I didn’t know these existed, but apparently you can assign a child theme to a parent theme. A child theme inherits all the template files of the parent theme except for the style.css file and functions.php, which take precedence over the original. Ian Stewart of Themeshaper.com published a post ( Functions.php WordPress Child Themes ) which goes into detail on how to redesign your blog the smart way basing the work off of a theme framework. I’m still not sure about the usage of parent-child themes so any help you guys/gals could give me would be appreciated.

Matt and company have announced that WordPress.com now officially supports Google Gears. Gears is an extension which works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It’s known for creating local database and file storage, while running javascript in the background to update that content without slowing down the browser. Gears support in WordPress.com means you will be able to store all images and other web page components of the WordPress administration panel locally which will speed up access to those files while reducing unnecessary web traffic. To enable this feature, click on the TURBO link in the WP.COM dashboard area. This will be located in the upper right portion of the screen. You will need to have the GEARS extension installed before you will be able to take advantage of this new feature. [EDIT] Rundown on Fool’s Wisdom of Google Gears Privacy concerned raised. Thanks Lloyd!

WP Easy Uploader WP Easy Uploader was created to make the life of WordPress bloggers easier by allowing an Administrator to add plugins, themes, and any type of file to WordPress directly from inside WordPress. You no longer have to load up an FTP client just to try out that latest plugin or to upload a text document for people to download. WP Developer Assistant WP Developer Assistant is a WordPress plugin developed by a WordPress developer for WordPress developers. Lead Manager This plugin allows the management of leads in many different website areas / sections. It is possible to order the posts in a flexible and dynamic way, providing extra visibility to the website’s features.

What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6: Just like it sounds, Ozh has started a post, followed by a lively comment thread, on the challenges that can be faced by plugin coders with WordPress 2.6. This might be a good time (WordPress 2.6 Beta 2 is out) to start digging into your plugins to get them to be 2.6 compatible.

Two Column Themes Word Press’d Word Press’d is a free two column WordPress theme based on the the WordPress Admin interface. It’s like viewing the admin screen on the outside. One Column Themes Notepad The new Notepad Theme is a simple, clean and sharp template designed for small business websites for personal branding that is ideal for personal coaches, consultants and independent professionals.

WordPress 2.5 was just released a few months ago and WordPress 2.6 has been in development for some time to be released very soon. Not only does WordPress 2.6 add more zing to a platform that has already won hearts and made blogging a wonderful experience, there are few features in WordPress 2.6 that many have requested and some that caused a little controversy. Let’s get to know a few things about WordPress 2.6 that will definitely raise few eyebrows albeit a few of them in the wrong way. Post Revisioning I have been a Software developer for quite long now and know how important CVS or SVN is to maintaining different versions of a file. WordPress 2.6 brings the same functionality to posts where you can have different revisions for posts. In lay terms this means that no matter how many times you make changes to the post, you […]

Semi-manual Breadcrumb Navigation This plugin allows you to add breadcrumb navigation to your WordPress installation. Unlike other WordPress breadcrumb plugins, this one allows you to manually control the breadcrumb structure. At the same time it takes care of a few things automatically, hence the name. WordPress Exploit Scanner This plugin searches the files and database of your website for signs of suspicious activity. It will not stop someone hacking into your site, but it may help you find any uploaded or compromised files left by the hacker. When a website is compromised, hackers leave behind scripts and modified content that can be found by manually searching through all the files on a site. Some of the methods used to hide their code or spam links are obvious, like using CSS to hide text, and we can search for those strings. Drop Caps Adds mark-up to your posts and pages which […]

There appears to be a WordPress meme going around (started by John at WordPress Expert) where members throughout the community are tagging other blogs along with mentioning three plugins which they feel are under rated. Although I don’t have access to the plugins used here on WLTC, I would like to bring about three under rated plugins I use on my own blog. DiggThis – This plugin was written by Aviran Mordod This by far my favorite DiggThis plugin because it only displays on posts which have been submitted to Digg. My opinion, which is shared by many others is that, it’s better to show a DiggThis button when the article has been submitted to Digg rather than showing a Digg button next to every article. Unless you are ReadWriteWeb or some other mainstream blog, those buttons will show 0 diggs and will possibly hint to the content not being […]