As your blog’s traffic grows, spammers will rush to your blog too and spam comments is a serious problem for all bloggers. You have to go through comments everyday and delete the spam comments, which is really a headache.
Today i have collected 15 most important wordpress plugins to help you fight spam. These plugins [...]
We have been hard at work now for a few months on the new features that will be coming in WordPress 2.9, and we are near the time when the first beta version will be available. We’ll need your help with beta testing the new features and ironing out any bugs.
There are a number of different ways in which you can get involved in the testing process, and each way is suited for each persons skill set and comfort level. First of all, you can join the wp-testers mailing list to keep up to date with the testing progress and to discuss things with the other testers. Secondly, you can head over to the Trac ticketing system and either create tickets for bugs you find or use some of the useful searches to look for patches that need testing or that need someone to try and reproduce the issue.
During the beta phase we are going to focus on stabilizing the new features and removing existing bugs which are well-understood and have easily testable solutions. During this process we will not be adding any new enhancements so as to ensure that the focus is on making the 2.9 release as bug-free as possible. We will also try and have a few special bug hunt days where one or more experienced WordPress developers will be available to help people track down issues and get patches committed to fix bugs.
To make is as easy as possible for you to get a beta testing install up and running we have put together a small WordPress plugin which makes it really easy to convert a test install of the latest release version of WordPress into a beta test install of the next up and coming release. The plugin is called WordPress Beta Tester and is available to download from WordPress Extend or can be installed using the built-in plugin installer. Please make sure you to only install this plugin on a test site. We do not recommend running beta versions on your normal, live sites in case anything goes wrong. You can read more about the plugin in “Making it easy to be a WordPress Tester”
We are aiming to release the first beta version of 2.9 around the end of October, after we have put the finishing touches on the new features. Then we switch to full on beta testing mode and your help and feedback will be very much appreciated. During the beta test program will push out new builds for automated upgrades regularly. Once we feel that a suitable level of stability has been achieved we will move into the release candidate phase. We hope to be able to make the final release 2.9 build available in either late November or early December.
WordPress is what you make of it. For some it is a simple blogging platform no different than Tumblr or Blogger. For others it is an all inclusive content management system for their corporate website. Developers continue to recommend WordPress as a CMS because of all the extended functionality contributed by the community as well as it’s raw simplicity.read more
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Business blogging can be exceptionally rewarding. When done correctly, a successful blog can bring attention to your business, can attract new customers, and can turn your current customer base into the type of fans that companies like Apple, Netflix, and Ben and Jerry’s have: people who will not only buy your product or service, but evangelize it to their peers. Of course, like anything, there is a right way to go about starting a business blog and a wrong way.
Creating a blog for your small business isn’t easy; it requires hard work and the ability to think creatively about your work. But if you avoid the five big mistakes laid out in this post, your chances of building a successful business blog will be much better.
The number one mistake that business bloggers make is to treat their blog as an extension of their current press center. Repeat after me: Your blog is not the place for press releases. Blogging is a conversation and it offers a way for your customers to connect with your business on a completely new level. Press releases, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. They’re impersonal, they’re self promotional, and most readers don’t trust them. If you use your blog to republish press releases your customers will have no reason to keep reading and they’ll also likely not trust your content.
How to Avoid: First, don’t ever put out a press release on your blog. You can use your blog to make product or other business announcements, but do so with original writing and in a more casual voice. Second, do use your blog to write about things other than your core business. Share your thoughts on your industry, share insights into the day-to-day work life and processes at your company, and provide tips and tricks you have learned during your time in business.
Think about the blogs you read on a regular basis — how many of them publish only sporadically? Most successful blogs put out new content at least a couple of times per week and try to stick to a regular schedule. Consistently putting out quality content will keep readers returning and over time it will help you build a community and turn your customers into fans.
How to Avoid: Blogging regularly isn’t easy, so to avoid burning out, brainstorm editorial ideas ahead of time. If you plan to put out new posts every Tuesday and Friday, for example, try not to start writing Tuesday’s post on Tuesday morning. Get other people at your company involved so that one person isn’t shouldering the entire blogging load, and even consider sourcing content from your customers. Remember that anything can provide fodder for a good blog post, so pay attention to the things you read or see on other blogs, newspapers, magazines, or television.
As I already said, blogging is a conversation, and not allowing it to occur on your blog is a mistake. It’s true that blog comments can open you up to criticism, but blogging is an unparalleled opportunity to connect with your customers. You’ll get a lot more out of blogging if you enable — and even encourage — your customers to respond to what you write.
How to Avoid: Obviously the first thing you need to do is enable commenting on your business blog. But beyond that, you need to remember that the conversation is two-way. Get in there and respond to the comments readers leave on your blog and you’ll be more likely to develop a community around your writing that can help turn your customers into fans who will evangelize your products and services and provide you with quality feedback. You should also participate in the conversation on other blogs in your industry by leaving comments on posts elsewhere around the blogosphere. That will help you to establish your “blogging brand” and bring new readers your way.
Your blog won’t be very helpful to readers if they aren’t able to easily find new content. You need to make your blog discoverable and you need to make sure that when you add new content, your regular readers will be able to find it.
How to Avoid: There are a few ways to make sure your blog content is more easily discovered.
- Make your blog easy to find by linking to it prominently from your company’s web site and including your blog’s URL in your email signature, on your business cards, and in sales and marketing collateral.
- Use a full RSS feed (because the goal with most business blogs should be to get read, not boost page views) and make it easy for your readers to find and subscribe to.
