There are two ways to install plugins in WordPress 3.0. You can either search for and install plugins via Plugins/Add New in your admin panel, or search for and download plugins from the plugin directory, then upload them to /wp-content/plugins/. Now, thanks to Mark Jaquith, there’s a new way to install plugins. The new plugin installer tool allows users to easily install plugins via a web-based interface outside of WordPress, with no FTP knowledge or tedious admin panel searching required. The new tool will be officially rolled into the plugin directory during WordPress’ impending site-wide redesign. For now, plugin developers can create a link directing users to the plugin installer tool and their plugin, and the rest of us can use the bookmarklet to install plugins from the directory.

The ClearCut WordPress Theme is a highly configurable WP theme for artful or portfolio sites with an unusual and unique layout, featuring a two column fluid theme layout, enabled with custom cufon fonts, options panel, css3, page navigation, and related posts. Cold Water is a cool and clean looking blog theme that has a large content slider on the front page. The theme has 3 columns for your widgets and it also supports the WordPress 3.0 menu management feature. Sketchpad is a WordPress 3.0 theme that will help fuel your socially oriented site with built in media subscription icons, a themesheep “related articles” feature, and a “latest tweet” area in the header. The Bibs Yellow Dream WordPress 3.0 Theme is based on the new WordPress 3.0 default Theme with a few modifications, frames, and little shadow effects. The right Sidebar is optimized for Adsense 300px. The Theme comes with 9 [...]

Thesis has officially adopted a split GPL license, putting an end to the explosive debate between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and Thesis developer Chris Pearson which launched a community-wide discussion on the GPL and WordPress themes. To clarify the split GPL license, Chris Pearson adds, “the PHP is GPLv2 and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary.” Specifically, this means that Thesis no longer violates the GPL of WordPress and the several plugins that Thesis was based on. Matt Mullenweg was thrilled to hear the news, replying with, “Now, back to work. This has taken a lot of my time over the past few days and was going to consume more if it went forward.” It is unknown if this will have any affect on Mr. Pearson’s business.  While the split GPL license now allows the core of Thesis be redistributed by a third-party either free or for a fee, the [...]

New plugins Foursquare map Foursquare is rising in popularity, and will continue to grow. This plugin makes it easy to share your last check-in location without needing to worry about giving away personal info, and you don’t need to be an expert in mapping APIs! Vanityvid Vanityvid is a service that turns avatars into videos. This plugin integrates the service into WordPress. Delicious Bookmark Button A cool delicious bookmarking button/badge with total bookmark count. It adds a delicious badge or button to your post or page which allows you to bookmark the post. It also reflect a real-time count of how many times your page has been bookmarked in delicious, just like tweetmeme button does for twitter. Both standard and compact version of the badge to choose from. Simple Sitemap This plugin provides an easy way to display a HTML sitemap of posts and pages on your site. This gives [...]

After five years of dedicated support, WordPress will be leaving PHP 4 and MySQL 4 behind for the far more current and secure PHP 5 and MySQL 5. WordPress 3.2, planned to launch during the first half of 2011, will be the first release to require PHP 5.2 or higher and MySQL 5.0.15 or higher. The change really comes as no surprise. Both PHP 5 and MySQL 5 are far more secure than their predecessors and they are actively developed. How long has it been since an update was made to PHP 4 and MySQL 4? The final version of PHP 4 was released during August of 2008, followed by the final version of MySQL 4 on December of 2008. Both PHP 4 and MySQL 4 have been discontinued for almost two years. The WordPress team is confident that the change in requirements will be relatively inconsequential. According to Mark [...]

Just in case you missed it the default theme in WordPress 3.0 has been updated to version 1.1.  If your running WordPress 3.0 you should find an update indicator in your admin panel under Dashboard > Updates. So when I saw this update a couple of days ago I went off in search of what was updated.  Unfortunately there is not a changelog in the WordPress.org Themes Directory and a quick search did not yield very much at that time. However, today when I made that same search I finally got some results and although it is not a changelog with a detailed listing of what has been updated it is from one of the WordPress Devs, Andrew Nacin and appears in the WordPress Support Themes and Templates forum: Hey all – The only real change is that I removed the half-baked code using the wp_title hook in order to [...]

About a month ago I posted about how fast WordPress 3.0 was being downloaded and there was a terrific discussion about the sheer amount of data that was being grabbed to get at the 3.0 version of WordPress.  We even had some comments as to why it was being downloaded at that scale. Well as of today the download counter reads that it has been downloaded just over 10.3 million times since it was released last month and the counter keeps rolling along! So what is it that makes the WordPress platform so popular?  What is it that drives people to download it over 10 million times? If you had the opportunity to talk to a non WordPress user what would you tell them about it to show that it is worth downloading and putting to use for a website? What is your favorite thing about WordPress?  What is your [...]

Yesterday, I wrote about a problem Matt had about the GPL license with the Thesis Theme. Though I am not biased and seriously do not want to get into an argument about it, let me put forth an argument that I think is really worth thinking about.