Learn how to create pro WordPress themes with a new book

WordPress is an open-source blog engine released under the GNU general public license which allows users to easily create dynamic blogs with great WordPress themes and content and many outstanding features, such as plugins. It is an ideal tool for developing blogs and though it is chiefly used for blogging, it can also be used as a complete CMS with very little effort. Its versatility and ease of use has attracted a large, enthusiastic, and helpful community of users.

This book walks through clear, step-by-step instructions to build a custom theme for the WordPress open-source blog engine. The author provides design tips and suggestions and covers setting up the WordPress sandbox, and reviews the best practices from setting up the theme’s template structure, through coding markup, testing, and debugging, to taking it live. The last three chapters cover additional tips, tricks, and various cookbook recipes for adding popular site enhancements to WordPress themes designs using 3rd-party plugins as well as creating API hooks to add custom plugins.

Whether users are working with a pre-existing theme or creating a new one from the ground up, WordPress Themes Design will give them the know-how to effectively understand how themes work within the WordPress blog system enabling them to have full control over their site’s design and branding. Users only need to be comfortable with the basics of web development and this book will take care of the rest.

What you will learn from this book

* Set up a basic workflow and development environment for WordPress theme design

* Create detailed designs and code them up

* Enhance your sites by choosing the right color schemes and graphics

* Debug and validate your theme using W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation tools

* Customize and tweak your theme’s layout

* Set up dynamic drop-down menus, AJAX/dynamic and interactive forms

* Download and install useful plug-ins and widgetize your theme

* Improve post and page content using jQuery and ThickBox

* Add interactivity to your themes using Flash

* Includes a reference guide to WordPress 2.0′s template hierarchy, markup, styles and template tags, as well as include and loop functions

Chapter 1 introduces you to the WordPress blog system and lets you know what you need to be aware of regarding the WordPress themes project you’re ready to embark on. The chapter also covers the development tools that are recommended and web skills that you’ll need to begin developing a WordPress theme.

Chapter 2 looks at the essential elements you need to consider when planning your WordPress theme design. It discusses the best tools and processes for making your theme design a reality. The author explains her own ‘Rapid Design Comping’ technique and gives some tips and tricks for developing color schemes and graphic styles for your WordPress theme. By the end of the chapter, you’ll have a working XHTML and CSS based ‘comp’ or mockup of your theme design, ready to be coded up and assembled into a fully functional WordPress theme.

Chapter 3 uses the final XHTML and CSS mockup from Chapter 2 and shows you how to add WordPress PHP template tag code to it and break it down into the template pages a theme requires. Along the way, this chapter covers the essentials of what makes a WordPress theme work. At the end of the chapter, you’ll have a basic, working WordPress theme.

Chapter 4 discusses the basic techniques of debugging and validation that you should employ throughout your theme’s development. It covers the W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation services and how to use the FireFox browser and some of its extensions as a development tool, not just another browser. This chapter also covers troubleshooting some of the most common reasons ‘good code goes bad’, especially in IE, and best practices for fixing those problems, giving you a great-looking theme across all browsers and platforms.

Chapter 5 discuss how to properly set up your WordPress theme’s CSS style sheet so that it loads into WordPress installations correctly. It also discuss compressing your theme files into the ZIP file format and running some test installations of your theme package in WordPress’s administration panel so you can share your WordPress theme with the world.

Chapter 6 covers key information under easy-to-look-up headers that will help you with your WordPress theme development, from the two CSS class styles that WordPress itself outputs, to WordPress’s PHP template tag code, to a breakdown of “The Loop” along with WordPress functions and features you can take advantage of in your theme development. Information in this chapter is listed along with key links to bookmark to make your theme development as easy as possible.

Chapter 7 dives into taking your working, debugged, validated, and properly packaged WordPress theme from the earlier chapters, and enhancing it with dynamic menus using the SuckerFish CSS-based method and Adobe Flash media.