- Embrace social media technologies like Twitter and Facebook as a way to notify your fans and followers of new blog content, and make it easy for your readers to share content with each other through social media channels and via email.
- Optimize for search engines by putting relevant keywords in post titles and URL slugs and write about the things that your customers are most likely to be searching for — but avoid sounding artificial simply so you can stuff some more keywords into a post.
Blogging isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. Your blog won’t be an overnight success, and for the first few months it might feel like you’re writing for no one. It can take time to build up your readership and have a regular community of people who participate on your blog. Don’t expect immediate returns from your blog and do expect to put in a lot of hard work.
How to Avoid: Set attainable goals and realize that you’re in it for the long haul. Don’t cancel your blogging efforts after three months — give it at least a year of regularly putting out quality, original content. And make sure that your blog is easy to find, and that your readers are able to easily comment and share posts with others.
- 6 Tips for Customizing Your Small Business Blog
- 5 Rules for Better Web Writing
- Top 20 Ways to Share a Great Blog Post
- 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog
- HOW TO: Support Social Good on Your Blog
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Franck-Boston, blackred, marekuliasz
Tags: blog, blogging, business, small business
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms available today. And for good reason.
It’s powerful enough to be a complete CMS, has every feature or function a blogger could dream of (either built in or available via plugins or custom functions), and it’s free and open source.
While WordPress is incredibly powerful and easy to use on its most basic levels, it can also get pretty complicated, pretty quickly.
Below are more than 300 resources to help you master WordPress no matter what your skill level is.
Everything from premium and free themes to plugins to WP hacks and everything in between is included. If it’s possible with WordPress, it’s likely you’ll find it below.
WP can have an almost infinite variety of designs applied to it. Themes can be as simple or complicated as you want. Below are a wide variety of theme roundups, theme frameworks for building your own themes, and premium theme sites with customizable or out-of-the-box themes. Be sure to check out the tutorial section next for resources for building your own themes.
WordPress PSD Framework – A free PSD template that includes all the common elements in a WP design for you to build on.
WordPress Theme Generator – An online theme generator that doesn’t require any coding knowledge.
Easier Theme Development with Sample WordPress Content – A downloadable bundle of sample WP content that includes posts, tags, categories, and pages to make theme development easier.
Blank WordPress Themes Ready for 2.7 Up for Grabs – Offers up a couple of free, empty themes you can download.
Blank WordPress Themes – A collection of two- and three-column blank themes from Refueled.
Thematic – One of the most advanced theme frameworks available.
Carrington – A free WP CMS theme framework that includes two browser versions and a mobile version.
Free HTML 5 WordPress Theme – A free theme template that takes advantage of HTML 5 features and functions.
The Buffet Framework – A theme framework aimed to be easy-to-use for both developers and end users.
Thesis Theme for WordPress – Another basic theme framework.
OnePress Community – A WP and bb Press theme framework.
Whiteboard – A basic framework for WP theme development.
WP Framework – A blank theme framework with minimal formatting.
WordPress Theme Frameworks—A Comprehensive Overview – A great rundown of what theme frameworks are and why they’re useful.
WordPress Theme Development Frameworks – An in-depth review of some of the most popular WP theme frameworks.
WP Contact Manager – A theme that basically transforms your WP installation into a full-featured contact manager.
41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes – A roundup of beautiful free themes.
16 Free Premium WordPress Themes That Don’t Suck – An awesome roundup of free premium-style themes.
11 Tips for Speeding Up WordPress Theme Development – A great list of ways to speed up your theme development process.
13 Helpful Cheat Sheets for Building WordPress Themes – A great roundup of cheat sheets helpful to WP theme designers.
140+ Brilliant Free WordPress Themes Around – A roundup of some excellent free WP themes.
10 of the Best WordPress 2.7 Compatible Themes – An overview of ten excellent WP themes compiled by Mashable.
10+ Best WordPress Themes for March 2009 – An awesome collection of newish themes from WP DesignBlog.
17 Free and Best WordPress Themes – A small roundup of excellent WP themes.
3-Column WordPress Theme Gallery – Includes a large number of excellent 3-column themes.
45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts – An excellent roundup of free magazine-style and grid themes.
15 Fresh WordPress Themes to Get the Coolest Portfolio for You or Your Studio – A collection of portfolio-styled WP themes.
Best WordPress Themes Collection – A roundup of excellent paid WP themes.
10 Best Free WordPress Themes You Haven’t Seen – A great collection of seldom-seen WP themes.
30 Free Magazine/Grid Style WordPress Themes – A compilation of 30 excellent magazine and grid style WP themes.
100 Excellent Free WordPress Themes – An excellent roundup of high-quality themes from Smashing Magazine.
40 Stylish, Minimal and Clean Free WordPress Themes – A roundup of minimalist themes from Speckyboy Design Magazine.
WordPress.org – The official theme repository from WordPress, with nearly 1,000 free themes available.
WordPressThemesBase.com – A categorized theme directory that you can browse by category, design properties (columns, sidebars, etc.) or tag.
Top WP Themes – A directory of free themes, many with a corporate or professional look.
Themes2WP.com – A categorized directory with more than a thousand themes.
WPthemespot.com – A theme aggregator with beautiful themes featured from all over the web.
WooThemes – Offers paid themes in a club format, though you can also purchase individual themes.
Obox Theme Shop – A premium theme site with some really awesome themes available with single-site licenses or developer licenses.
StudioPress – Premium WP theme site that lets you download themes individually or as a package.
NattyWP – Another club-based premium themes site.
Blurbia – A premium themes site that also offers one free theme.
