Several commenters mentioned on yesterday’s post regarding Gravatars without a plugin that WordPress 2.5 would be having built-in Gravatar support. And indeed WordPress 2.5 will come with Gravatar (aka, Avatar) support. Within this post I will demonstrate how Gravatars will be used with WordPress 2.5. As a side note, 2.5 has yet to be released as of this writing. Gravatars in the WordPress Admin Panel WordPress 2.5 marries theme authors and casual WordPress users together with support for Gravatars in the WordPress admin panel. WordPress users can access the Gravatars settings in the Settings->Discussion panel. If a theme author has decided to use the WordPress 2.5 function, then WordPress users can easily control their Gravatar usage in the admin panel. In the admin panel, WordPress users can change: Whether Avatars (aka, Gravatars) are displayed or not. Which rating of Avatars are shown. Avatars in the WP Admin Panel Please keep […]

How to organize posts into two side-by-side columns in WordPress: A quick tutorial on setting up the front page of a WordPress blog to display two side by side columns with posts alternating between the two columns. The tutorial does require some simple PHP code that is not included (but should be, pseudo code is provided) but the concept is interesting, especially for theme developers looking for the next new thing. In my experience, side by side posts are more applicable for blogs that are heavy in embedded media and light on text.

Connor Wilson has published a tutorial on how to setup Gravatars on your WordPress blog without the use of a plugin. If you are comfortable editing theme files and don’t want the overhead of a plugin, then this technique should work for you. I’ve added in my input in the comment’s section on how to use his technique in the sidebar of a post as well, which should be useful for blogs with multiple authors.

WordPress as a Membership Directory: After the recent tutorial on setting up WordPress as a Contact Manager, Chris Cagle has written up a tutorial on WP Designer on how to use WordPress as a Membership Directory. He has setup a Membership Directory for Pittsburgh Designers and uses his experience from that project to outline the steps, plugins and code required to set this up for yourself. Beside the annoying CSS bug that puts a text box in the middle of every page, the setup looks nice, highly versatile and very useful for both designers (in this case) and future clients. I really like the Members Directory and the ability to display detailed contact information and portfolio of every designer. Even the signup is automated (and modified to suit the need) and relatively painless. I am curious to know what they plan to do about possible spammers posing as designers, but […]

WPThemerKit.com is a new way to create WordPress themes. The system works similarly to the way cssZenGarden works in that, you have an HTML file and a CSS file. Once you are finished with the design, you copy the CSS file along with the images folder to the corresponding WordPress blank theme and all of a sudden, you have a full blown WordPress Theme. I managed to get a hold of the creator behind WPThemerKit and asked him a few questions regarding his project. Jeff – First off Cal, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Cal – I am a web developer and entrepreneur. I don’t really specialize in any one area, but would consider CSS one of my stronger areas. I’ve been developing websites since around 2003 and really enjoy using content management systems like WordPress. Most of my time is spent playing with PHP scripts or […]

Sort By Comments Allows you to change the order of the posts and display the most recently commented posts on the home page. Release Page | Download WordPress Tweaks Just like any other software WordPress Tweaks allows you to tweak settings for the core WordPress, the tweaks include renaming blogroll, removing nofollow from comment links and more. Release Page | Download WP Spam Blocker Makes use of Time Based Tokens and AJAX to block out automated comments without having to make use of captchas. Release Page | Download MyFTP Allows WordPress administrators to browse, edit and upload files just like a FTP client from within the Administration panel. Release Page | Download Shantz WP Quote of the Day Allows you to add quotes to posts and also provides users with a custom template tag to add the quotes wherever they want. Release Page | Download

Webware has opened up voting on the 2008, Webware 100. This is Webwares annual awards program where users from all across the globe get to vote on their favorite Web 2.0 apps. Last year, WordPress took the honors of winning the Publishing category. This year, WordPress is in the running for the Publishing & Photography category, along with a few other big names. Voting will run until March 31. Winners will be announced on April 21, the day before the big Web 2.0 Expo opens. To vote, click on this link and scroll down to the bottom of the website until you see WordPress. Click on the VOTE button on the right hand side. Webware allows you to vote up to 3 times within this category so if you feel as if any other nominee deserves a vote (why would you) click on the other company names and click on […]

Joost de Valk has taken notice that there may be a large amount of plugins who’s setting pages in the newly redesigned WordPress back end will look awful. Joost is currently working on redoing all of his own plugins so they look good in the admin panel and has published a post which explains what he found in his research. The post goes over details such as the Wrapper, Headings, Individual Settings, and Submit Buttons. For all of you plugin authors out there, be sure to check out the WordPress 2.5 Plugin Settings Pages Style Guide. If you are looking to migrate your theme or plugin to WordPress 2.5, check out this article on the WordPress Codex.