Chapter 8 continues showing you how to enhance your WordPress theme by looking at the most popular methods for leveraging AJAX techniques in WordPress using plugins and widgets. It also gives you a complete background on AJAX and when it’s best to use those techniques or skip them. The chapter also reviews some cool JavaScript toolkits, libraries, and scripts you can use to simply make your WordPress themes appear ‘Ajaxy’.

Chapter 9 reviews the main tips from the previous chapters and covers some key tips for easily implementing today’s coolest CSS tricks into your WordPress themes as well as a few final SEO tips that you’ll probably run into once you really start putting content into your WordPress site.

For more details on the WordPress themes book please visit this link.

And why we use WordPress plugin repository?

WordPress is a great open-development community that encourages its users to innovate and the WordPress Plugin Repository was born (currently hosted at http://WP-plugins.org) because a few years ago, it started getting hard to keep up with those innovations.

The repository is a place where all WordPress plugins are pulled together and shared with the community of users. But more than that, it’s a place where developers can go to see what’s already out there, what they can base their new work on, and what needs to be improved. In addition to end-user utilities that anyone can download for their WordPress needs, there are plenty of development tools, including wiki-based version control and a bug tracker, that the WordPress development community is welcomed to use. Everything is licensed under GPL unless noted in the source, so almost everything is open.

If you’re new to the WordPress plugin repository but not to the WordPress support forums, you should login with your forum username and password; they are currently synced. If you have any problems, you should email the forum webmaster to ask what’s going on. Only logged-in users may edit on the Repository, though everyone is welcome to view what’s going on.

What’s Available on the WordPress Plugin Repository?

The Repository is designed to be a complete, organized, efficient method of seeing what’s in development and what has been developed for WordPress. As such, the core offerings here are the plugin directory and a robust version control mechanism. You can also use a special interface, downloadable for free, to work with the Repository more easily. The Repository is powered by Trac, a source control management and project management tool. Subversion is a wiki tool providing version control, and is also the source management tool WordPress is using today.

Developers using this directory can host all their WordPress developments for free, even organizing teamwork through the WordPress Plugin Repository. By hosting here, they have high visibility, can easily manage their code and track bugs, and develop wiki-based documentation with end users more easily than they could ever do it by themselves.

But developers without users are like stores without customers. WordPress users, too, are welcome to download plugins that are in alpha or beta form, or to download and use the plugins that are fully-functional but not integrated into WordPress yet. There are tools available for users to:

• Browse plugins and themes available at the Repository
• Download all desired plugins and themes from one stable location
• Give their own feedback and suggestions to developers by using the tracker.
• Help develop documentation and improvements by using the plugin’s wiki page.
• Know what’s going on at all times by using RSS feeds.

Anyone developing or looking for WordPress plugins and themes is encouraged to use this resource. An email will get you the hosting you need for your project, and just coming and looking around will tell you a lot about what’s going on in the WordPress development world.

What Plugins Are Available Right Now?

While plugins are changing fast, a few core plugins are available and certainly worth the time they’ll take to check out. The best ones right now include:

Main Categories for WordPress allows you select “main” categories on your blog’s navigation bar. This allows you to highlight the parts of your blog you find most important, while still displaying everything else.

The WordPress DBManager manages your WordPress database so you don’t have to. Instead of worrying about lost data, you can use this manager to optimize, back up, restore, delete backed up databases, and even run queries for specific data.

WordPress Email allow you to send your blog entries to friends, enemies, or anyone you choose.

WordPress PageNavi gives you advanced page navigation.

WordPress Polls allows you to run the ever-popular polls and make the results public when you’re ready.

WordPress PostRatings allows you to have rating systems for your blog posts.

WordPress PostViews lets you display for users and for yourself how many times a post has been viewed.

WordPress Print will display for the user a printable version of any given WordPress blog post.