Elegant Themes – Another great premium themes site that allows unlimited access for less than $20.
WP Remix – A premium WP CMS theme with more than 50 page templates available.
10 Premium WordPress Themes Released in April 2009 – A roundup of recently released premium themes.
Gorilla Themes – A premium themes site with ten themes available.
Press75 – Another premium themes site that lets you buy themes individually or as a bundle.
Theme Layouts WordPress Themes – The WP category from ThemeLayouts has hundreds of themes available, free for members to download.
100 Amazing Free WordPress Themes for 2009 – An awesome roundup of beautiful themes compiled by Smashing Magazine.
Cream of the Crop: Six Cutting-Edge, Minimalist WordPress Themes – An article from Skelliewag of beautiful, minimal themes.
Graph Paper Press – A club-based WP themes gallery that also offers some free theme downloads.
10 Minimalist WordPress Themes You’ll Love – A collection of ten minimalist themes, some of which aren’t commonly seen.
25 Simple and Minimal WordPress Themes – A great roundup of minimalist themes from ReviewPk.
60 Great WordPress Themes – An excellent, recent roundup of gorgeous WP themes.
25 Best Free WordPress Themes – An absolutely amazing roundup compiled by EliteFreelancing.com of gorgeous WP themes.
14 Most Visually Appealing Free WordPress Themes – A small collection of beautiful and elegant themes.
15 Magazine WordPress Themes You Can Use for Free – Another roundup of excellent magazine themes.
83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen Yet – While this post is a couple of years old and you probably have seen many of the themes on it, it’s still a great roundup of gorgeous designs.
21 Mindblowing Premium-Like Free WordPress Themes – A collection of unique themes that often defy the conventions of what we normally think of as a “blog design.”
20 More Free First-Class WordPress Themes – An excellent roundup of beautiful themes, many of which aren’t widely seen yet.
85 Best Beautiful Free WordPress Themes – An excellent roundup from [Re]Encoded.com of stunning WP themes.
23 of the Best Grunge-Style WordPress Themes – A collection of excellent grunge-style themes, many of which aren’t commonly seen.
13 Best Grunge WordPress Themes Online – A great roundup from CSSAddict of beautiful grunge themes.
20 Free 3 Column WP Themes – A great roundup of gorgeous 3-column themes.
45+ Must See WordPress Themes – A categorized roundup of themes compiled by Noupe.
15 Free Stunning and Unique WordPress Themes – A roundup of mostly clean and professional-looking themes.
WordPress Rainbow: 35 Colorful Free WordPress Themes – A great roundup of bright and colorful free themes.
22 Free and Unique WordPress Themes – A recent roundup of themes not seen very often.
Great Green WordPress Themes – A wonderful collection of WP themes with a green color scheme.
25 Free WordPress Themes (2009 Edition) – A roundup of some really beautiful and different themes.
25 Artistic Themes for WordPress – A great roundup of artsy WP themes.
21 Premium-Like Free Photoblog Themes for WordPress – Photoblogs have specific needs not often addressed in standard WP themes. Here are 21 themes specifically built for photoblogs.
15 Portfolio Themes for WordPress – A great roundup of themes perfect for portfolio sites.
65+ Free Exceptional WordPress Themes Worth Investigating – A great roundup of gorgeous themes compiled by Tripwire Magazine.
8 Fresh WordPress Themes – An older post that offers up some great theme designs.
50 Beautiful Free WordPress Themes – A roundup of stunning WP themes.
The tutorials featured below cover everything from basic WP installation and setup to more complicated topics like theme development, plugin development and advanced WP features and functions.
My WordPress Install Process – A guide from Blogging Pro for installing WP.
You’ve Installed WordPress, So What’s Next? – A great overview of steps you should take after you’ve installed WP.
The Ultimate Guide to Setting Up WordPress after an Install – A complete guide to what to do once you’ve installed WP, from Pro Blog Design.
Dissection of a WordPress Theme: Part 1 – A really in-depth overview of how WP themes are constructed.
How to Create a WordPress Theme: The Ultimate WordPress Theme Tutorial – An extremely in-depth tutorial for creating themes from ThemeShaper.
The WordPress Developer Toolkit – This tutorial and tool roundup from iThemes gives a great overview of what you need to have and learn to develop great WP sites.
How to Edit WordPress Themes Using Dreamweaver – A great guide to theme editing with Dreamweaver.
WordPress as a CMS – A 27-minute video tutorial for using WP as a content management system.
How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch – A great tutorial for building a WP theme from the ground up.
Create An Awesome WordPress Theme Options Page (Part 1) – A tutorial for creating a theme options panel in the backend of WP.
WordPress Loop: Get Posts Published Between Two Particular Dates – A great guide to retrieving and displaying posts published during a specific time frame.
Leopard: How to Install WordPress – A tutorial for creating a local installation of WP on Mac OS X Leopard.
Premium WordPress Theme Design Part 1—The Photoshop Mock Up – The first in a series of tutorials for creating a premium-style WP theme.
The Power of WordPress Custom Fields – A great overview for working with custom fields.
Customize Your WordPress Login – Learn how to customize the look of your WP login screen.
Things You Should Know When Using Post Excerpt – An overview of things to keep in mind when using the post excerpt function in WP.
WordPress Custom Fields; Laying Text Over Your Lead Graphic – A tutorial that shows you how to add a text overlay to your graphics.
5 Useful WordPress Functions You Didn’t Know Existed – A rundown of five great WP functions most people have never heard of.
Power Tips for WordPress Template Developers – An excellent resource from Smashing Magazine of advanced techniques useful to template and theme developers.
