New plugins Candy Social Widget adds a delicious Social Icon widget to your dashboard. Drop Shadow Boxes provides an easy way to highlight important content on your posts, pages and widget areas. root.abl.es Hacks allows you to share top hacks from root.abl.es by tag, votes or views. Updated plugins BackWPup allows you to backup your WordPress database, files, and more. WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.

Amdhas is a classical and logical theme. Baby on Board is a two column, fluid width theme with a lovely, glowing blue color scheme featuring a stork delivering his package above the cityline against the twilight sky. Major Media is a simple theme in minimalistic black and white design with a touch of nice colors.

New plugins ChartBoot allows to create, edit, and embed Google Charts in WordPress Posts or Pages. Fast Flickr Widget lets you add a widget to show your Flickr photos. Widget CSS Classes adds custom widget classes and IDs plus first, last, even, odd, and numbered classes to your widgets. Updated plugins Genki Youtube Comments allows you to grab YouTube video comments and insert them into your own blog. Jetpack supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com. Simple:Press Forum is a feature-rich forum plugin.

The scope for WordPress 3.5 has been proposed. Of note, the planned release date is December 5, with release candidates landing around November 14, and a feature freeze at the end of September. WordPress 3.5 will also be introducing the new default Twenty Twelve theme, full support for Apple’s new super-high-definition Retina displays, and improved user experience and image handling. Of course, WordPress 3.5 is still in the planning stages, so these are all subject to change at any time before the feature freeze in September.

Embrace is a classy and sleek theme ideal for your latest website, whether is a blog, magazine or business. Max Responsive is a super-awesome theme best suited for newspaper or magazine websites. Snowberry is a simple and clean wordpress theme with nice contrast headers. Spray is a one column theme with bright, vibrant colors from the primary spectrum including lemon yellow, lime green, orange, fuschia, purple, aqua blue and white.

Sure, you have a blog, but how often do you post to it? Are you posting every day, less, only a few times a year perhaps? We’d love to hear how often you blog and why, and your answers may be featured in a future post. Don’t forget to vote and leave a comment below!

Sure, folks blog for many things, but that usually boils down into two main categories, personal reasons or business reasons. We’d love to hear what you blog for and why, and your answers may just appear in a future post. Don’t forget to vote and leave a comment below!

The latest free WordPress eBook from Code Poet has arrived, Locking Down WordPress. This new eBook from Rachel Baker, Brad Williams, and John Ford, will show you how to secure your WordPress installation and take care of it when things get out of hand. Security should be one of your fore-most concerns with any website, and this eBook is free and available in PDF, EPUB, and Kindle formats, so get it while it’s hot!