WordPress RelativeDate displays a relative date beside your post or comment actual date.

WordPress Stats displays WordPress statistics you want to brag about.

WordPress UserOnline allows you to note which users are currently browsing your blogs

WordPress Wap allows you to use a Wap-enabled cell phone to brows your WordPress blog entries from anywhere.

Other projects that are in development include:

• Joystick controls
• RPMView
• A WordPress XHTML validator
• Tons of tools for Python, including MySQL tools
• Recording level monitor
• An admin themer
• A post editor enhancement
• Fix broken links
• Palm usage manager

There are always new things in development in the repository, like new themes and small fixes such as a way to make WordPress allow dashes.

Even if you’re not a developer or interested in expanding your blog beyond what it has now, it is a good idea to check out the Repository. It’s certain that many of the plugins provided or in development today will eventually be incorporated into the newer upgrades of WordPress. By keeping an eye on the Repository, you’ll know what new developments are around the corner – and by logging in and discussing them on the wiki logs, you’ll be able to give your own input regarding how things ought to be done. While there are other places to find WordPress plugins, it’s to be hoped that most people will use the Repository in the future, making life easier for everyone.

You want some recommendations for the best wordpress plugins?

If so then today is your lucky day because what I have you here is what I think to be the best wordpress plugins every wordpress blogger should be using for their blog or blogs period.

I’m sure once you go through the list I have put together below and read through what each of these wordpress plugins can do for your blog you’ll soon agree that these are the best wordpress plugins you’ve been searching for.

I’ve spent countless hours searching the web for the best wordpress plugins for my blogs because with them they can simplify a lot of tedious work giving you more time to do what you need to do with your blogs.

My suggestion to you is if you want to reduce the time involved with searching the web for the best wordpress plugins then make a plan now to read through the rest of this article.

Okay, that is enough talking, let’s get to the heart of the best wordpress plugins every wordpress blogger should be using.

Below is the list I have put together with some brief descriptions and hyperlinks to where you can download these wordpress plugins.

#1. Akismet -

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blogs “Comments” admin screen.

#2. All In One SEO -

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

#3. Broken Link Checker -

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

This plugin is will monitor your blog looking for broken links and let you know if any are found.

#4. WordPress Database Back Up -

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

#5. Exec-Php – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/

The Exec-PHP plugin executes PHP code in posts, pages and text widgets.

#6. Google XML Sitemaps -

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog.

#7. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer -

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maxblogpress-ping-optimizer/

Save your blog from getting tagged as ping spammer by installing this plugin.

#8. MaxBlogPress Favicon

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/maxblogpress-favicon/

Help create brand awareness by displaying a little favourite icon (favicon) in the title of our blog next to the URL.

#9. WP-Cache

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-cache/

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make you site much faster and responsive.

#10. Auto Hyperlink URLs

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/auto-hyperlink-urls/

Auto-hyperlink text URLs in post content and comment text to the URL they reference.

#11. No Ping Wait

- http://onemansblog.com/2007/04/15/no-ping-wait-wordpress-plugin/

The purpose of the No Ping Wait plugin is to prevent WordPress authors from having to wait for all of the update services to respond to new post pings.

#12. FD Feedburner Plugin

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/feedburner-plugin/

Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner.com.

#13. WordPress.com Stats

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Tracks views, post/page views, referrers, and clicks.

#14. What Would Seth Godin Do

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/what-would-seth-godin-do/

Displays a custom welcome message to new visitors and much more.

#15. Popularity Contest

- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/popularity-contest/

This will enable ranking of your posts by popularity; using the behavior of your visitors to determine each post’s popularity

That’s quite the list isn’t it? But they each serve a purpose as you’ll see when you look into each further.

If you wish to search for more wordpress plugins you can at – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

Now if you want to get the very best out of WordPress then you need the best wordpress plugins, so keep these ones handy.

