Comments are an important part of blogs. They help readers relate to articles by asking questions and building discussion and are even credited with creating some of the strongest online communities today. But, how do you keep everything clean and on topic? Do your users know what to expect? I’m not just talking about common sense and anti-spam practices, I’m talking about a policy or a code of conduct. Do you have one? We have a comment policy here, and it’s as follows: Comments will be accepted if they meet the following conditions: The comment is not spam. The comment is not left solely to drive traffic elsewhere. (Yes, this is spam.) The comment is not widely off topic. The comment is not obscene or profane. The commenter has left a real name or proper screen name. (“Cheap Lawn Chairs” and “Joe @ MyCellPhoneTips.blah” are not real names). We do […]

Chess is a vibrant, bright, high contrast theme that would suit sites dealing with games, chess, or sales. silverOrchid offers a wide range of customization possibilities with theme options, and is extremely simple to get up and running. Sunspot is a sharp theme with subtle grid lines and sun-splashed accents.

Konstantin Kovshenin, an Automattic Code Wrangler, has launched Theme Options Gallery, a new blog dedicated to the best and worst WordPress theme options screens. Each post features a screenshot of a theme options panel in action followed by a breakdown of what makes it either so great or so terrible. There are definitely some eye-opening observations here, especially when it comes to the themes that have so many options they might as well be their own blogging platform. If you know of a theme options panel that’s either amazing or terrifying, Konstantin has a handy submission form for you to share in the joy or madness.

New plugins I Recommend This allows your visitors to simply recommend or like your posts instead of commenting. WP Breaking News Mail allows you to send an email to your subscribers each time a post is published in one or more categories. Updated plugins Akismet filters out your comment and track-back spam for you, so you can focus on more important things. Jetpack supercharges your self-hosted WordPress site with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com. Share Buttons by Lockerz / AddToAny helps people share, bookmark, and email your posts & pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, StumbleUpon, Digg and many more. Sharexy is a powerful social sharing, bookmarking, and blog monetization tool. Shortcoder is a plugin which allows users to create a custom “shortcodes” and store HTML, Javascript and other snippets in it. Super RSS is a jQuery based RSS reader widget, which displays the RSS feeds […]

LaunchTime is a coming-soon page theme that you can use as a placeholder while waiting until your site is launched. Silesia is a clean and elegant HTML5 theme. SmartBiz is designed for corporate business websites and blogs. Voyage is a peaceful, nautical theme that would suit personal blogs, sites about boating or sailing, or any other nautical related subject matter. Zenon Lite is an all in one wordpress theme with 3 awesome fonts, slider, background image, and an easy to use theme options panel.

New plugins Donate Ribbon places a black “Donate” ribbon in the upper right corner of your blog with the option to set the link and link title. Rickroll changes all of your embedded YouTube videos to Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Updated plugins Exploit Scanner searches the files on your website, and the posts and comments tables of your database for anything suspicious. It also examines your list of active plugins for unusual filenames. HTML5 MP3 Player with Playlist allows you to easily use the HTML5 audio element to enable audio playback in most browsers, with playlists.

Express is a basic, simple theme that would be suitable for any blog or website. Next Saturday is a bold and playful theme which adds a touch of childlike innocence to your blog. Typhoon is a simple blue theme.

WordPress 3.3.2 and 3.4 Beta 3 have been released. This important security update plugs exploits in Plupload, SWFUpload, and SWFObject (three external libraries used by WordPress), as well as a few additional fixes. WordPress 3.4 Beta 3 is still not ready for prime time, but provides almost 90 fixes since the second beta release. Please do take a few swings at it on a test installation, especially if you are a plugin or theme developer. If you find any bugs, please report them, and contact the support forums if you need any help. If you’re currently running on the WordPress 3.3 branch, please update to 3.3.2 as soon as you can!