How to: Make a Control Panel for Your WordPress Theme – A tutorial for creating a customization menu in the backend. for your WP theme.
WordPress Ajax Commenting Revisited – A tutorial for creating your own ajax comment system.
WordPress Screencast Tutorial—Photo Captions – A video tutorial for adding captions to your photos.
How To: Adding an Author Page to Your WordPress Blog – A fantastic tutorial for creating an “about the author” page on your blog.
Turning a Web Template into a WordPress Theme: A Video Tutorial – A video tutorial for turning virtually any website template into a WP theme.
Styling Your WordPress Comments – Learn to style your comments to better complement your site’s design.
Displaying Author Meta Information in WordPress 2.8 – An excellent tutorial for displaying the meta information included about authors within the front-end of your WP site.
So You Want to Create WordPress Themes, Huh? – This is one of the most comprehensive and in-depth theme development tutorials out there, broken down into more than 16 parts.
The Ultimate Guide to the WordPress Loop – A must-have resource for anyone who wants to develop WP themes or just have a better understanding of how WP works.
Mastering Your WordPress Theme Hacks and Techniques – A great collection of hacks and customization from Noupe.
How to Use Thumbnails Generated by WordPress in Your Theme – A guide to working with WP-generated thumbnail images.
How to Write Your Own WordPress Theme – A complete tutorial for WP theme development.
Tutorial: Creating Custom Write Panels in WordPress – A tutorial for adding unique data to your posts using custom write fields in the backend.
Display Thumbnails for Related Posts in WordPress – A tutorial for displaying the WP-generated thumbnail images for your posts in a related posts list.
How to Set Up Pretty Permalinks in WordPress – A guide to creating pretty permalinks from ThemeLab.
Multiple WordPress Page Layouts in One Single Template – A tutorial that shows you how to create more than one page layout without having to resort to separate templates.
Build a Newspaper Theme with WP_Query and the 960 CSS Framework – A complete tutorial for building a news-style theme.
How-To: Create a WordPress Theme in 5 Minutes – A tutorial that shows how to set up a basic WP theme. It also includes all the code you’ll need.
The Ultimate WordPress 2.8 Optimization Guide – A complete guide for setting up and optimizing your WP 2.8 installation.
WordPress as a CMS: How to Think About Building a Website with WordPress – A great overview and tutorial for setting WP up as a CMS.
WordPress: How to Get Custom Fields Outside the Loop – A tutorial for creating custom fields that reside outside the WP Loop.
WordPress Tutorial: Blog Posts in Different Columns – A tutorial that shows how to make blog posts appear in more than one column on your site.
Multiple WordPress Loops Explained – A great tutorial to get you started with multiple loops.
DiggProof Your WordPress – A complete guide to making your site stand up to traffic spikes, like those caused by making the front page of Digg.
Displaying Code in WordPress Posts – A brief overview of the methods available for displaying code snippets within your posts.
WordPress Tutorial: Category Trick for WP 2.7 – A tutorial for applying different styles to specific categories.
How to Make a Random Post Button – A tutorial for creating a button to take visitors to a random post on your blog.
10 Things to Do After Installing WordPress – A list of 10 must-do steps to take after installing a fresh copy of WordPress.
10 Impressive Techniques to Spice Up Your WordPress Theme – A great roundup of style improvements you can add to your WP theme.
20+ Tutorials and Resources for Working with Custom Fields in WordPress – An excellent collection of tutorials for dealing with custom fields.
Top 50 WordPress Tutorials – A roundup of fifty great WP tutorials compiled by Nettuts+ and covering virtually every aspect of WP development.
135+ Ultimate Round-Up of WordPress Tutorials – A categorized roundup of tutorials compiled by instantShift.
30 Tutorials Combining Both WordPress and jQuery – A great roundup of jQuery/WP combo tutorials from Speckyboy Design Magazine.
40+ Awesome Tutorials and Techniques for WordPress Theme Developers – A tutorial list specifically aimed at theme development put together by tripwire magazine.
60+ Awesome WordPress Tutorials – A great collection of tutorials that will lead you right from installation through advanced WP development.
30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials – A collection of video tutorials for everything from theme development to creating plugins to administration tasks.
110+ Massive WordPress Video Tutorial Collection – A roundup of more than 110 video tutorials for everything from installing WP to using it to developing for it.
Top 10 Tutorials for Developing WordPress Themes – A compilation of ten of the best theme development tutorials out there.
23+ Excellent Tutorials for WordPress Theme Developers – A great roundup of theme development tutorials from Web Developer Plus.
63 Essential WordPress Hacks, Tutorials, Help Files and Cheats – A great roundup of WP resources.
Getting Past First Base…Using WordPress as a CMS – A recent guide from Foraker Design to using WP as a CMS.
How to Speed Up Your WordPress Blog – An excellent resource for making your WP site run faster.
HOW TO: Create a jQuery Carousel with WordPress Posts – An excellent tutorial for creating a carousel to display WP posts from a specific category.
Customize WordPress Theme to Match an Existing Website: A Step-by-Step Blog Integration Tutorial – Create a WP theme that matches an existing website design for seamless integration.
How to Only Show Posts With a Specific Custom Field – A quick tutorial for showing posts with content in a specific custom field.
Create a Plugin With Its Own Custom Database Table – A tutorial for coding plugins that need to have their own custom db table.
How to Add Sidebars to a Theme – A very basic tutorial for theme developers.
Post Image the Easy Peasy Way – A quick tutorial for creating a function that automatically displays images with your posts.
