Two Column Themes Faleonis Faleonis is a two column widget-ready theme with inbuilt gravatar support WordPress 2.5 and above. The theme also shows a gravatar of the author at the end of each post. Syrup Syrup is a two-column widget-ready theme which provides users with extensive options panel to control the look and feel of the theme. You can manage custom color schemes, layouts, sidebar positioning, font sizes and more from the admin panel. DarkClassic DarkClassic is a two column widget-ready theme made up of black color with a green tinge. The theme has built in tag support. Gymmetry Gymmetry is a two column widget-ready theme. You can customize the blog title and sidebar styles along with the header of the theme. The theme can also be customized to use 4 different colors. WP Newsmag WP Newsmag is a two column widget-ready magazine style theme. The theme has slider functions […]

WordPress.com 2.5 Essential Training at lynda.com Online Training Library® is a set of training videos by Maria Langer (who also happens to be a professional helicopter pilot) that walk through the setup and use of WordPress as a blogging tool. Sadly, the title of this set of videos might be a bit misleading (though the title does indeed say WordPress.com, I was taken by the version number in the title) since the videos are tailored for WordPress.com blogs and not for self hosted WordPress.org blogs. However, a few of the initial videos are offered for free download and the only option for purchase of the full set is via a monthly subscription for $25 which would give the user access to all the videos on lynda.com. There are plans to sell the videos as a CDROM for purchase but those are not available as of this post. The videos are […]

There are many plugins which are useful when it comes to displaying ads to your visitors but there are only a few of them which allow you to determine to whom and when you should. Who Sees Ads does help you to determine to whom and when you should display advertisements, though, there is a limitation with the plugin as it does not allow you to control the ads shown on single post level. In this post we will talk about the quick and easy way to hide advertisements for any particular post by making some minor changes to your theme. The Condition To Skip Advertisements For Single Posts Talking about conditions whatever you do there is always a condition under which you perform any action. We will use a similar logic and create conditions under which the advertisements should not be displayed for certain posts. The condition we will […]

One Column Themes Jin Jin is a a one-column theme which allows users to add post images directly to the home page using the write post page. The theme has a extended sidebar in the footer area. Two Column Themes Darkzen Darkzen is a two column widget-ready theme. The theme makes use of darker colors and comes built in with social networking integration for home pages as well as single pages. Elegant Brit Elegant Brit is a two column widget-ready theme. The theme allows visitors to rearrange the widgets in the sidebar as well as collapse any widgets that would not like to see. Users can store their settings for next time if cookies are enabled in the browser. Our Rights Our Rights is a two column fixed-width widget-ready theme. The theme has in built support for Gravatars. Three Column Themes TechnoHolic TechnoHolic is a flexible three column theme which […]

If you cannot see, the video, please visit this link: Comment Remix – Video Plugin Review Today’s WordPress Plugin video review is of Comment Remix. Video Summary: Comment Remix adds numerous admin panel options, as well as reply, quote, and tag capabilities on a post. The star feature for admins (in my opinion) is the “In Need of Reply” option, as well as the various actions added to comments. Pros: Reply/Quote options are useful for admin and end-users. “In Need of Reply” is great for blog admins and unreplied comments. A lot of admin panel options make this plugin highly configurable. Cons: Pop-up boxes could use the built-in WP 2.5 thickbox.js script. The “In Need of Reply” badly needs an “ignore all” option. Not sure of the usefulness of tags for comments unless there are global options. Styling could also be better for the comment actions. The Comment Remix plugin […]

I received a ping from Anil on their newly released beta product TypePad AntiSpam while I was on vacation. I told Anil that I would look into it and write a balanced article on it when I got back. I procrastinated on writing the post for quite a while but that also gave me the chance to think about the product quite a bit, have some conversations with Anil and others about the product and ruminate on the merits, usefulness and finally the viability of the service. It came as no surprise to me that Six Apart would come up with such a product and the choices made for the product are even lesser of a surprise. I had some initial thoughts on branding and the nature of the product that I communicated to Anil privately but the rest of the review of the technology and the service is my […]

The WordPress Plugin Competition is in full swing. A lot of people have expressed interest in participating in the competition and some prizes have already been committed. As in the years past, the plugin competition prizes will be listed on the prize page. But here is a short list of what is in store for the winners. Weblog Tools Collection is offering up $1000 of prize money for the winners James and Andrew from Incsub have offered up $250 for a plugin that is WPMU compatible. They add that WPMU plugins are not that dissimilar to regular plugins, but need to run automatically and efficiently via wp-content/mu-plugins and require users to make no hard code changes (just edits in Settings) and for global administration to be possible via the Site Admin menu. Geof F. Morris has generously offered $100 towards the competition WindowsObserver.com has provided a copy of Tom Clancy’s […]

When Jeff wrote about plugin deactivation breaking your blog, Aaron and I wrote in the comments of a few solutions to prevent plugin issues with themes. Within this post I will present several techniques plugin and theme authors can take in order to prevent deactivation issues. Method 1: function_exists In this example, let’s assume we have a function named related_posts. When in a theme, we could use this code to call the function if only it exists. <?php if (function_exists("related_posts")) { related_posts(); } ?> The PHP function_exists checks for the existence of the function, and if it does exist, it calls the function. Method 2: function_exists and Actions Using the same function name, the theme author could add some code into their functions.php file and use an action and function_exists combination. if (function_exists('related_posts')) { add_action('my_related_posts', 'related_posts'); } In the above example, we create a new action called my_related_posts. The end […]