Six Apart & Automattic Compared: A comparison of two of the three blogging juggernauts on the web. Though the comparison is mildly interesting from a historical novice’s point of view, I think the article is missing a few things. Since it was written by a business professor, I would have expected more analysis and forecasts rather than a rehashing of the past events in a company history narrative. Furthermore, a story of MT and WP does not make sense without Blogger and it should have been included. There are very interesting business model and structure type details of all three companies that I believe are instrumental in their success in each of their arenas and the underlying competitive tension amalgamated with a deep sense of respect and jealousy among each of the competitors would have made for very interesting business reading. In spite of my perceived shortcomings, Carthik is mentioned […]

divShare allows you to integrate the file upload and storage site with your WordPress and WPMu installation. JAlbum allows you to integrate JAlbum galleries directly into your posts. MultiUploader allows you to attach many files at once. Ultimate Progress Bar creates customizable progress meters to show progress of Your projects. Zorpia Hot Box lets users publish articles of your website to Zorpia.com directly, vote the published articles of your website, show voted points to each article with the widget, and allow for configuration of theme & style of the widget.

Bomb is a 2-column theme with a fixed background featuring a bomb with smoke fading away. Into the Ocean is a gorgeous 2-column theme that supports Ultimate Tag Warrior. LoseMyMind is a single-column theme with a javascript-powered module at the bottom for showing typical sidebar content. BugClimb is a 2-column, green theme with a nice shot of a ladybug. (Contains sponsored links.) Cleanbright is a 2-column, simple theme. (Contains sponsored links.) Deserted is a 3-column, widget-ready theme. (Contains sponsored links.) Life is a 2-column theme with bold colors. (Contains sponsored links.) Poker #2 is a 3-column, widget-ready theme for poker fans. (Contains sponsored links.) Omega 3 is a 3-column, fluid theme with a very clean look. (Contains sponsored links.) RedCarpet is a 2-column theme with red, white, and blue colors. (Contains sponsored links.)

Nathan Rice wrote about WordPress’s ability to make any page a homepage. One problem I ran into using the technique of pages was the inability to use the <!–more–> tag to display partial posts. Apparently this is default behavior (for good reason) on pages. However, when using Nathan’s technique, I found myself in a unique situation where I only wanted to show a partial post (on a page) if the post was making use of the <!–more–> tag (apparently, I’m not alone). The technique is rather simple. Simply declare a variable named $more as a global and set it to false right before showing your content. If you wish to resume normal behavior after the content is shown, simply set the variable back to true. <?php global $more; $more = false; ?> <?php the_content('Continue Reading'); ?> <?php $more = true; ?>

For each WordPress plugin you install, you are adding to the bandwidth/server overhead of your site. As a plugin author, there are some simple steps to take to reduce the footprint of your plugin (whether it be helping with server load or conserving bandwidth), even if your plugin still requires a lot of code. Break Out Admin Panels Into Separate Files Even for simple plugins, adding admin panels can easily balloon a plugin’s file size. A simple, yet effective technique, is to copy the code used for the admin panel to a separate file and simply provide an include in the function that loads the admin panel. For example, say you load in your admin panel using this code: add_options_page(‘Plugin Name’, ‘Plugin Name’, 10, basename(__FILE__), ‘printAdminPage’); The function printAdminPage is going to be the function that loads the admin panel. Within this function you could have: function printAdminPage() { include […]

Bloggers want my steak baguette: If you’ve got a friend who thinks they can make money with their blog, get them to read this piece. Like all people who rise to the top of their profession, it demonstrates a simple truth: good bloggers work like dogs. You better believe it! Making a blog successful and making people want to come back for more everyday is more than a full time job that not only needs dedication but it needs a certain amount of eccentricity and obsessive devotion. I guess the above is true for any successful venture that is built from the ground up but if you ever heard someone say that blogging is easy or takes any small amount of work, they are probably full of bees wax.

aggr allows you to place the contents of an RSS feed into your pages or posts. It is a deeply modified version of the Aggregate plugin of Rob Miller. Image Control Size lets you have more control over your thumbnails. Leprakhauns Word Count gives you an estimated number of words based on the tiny_MCE in WordPress. You do not need to post anything for the count to show up, it does it in real time using Javascript. Pluginstaller is a plugin-management plugin that eliminates the need to download a plugin archive, upload it to your FTP server and unpack it manually. WordPress Download Counter keeps track of the amount of downloads for specific files. It will also store the last time the file was downloaded. You can use tags to add the download url or download count to any page or post.

Acid Green is a 3-column, widget-ready theme featuring green, white, and grey colors. BBlack is a 2-column, widget-ready, black theme with right-side sidebar. Gazeb is a 2-column, dark theme based on a website template. Lust is a very attractive 2-column, widget-ready theme. Moon is a 3-column, widget-ready theme with a prominent moon header image and features mootools. Sign is a 2-column, cityscape theme with two different cityscape options for a backdrop. BlackRedone is a 2-column, widget-ready theme suitable for professional sites. Also check out SleekBluey and RoundedOrange by the same designer. (Contains sponsored links.) Coffee is a 2-column theme perfect for those who just have to have their morning cuppajoe. (Contains sponsored links.) Gamers Target is a 2-column, widget-ready theme designed with the gaming blogger in mind. (Contains sponsored links.) Hello Kitty is a 2-column, pink theme based on its namesake. (Contains sponsored links.) Spotless Dot is a 2-column, minimalistic […]