How to Add an Announcement Box to Your WordPress Theme – A complete tutorial for creating a news or announcement box that can be switched on and off from the dashboard.
Create Your Own Private Twitter Site Using WordPress – A quick tutorial for creating a private, Twitter-like network using WordPress.
How to Add Pagination Into a List of Records or WordPress Plugin – A very thorough tutorial for adding pagination to records generated by a WP plugin.
Creating Widgets in WordPress 2.8 with the Widget API – A great overview and tutorial for working with the new widget API included in WP 2.8.
Use WordPress as a PHP Framework for Your Static HTML Pages – A very interesting tutorial on how to use WP as a PHP framework.
Tutorial: Multiple single.php Templates in WordPress – A guide to using more than one single.php file in WP.
How to Create a Beautiful Dropdown Blogroll without JavaScript – A complete tutorial for creating dropdown menus using just plain HTML.
Custom Header Images for WordPress Pages – A tutorial for using custom header images on different pages using custom fields.
How to Display Recent Comments Without Using a Plugin or Widget – An excellent tutorial for adding recent comments to your theme using the functions.php file and some code right within your theme files.
Display a Random Post (with AJAX Refresh) – A complete tutorial for creating a random post display using jQuery.
Get More Traffic: An SEO Guide for WordPress – Thorough coverage of changes to make to improve your blog’s SEO.
How to Design and Style Your WordPress Plugin Admin Panel – A complete tutorial for styling the admin panel for your WP plugins.
Wicked WordPress Archives in One Easy Step! – A complete tutorial for creating stylish WP archives.
Make a Mobile Friendly Version of Your Blog with Google Reader – An awesome method of making a blog better-formatted for viewing on mobile devices by using Google Reader.
Designing for WordPress: Complete Series and Downloads – A complete video tutorial series from Chris Coyier for designing WP themes.
100+ WordPress Video Tutorials, from Basic to Advance – An awesome roundup of video tutorials for virtually every aspect of working with WP.
Complete WordPress Theme Guide – A three-part tutorial series from Web Designer Wall for creating WP themes.
Import and Export WordPress Data – A video tutorial that shows you how to import your data from other blogging platforms (including TypePad and Blogger) and how to export your data for installing on another version of WP.
Create a Tabbed Featured Posts Area in WordPress – A tutorial for creating a tabbed area for displaying multiple featured posts.
A Crash-Course in WordPress Plugin Development – A video tutorial for creating your first WP plugin.
List of WordPress Thesis Theme Tutorials – A collection of tutorials for working with the Thesis parent theme.
Tutorial: Add a Background to Your WordPress Theme – A very basic tutorial for adding a different background image to a standard WP theme.
26 Complete WordPress Blog Design Tutorials – A roundup of 26 tutorials for creating specific WP designs from scratch.
Installing WordPress on Tiger – A great tutorial for installing a local copy of WordPress on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
Integrating BuddyPress, WordPress MU, and bbPress – A great guide if you want to build a complete social networking site.
12 Great Tutorials on Creating a New WordPress Theme – An awesome roundup of theme development tutorials compiled by [Re]Encoded.com.
5 Useful and Creative Ways to Use WordPress Widgets – A great guide to using WP widgets.
How to Easily Customize the WordPress Image Caption – A tutorial for customizing the appearance of the built-in WP image caption text.
10 Steps to a Client Friendly WordPress CMS – A guide to making WP more end-user-friendly as a CMS.
An Elegant Featured Content Slider for WordPress – A tutorial for creating a slider to display your recent posts.
WordPress Theme Guide – A complete guide to building WP themes from Urban Giraffe.
Mastering WordPress Shortcodes – A great guide for learning all about WP shortcodes.
Plugins extend the functionality of a standard WP installation. There are thousands of plugins on the WordPress site but finding the best among them can be incredibly time-consuming. The plugins featured here have already been vetted by other bloggers, making it easier to find not only the plugins that do what you want, but those that do it well.
BuddyPress – A plugin that adds a social networking platform to WordPress MU.
bbPress – A forum system meant to integrate with WP, created by the makers of WP.
WordPress Plugins and Tutorials – A great roundup of categorized plugins, with a few articles and tutorials included at the end.
Top 10 Characteristics of a Great WordPress Plugin – An excellent guide that should be referred to by anyone developing, or even just using, WP plugins.
12 WordPress Plugins for Theme Development – A great list of plugins essential for theme developers.
Top 35 Plugins of WordPress to Share Your Blog Post – A great roundup of plugins that make it easier for your visitors to share your blog’s content.
3 WordPress Plugins to Manage 125×125 Ads – 125-pixel-square ads are a very popular size; here are three plugins to help you manage them.
55 Best WordPress Plugins – A roundup from About.com of the plugins every WP user should consider.
Top WordPress Plugins – A compilation from TheBlogJoint.com of the best WP plugins available.
10 Best WordPress Plugins—March 2009 – A recent post covering ten of the best WP plugins, including ThickBox and Lexi.
20 Best WordPress Plugins—April 2009 – Another great roundup from AjaxLine of recent WP plugins, including AnyFont and Twitter Widget Pro.
13 of the Best WordPress Plugins – A list compiled by David Airey of the best WP plugins, including All in One SEO Pack and cforms II.
6 Best Facebook WordPress Plugins – A collection of six plugins for integrating your WordPress blog and your Facebook profile or page.
20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress – A collection of great plugins to improve your SEO, compiled by Mashable.
30+ Must Have WordPress Plugins – Another roundup of essential WP plugins.
Best WordPress Plugin for Related Posts? – A review of some of the available related posts plugins and the author’s verdict on which one is best.
