IDs 2,5 and 6, you’d have:

$catQuery = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT * FROM $wpdb->terms AS wterms INNER JOIN $wpdb->term_taxonomy AS wtaxonomy ON ( wterms.term_id = wtaxonomy.term_id ) WHERE wtaxonomy.taxonomy = 'category' AND wtaxonomy.parent = 0 AND wtaxonomy.count > 0 AND wterms.term_id IN (2,5,6)");

For further help with comparison operators and functions, you can check out the MySQL manual.

Next, we set up a category counter which will be incremented each time a category will be displayed. Based on this counter, the code adds a ‘catAlt‘ class that you can use to style differently consecutive categories. In our case, we’ll use it to shift the categories into two columns. This is were the alternate classes are assigned:

$catCounter++;

$catStyle = '';
if (is_int($catCounter / 2)) $catStyle = ' class="catAlt"';

The category list is built by the use of foreach and it helps retrieve vital information about the categories, such as name and permalink:

foreach ($catQuery as $category) {
	/* Code used to retrieve and display the latest posts */
}

After we display the category title and link through this line of code

echo '<li'.$catStyle.'><h3><a href="'.get_category_link($category->term_id).'" title="'.$category->name.'">'.$category->name.'</a></h3>';

we continue by using a custom query to retrieve the latest 5 posts from the current category in the cycle, followed by a link to the complete category archive:

query_posts('cat='.$category->term_id.'&showposts=5');?>

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
	<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
<?php endwhile; ?>
	<li><a href="<?php echo $catLink; ?>" title="<?php echo $category->name; ?>">More <strong><?php echo $category->name; ?></strong></a></li>

And that’s about everything in terms of coding! Now, onto the CSS styling.

Styling the archive

Find the style.css file in your default theme’s directory, open it and scroll down to the end of the file. Now copy the code below and paste it in your file.

/* Latest posts by category styles */

.catArchive {
	width: 450px;
	overflow: hidden;
	margin: 20px 0 0 0;
	padding: 0;
	list-style-type: none;
}

.catArchive h3 {
	font: normal bold 18px sans-serif;
	border-bottom: 1px solid #666;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0 0 3px 0;
	display: block;
}

.catArchive li {
	display: block;
	float: left;
	width: 210px;
	margin: 0 30px 30px 0;
}

.catArchive ul {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
}

.catArchive li li {
	border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 4px 0;
}

.catAlt {
	margin-right: 0 !important;
}

Now, save the file. We’re done!

Note: Keep in mind that column sizes have been calculated based on the available space (450 pixels) in the default theme’s content area. So, our columns should each be 210 pixels wide, with a 30 pixels spacing between them.

Since the column shifting is done with the help of float, I’ve set the overflow to hidden to stretch the list full height. This can only work with a fixed given container width, which in our case is 450px set on .catArchive.

If your new to “floating”, Sarah has posted a fairly easy to understand article about the float property on BloggingTips.com.

You can download an archive containing both source files: Download.

Free PDF eBook: Corporate Blogging Guide by Blogsessive

Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?

Although not a day goes by without someone putting out there another WordPress theme, days like this one, when I see one theme that truly impresses me, don’t come that often. On January 26th, Performancing.com, in collaboration with Sophia Lucero, launched the “Too Newsy” free WordPress theme, and this is one theme you should definitely check out.

Too Newsy

Too Newsy is a very clean 3 column WordPress theme that does excellent use of space, colors an typography. I’ll say it again: I love the typography of this theme. The two sidebars are widget-ready and the theme has built-in support for gravatars and threaded comments. The download files are available in two versions, one for WordPress 2.7 and the other for WordPress versions prior to 2.7.

Preview here
Download here

Looking for more free 3 column WordPress themes?

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As some of you might already know, back on January 17th, the folks at Automattic have launched WordPress.TV, a website they plan on turning into “Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress”.

This is a definitely a great project that will undoubtedly become a WordPress resource hot spot. On what do I base my belief? On the amazing community of people around this extraordinary blogging (and not only) platform that is WordPress.

It’s enough to check out their support forums and see the kind of involvement that people show, how willing they are to help, solve problems and answer questions. So yes, I think that the WordPress TV will be a success.

The reasons behind this launch are simple. The WordPress community needs a place where video information (news, tutorials and so on) finds its way to people, after passing through a certain quality filter, where it will be kept up to date with ad/spam free.

By the looks of it, after only one week of existence, the community response is amazing.

So, in case you’ve missed the launch (but not only for this reason), in this post I’m going to guide you to 10 must-see videos on WordPress.TV. Since the website is fairly new, most of these videos are addressed to WordPress.com users, or users that are new to WordPress in general. So, as a heads-up, those of you with a fair level of knowledge might not find these vids to be very educational or spectacular.

But before we get to those 10 videos, let’s start with a small WordPress.TV introductory video.

Welcome to WordPress.TV Video

1. The WordPress.com Dashboard

New to WordPress and its amazing dashboard? At a first glance, the dashboard might seem like a lot information to digest, but with the new administrative options, the dashboard turn into one of the most important and accessible tools on your blog. (Video source)

2. How to get a post out quickly with QuickPress

This video walks you through the functions and capabilities of “QuickPress”, a section on the dashboard of your self-installed or WordPress.com blog. The purpose of this section is to fasten the publishing of those posts you really need to get out quick, without wasting time with every possible setting available. (Video source)

3. Moderating recent comments from the dashboard

Moderating recent comments has just become a whole lot easier with WordPress 2.7′s new dashboard and this video guides you through the steps you need to take. (Video source)

4. Adjusting the discussion settings

This video explains the setting of how will your readers interact with you and your blog through comments. (Video source)

5. How to rearrange the post editor to suit your own style

With WordPress 2.7 it has become a lot easier to configure the Post/Edit screen to suit your own style or writing. You can choose which sections you need displayed and which you don’t, and even the order they appear in the management area. (Video source)

6. How to create a static frontpage for your blog

Sometimes, a recent blog posts archive is not enough to display on your blog’s homepage. Sometimes, people need to turn their blog homepages in actual landing pages with additional information. Setting up a static page for your blog is a fairly easy task and this video teaches you just how to do it. (Video source)

7. Using the WordPress.com Video Player – A DemoGirl Tour

Molly McDonald, also known as DemoGirl, does an amazing job at teaching you all you need to know about WordPress.com’s video player. Quality user videos like this one reinforce my belief in WordPress TV’s bright future. (Video source / Author website)

8. How to change the reading settings

In this video, you will learn how to adjust the settings of your blog in terms of reading, and thus adjusting the way readers experience your content, whether when reading on-site or in their feed reader. (Video source)

9. Integrating a bbPress Forum with your self-installed WordPress

This video by bbPress developer Sam Bauers guides you through the process of integrating a bbPress forum on your self-installed WordPress blog. Also, this video stands as proof that WordPress developers have now a place to better interact with their community of users through video tutorials. (Video source / Author website )

10. CSS-Tricks: Designing for WordPress

Finally, this 3 part video tutorial by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks.com takes you through the steps of designing a WordPress from scratch. Since this video is also presented on its author website, I encourage you to view it there, where you also have access to all links and files used.

Here are the links to all three parts of the tutorial:

• Part one: On CSS-Tricks.com / On WordPress.TV
• Part two: On CSS-Tricks.com / On WordPress.TV
• Part three: On CSS-Tricks.com / On WordPress.TV

Next, on WordPress.TV…

Most probably a lot of great, interesting content. Make sure you bookmark the WordPress.TV website, I’m sure it will be worthwhile.

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