You’ll find every blogging plugins you need to turn your blog into something amazing that is every bit as great as you would have imagined

While there are many blogging plugins out there that are worth your while, the five that follow are the cream of the crop.

Source : www.turnblogstocash.com

Akismet

This plugin actually comes standard with your WordPress installation. You will have to get a WordPress.com API key to make it work, but after you do it’s pure bliss. This will help keep spam comments away automatically! Akismet is smart enough to put suspected spam into a separate folder, and it even learns from you as you go. You should always activate this plugin for the best results with your blog. It saves you a ton of time too!

Related Posts

Linking to different pages in your blog from every page is a great search engine optimization tactic. The problem with blogs is that it can be so hard to dig through old posts that are related and manually link them in your new post. Related posts solves that problem! This will automatically insert some relevant posts for your blog. It’s very hands-off and very effective. Both visitors and search engines love this plugin.

All in One SEO Pack

Once again, optimizing your site for the search engines
is going to be one of the best ways you can make money with your blog. The higher you rank, the more traffic you recieve. The more traffic you receive, the more money you make! The All In One SEO pack makes your life easier because it allows you to specify the title, description (that will show up in the search engines), and keywords.

WordPress Database Backup

Backing up your blog is crucial if you value your business. You never know what could happen to your server, and it would be awfully devastating to lose everything. You can easily back everything up by pressing a few simple buttons with this effective and very useful plugin.

Top Commentators

This plugin is greatly effective and it encourages a lot of interaction on your blog. It lists the people who have the most comments within your blog. They love this because they get the extra exposure. You love it because people really get into posting to try and be at the top. It also gives social proof. When people visit a blog for the first time they are more likely to stick around if there are clearly other people there who value your content. The fact that they can see others participating is a great thing.

There are an incredible number of different blogging plugins out there that are ready for you to use. Install these essential blogging plugins and you’ll be well-prepared to become the great blogger you’re going to become.

Learn how to install Blogumulus for WordPress easily

Did you have read the previous post which is decribe about Blogumulus?

“Blogumus” is an Flash based tag cloud widget which uses scripts converted from Roy Tanck’s WP Cumulus plugin for WordPress. I fell in love with Roy’s original Cumulus plugin when I saw it, and simply had to learn how to convert this for use in Blogger powered blogs. The result is the widget you can see in action at the top of this post. Hover your mouse over the Flash object to see the animation begin. In this post, I’ll explain how you can add Blogumus to your own Blogger layout with ease

Yes, Blogumulus is the blogspot version of the original, which is WP-Cumulus. In wordpress, to get it perfectly on your wordpress blog or site is simple. Just go to download the plugin from wordpress.com and upload it to wp-content/wp-themes and login to your site. In plugins section you’ll find your plugin and you must activate it. The second method is install it via plugins section. Click the add new plugins button and search for “WP-Cumulus” and install it. Then your cumulus must be show up perfectly. If the cumulus didn’t appear, check your posts, are they have a label? If not, just give them a label then your Blogumulus will appear on the main page.

Blogumus is based on the original WP Cumulus plugin by Roy Tanck, and was converted for use with Blogger layouts by myself. Please leave the credit links in the widget code intact. These will not be seen by the majority of your blog readers (as they will only display if JavaScript and Flash is not activated) but leaving these links intact is a great way of passing some link love on to Roy for all his hard work, and to inform other Blogger users that they can find the widget codes on this site.

Support/Issues

If you have any problems installing or using this widget, please leave your comments below or direct these to the Blogger Buster forums as Roy will be unable to provide support for installation in Blogger blogs!

Requirements

For Blogumus to display properly in your template, you will need to have Flash Player 7 or higher. You can download the latest Flash Player plugin for your browser from Adobe. I’m not sure that this installation will support special characters as tags (only Latin characters supported at present). If you do experiecce issues with labels displaying incorrectly, please let me know. I’ll try to add more support, but have very little experience using Flash with Blogumulus!