50 Best WordPress Plugins for Power Blogging – A compilation of some of the best plugins available for WP power users.
5 of the Best WordPress Plugins – A fairly in-depth look at five great WP plugins.
Top WordPress Plugins – A roundup of great plugins, broken down by category and including Advanced Admin Menu and In Series.
11 Top WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have – A list from Yoast of what they consider to be the essential WP plugins.
Top 8 WordPress Plugins Used by SEO.com – A list of 8 of SEO.com’s preferred WP plugins.
70 Best WordPress Plugins to Supercharge Your Blog – A comprehensive list of awesome plugins, including Broken Link Checker and Comment Timeout.
The Best WordPress Plugins – A short review of some of the best WP plugins out there.
9 Best WordPress Plugins – A list of great plugins, including WP Smushit and WP Syntax.
Best WordPress Plugins—18 Most Downloaded WordPress Plugins Ever – A listing of the most popular WP plugins, including NextGEN Gallery and WP Super Cache.
5 Best WordPress Plugins to Shorten URLs – A collection of WP plugins for shortening your URLs.
Best WordPress Plugins – This post compiles the best WP plugins broken down by category.
WP Tutorial: Your First WP Plugin – A tutorial for creating your own WP plugins.
10 WordPress Plugins Guaranteed to Save You Time – This is a great collection of plugins compiled by Six Revisions to make you a more efficient blogger.
How to Write a Simple WordPress Plugin – A great tutorial to acquaint you with building WP plugins.
40 Exceptional “CMS Enabling” WordPress Plugins – Includes forty plugins to turn WP into a full-featured content management system.
Contact Form Plugins for WordPress – An overview of some of the contact form plugins available for WP.
The TTFTitles WordPress Plugin – A plugin to let you swap out your post titles with dynamically-created images.
TDO Mini Forms – This is one of the coolest plugins for WP out there. It allows non-registered users and/or subscribers to your site to submit their own content (which is kept in draft form until an administrator approves it). It even works with Akismet to help prevent spam posts.
30+ Plugins for WordPress Comments – A great roundup of comments-related plugins compiled by Mashable.
21 of the Best WordPress Plugins for New Blogs – A collection of plugins focused mostly on front-end features and basic end-user management.
Top 5 WordPress Plugins that Help Increase Comments – A small roundup of plugins designed to get more visitors to comment.
Top 30 WordPress Plugins That Are Actually Useful! – An awesome roundup from Speckyboy Design Magazine of incredibly useful plugins, including FireStats and WASABI Related Post.
19 Top WordPress Plugins – A great roundup of popular and useful WP plugins, including DISQUS Comment System and Popularity Contest.
Top 10 WordPress Hidden Gems (Plugins) – An awesome roundup of often-overlooked plugins that do really amazing things, including Front-End Editor and Feed Styler.
10 of the Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins to Choose From – A roundup of some of the best contact plugins available.
Top 11 Comment Plugins to Make Your WordPress Blog More User Friendly – An awesome roundup of comments-related plugins, including the Top Commentators Widget and CommentLuv.
Top 10 WordPress Gallery Plugins – Ten great plugins for creating and managing image galleries.
10 Best Photo and Image WordPress Plugins – A roundup of excellent plugins for handling images, including Shutter Reloaded and SEO Friendly Images.
Plugins That Make WordPress Into a Company Intranet – Coverage of plugins that make it possible to use WP as a corporate intranet.
20 New, Useful and Promising WordPress Plugins – A roundup of twenty great WP plugins, including WP Greet-Box and Post Ideas.
10 Mistakes You Could Avoid in WordPress Plugin Development – A must-read article for anyone doing plugin development.
16 Excellent WordPress Security Plugins to Secure Your Blog – A great roundup of security-related plugins for WP.
31 Useful Twitter Plugins for WordPress to Choose From – An extensive list of plugins for integrating Twitter and WP.
6 WordPress Plugins That Help Your Blog’s Maintenance – A great roundup of maintenance-related plugins, including Broken Link Checker and WP Anti-Virus.
The resources featured below involve customizations and hacks you can apply to your WP installation and themes that extend the functionality of WP beyond what plugins and widgets are generally capable of.
13 Vital Tips and Hacks to Protect Your WordPress Admin Area – A compilation of security hacks for WP admin.
Hack Together a User Contributed Link Feed with WordPress Comments – Shows you how to set up a user-generated public link feed by utilizing post comments.
5 Great WordPress Hacks – A small roundup of hacks, including sending pages to Twitter and listing all of the authors on your blog.
Top 10 WordPress Hacks from June ‘09 – A roundup of recent hacks, including listing all hooked WP functions and detecting which browser a visitor is using.
9 WordPress Hacks to Encourage User Interactivity – A great collection of hacks for getting your visitors to interact more, including showing the most recent comments and reversing the order of your comments so the newest ones show up first.
9 Useful Snippets for Your WordPress Functions – A collection of handy snippets you can add to your functions.php file to add functionality to your blog.
WordPress Hack: Opening Links in New Windows – A great hack using JavaScript for forcing links to open in new windows.
10 Tips to Improve Your WordPress Theme – A great rundown of theme customizations that make your site more user-friendly.
10 Most Wanted Category Hacks and Plugins for WordPress – A great rundown of category hacks, including displaying the most recent posts within a specific category and excluding certain categories from being displayed in a loop.
10 Awesome .htaccess Hacks for WordPress – A great collection of .htaccess hacks, including removing/category/ from your WP URLs and how to redirect visitors to a maintenance page.
10 Killer WordPress Hacks – A roundup of great hacks from Smashing Magazine, including displaying AdSense ads only to search engine visitors and replacing the “next” and “previous” page links with pagination.
10 WordPress Tips and Tricks for Your Comment Page – A great roundup of comment tricks, including displaying the total number of comments on your blog and separating comments from trackbacks.
15 Killer Hacks for WordPress That Are Extremely Useful – An excellent roundup of useful hacks including displaying random header images on your blog and listing future “upcoming” posts.
9 Extremely Useful RSS Tricks and Snippets for WordPress – A great selection of tricks and customizations for RSS feeds, including creating RSS-only posts and excluding a category from your RSS feeds.
7 WordPress Customizations – A quick rundown of how to customize your WP installation in multiple ways.
Define Your Own WordPress Loop Using WP_Query – A great hack to creating your own customized WP loop.
10 Useful WordPress Loop Hacks – A roundup from Smashing Magazine of ten excellent WP loop hacks.
13 Tags to Delete From Your Theme – A list of tags that are generally unnecessary in a standard WP theme.
30+ New Useful WordPress Tricks & Hacks – This post from Hong Kiat shows more than thirty new hacks and tricks to customize your WP installation.
40+ Most Wanted WordPress Tricks and Hacks – A roundup of great hacks compiled by Hong Kiat.
WordPress Theme Hacks – A roundup of a number of simple hacks for making better WP themes.
30+ (More) Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks and Hacks – Another roundup from Hong Kiat of great WP customizations.
22 Mixed Quality WordPress Hacks – Despite the title, this is actually a roundup of more than twenty high-quality hacks for customizing your WP blog and making it stand out from the crowd.
10 Easy Ways to Fix Common WordPress Headaches – A great overview of ways to improve the functionality of your WP installation.
If you’re looking for inspiration for your next WP-powered site, look no further than the resources below. Included are design roundups, galleries, and instances of uncommon WP usages.
160 Unique WordPress Themes – An awesome roundup of 160 unique WP designs.
11 Non-Traditional Uses of WordPress – A great roundup of some unique WP implementations and the tools used to create them.
WPLuxe – A great WP gallery that also includes a blog with WP news and resources.
45 Beautiful and Creative (WordPress) Designs – A roundup of beautiful WP designs compiled by Six Revisions.
15 Creative WordPress Header Designs – A small roundup of beautiful WP headers.
15 Impressive and Beautiful Uses of WordPress – A collection of 15 sites using WordPress in elegant and innovative ways.
Best WordPress Sites – A gallery of excellent WP-powered sites compiled by N.Design Studio.
60+ Unusual WP Blog Designs – A great roundup post from Noupe of unique WP designs.
30 Untypical WordPress Sites – A great roundup of 30 unique WP sites.
WordPress Showcase – The official WP showcase blog/gallery.
WP Inspiration – An amazing gallery showcasing only WP-powered sites.
CSSBloom – This gallery includes a WP tag with a great collection of unique designs.
CSS Glance – Another gallery with a WP tag that includes hundreds of WP designs.
We Love WP – A great gallery dedicated to beautiful WP designs.
Sites—WP Candy – A WP gallery from the WP Candy blog.
LoopPress – A WP gallery that lets you rate and comment on designs.
WPCube – Another dedicated WP gallery.
Unmatched Style – The WP category on Unmatched Style includes a few dozen WP designs.
Best CSS Gallery – Their WordPress tag includes more than a dozen WP designs.
Gallerific – Another general-purpose gallery that has a WP tag and features some great designs.
This is where you’ll find everything else WP-related that didn’t quite fit into the categories above. There are articles about WP-specific topics, blogs by and for WordPress designers and developers, and cheat sheets and other resources to make your WP development easier and more efficient.
Adii Rockstar – The blog of “WP Rockstar” and theme developer Adii, covering blogging, development, and themes, among other topics.
Brian Gardner – The personal blog of WP theme designer Brian Gardener.
WordPress Tavern – A blog that covers WP news, plugins, themes, and even BuddyPress.
instantShift – InstantShift’s WordPress category has tons of great tutorials, tips, and other information on WP.
StylizedWeb – StylizedWeb has a great WP category with tutorials, reviews, plugins, theme roundups, free themes, and more.
Weblog Tools Collection – A WP blog that covers mostly plugin news and releases.
WordPress Blog – The official WP blog.
WordPress.com Just Another WordPress Weblog – The official WordPress.com blog.
WPCandy – A blog that covers themes, plugins, tutorials, and more.
WordPress Publisher Blog – A blog from Automattic aimed at publishers using WordPress.
Hong Kiat – Hong Kiat’s WordPress category has pages of great content, including hacks, tutorials, giveaways, and roundups (some of which are mentioned above).
155 WordPress Resources, Tutorials, Plugins, Themes, AJAX, Podcasting…WP Monster List – A huge roundup of resources from Speckyboy Design Magazine.
The Advanced WordPress Help Sheet – A PDF WP cheat sheet.
WordPress.tv – View videos about all things WP.
Nathan Rice – Nathan Rice writes about WP theme design and blogging.
WpRecipes.com – A blog covering WP tutorials and tips.
Wpazo – A blog covering the best WP news, resources, and updates every day.
WP Engineer – A blog for WP developers.
ThemeShaper – The blog from the developers of the Thematic framework.
WordPress Weekly – A weekly podcast dedicated to WP from TalkShoe.
Darren Hoyt – Darren Hoyt’s WP archive category has tons of great resources and new articles are added most months.
WordPress Theme Development Check List—PDF Version – A PDF checklist for WP theme development.
Justin Tadlock – Blogs about WP plugins, tutorials, and news.
Plugins – A podcast dedicated to WP plugins.
WordCast – A WordPress podcast with more than 60 episodes already published.
50+ Cheat Sheets for Building WordPress Themes and Plugins – A huge roundup of cheat sheets and references for theme and plugin developers.
WP Topics – An aggregation of the content of some of the most popular blogs about WP out there.
Pro Blog Design – Pro Blog Design’s WordPress tag has tons of articles and resources related to WP design and customization.
Top WordPress 2.7 Tips, Hacks, Plugins and Resources – While this roundup is specific to WP 2.7, much of the resources and information it includes also applies to 2.8.
100+ Killer WordPress Resources – A huge collection of varied WP resources compiled by Steffan Antonas.
WordPress Daddy – A great blog with regular posts on plugins, customizations and hacks.
WPDesigner.com – A great blog with a huge archive of WP-related content.
wpGuy – A blog dedicated to WP that also features themes and plugins.
Lorelle on WordPress – An exceptional WP blog that covers tons or WP news, tips and advice, as well as general blogging info.
15 Resources for Setting Up an E-Commerce Site with WordPress – A great roundup of plugins, themes, and tutorials for creating an e-commerce site with WP.
The Autopsy of WordPress as CMS with 25 Great WP Plugins and Designs – A great article on using WP as a CMS, along with plugins that make it possible.
WordPress God: 300+ Tools for Running Your WordPress Blog – A slightly older post from Mashable, but it still has some great plugins and other resources listed.
Compiled exclusively for WDD by Cameron Chapman.
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A stitch in time saves nine. I couldn’t sew my way out of a bag, but it’s true advice for bloggers as well — a little bit of work on an upgrade now saves a lot of work fixing something later.
Right now there is a worm making its way around old, unpatched versions of WordPress. This particular worm, like many before it, is clever: it registers a user, uses a security bug (fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.
The tactics are new, but the strategy is not. Where this particular worm messes up is in the “clean up” phase: it doesn’t hide itself well and the blogger notices that all his links are broken, which causes him to dig deeper and notice the extent of the damage. Where worms of old would do childish things like defacing your site, the new ones are silent and invisible, so you only notice them when they screw up (as this one did) or your site gets removed from Google for having spam and malware on it.
I’m talking about this not to scare you, but to highlight that this is something that has happened before, and that will more than likely happen again.
A stitch in time saves nine. Upgrading is a known quantity of work, and one that the WordPress community has tried its darndest to make as easy as possible with one-click upgrades. Fixing a hacked blog, on the other hand, is quite hard. Upgrading is taking your vitamins; fixing a hack is open heart surgery. (This is true of cost, as well.)
2.8.4, the current version of WordPress, is immune to this worm. (So was the release before this one.) If you’ve been thinking about upgrading but haven’t gotten around to it yet, now would be a really good time. If you’ve already upgraded your blogs, maybe check out the blogs of your friends or that you read and see if they need any help. A stitch in time saves nine.
Whenever a worm makes the rounds, everyone becomes a security expert and peddles one of three types of advice: snake oil, Club solutions, or real solutions. Snake oil you’ll be able to spot right away because it’s easy. Hide the WordPress version, they say, and you’ll be fine. Uh, duh, the worm writers thought of that. Where their 1.0 might have checked for version numbers, 2.0 just tests capabilities, version number be damned.
The second type of advice is Club solutions; to illustrate, I’ll quote from Mark Pilgrim’s excellent essay on spam 7 years ago, before WordPress even existed:
The really interesting thing about these approaches, from a game theory perspective, is that they are all Club solutions, not Lojack solutions. There are two basic approaches to protecting your car from theft: The Club (or The Shield, or a car alarm, or something similar), and Lojack. The Club isn’t much protection against a thief who is determined to steal your car (it’s easy enough to drill the lock, or just cut the steering wheel and slide The Club off). But it is effective protection against a thief who wants to steal a car (not necessarily your car), because thieves are generally in a hurry and will go for the easiest target, the low-hanging fruit. The Club works as long as not everyone has it, since if everyone had it, thieves would have an equally difficult time stealing any car, their choice will be based on other factors, and your car is back to being as vulnerable as anyone else’s. The Club doesn’t deter theft, it only deflects it.
Club blog security solutions can be simple (like an .htaccess file) or incredibly complex (like two-factor authentication), and they can work, especially for known exploits. Club solutions can be useful, like using a strong or complex password for your login — no one would recommend against that. (Another club solution is switching to less-used software on the assumption or more like the software’s claim that it’s perfect and more secure. This is why BeOS is more secure than Linux, ahem.)
In the car world, if someone figured out how to teleport entire cars to chop shops, The Club wouldn’t be so useful anymore. Luckily for manufacturers of The Club, this hasn’t happened. Online and in the software world, though, the equivalent happens almost daily. There is only one real solution. The only thing that I can promise will keep your blog secure today and in the future is upgrading.
WordPress is a community of hundreds of people that read the code every day, audit it, update it, and care enough about keeping your blog safe that we do things like release updates weeks apart from each other even though it makes us look bad, because updating is going to keep your blog safe from the bad guys. I’m not clairvoyant and I can’t predict what schemes spammers, hackers, crackers, and tricksters will come up with with in the future to harm your blog, but I do know for certain that as long as WordPress is around we’ll do everything in our power to make sure the software is safe. We’ve already made upgrading core and plugins a one-click procedure. If we find something broken, we’ll release a fix. Please upgrade, it’s the only way we can help each other.
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