Automattic wants you to have the best possible experience on WordPress.com, and to ensure that, all of the available themes go through a rigorous series of tests. Each theme is carefully scrutinized by at least two, if not four, of Automattic’s Theme Team focussing on code quality, usability, and potential theme-specific anomalies. The result is a theme that “just works” out of the box, with no annoying bugs or usability quirks. Traditionally, things like this have been closely guarded secrets, but Automattic has publicly released their theme guidelines so anyone can benefit from them. These guidelines, are not a requirement if you want to just develop a theme for WordPress in general, but they are still some great coding practices worth following if you want your theme to “just work” too.

BT Extended is a newspaper style with a responsive four column fluid layout. Cocoa is a basic, simple, minimalist theme of browns and black with just a touch of cinnamon red thrown in for flavor. Columbus is a real estate theme with a two-column layout and top-level page navigation. Photogram is designed to integrate your WordPress site with Instagram and Pinterest in a few simple clicks. Simplify is a responsive theme designed for small businesses.

New plugins Facetious lets you add a faceted – often called an ‘advanced’ – search form to your website. WP Snippets makes it very easy to reuse fragments of content (i.e. Snippets). Updated plugins Facebook makes your site deeply social by integrating functionality from Facebook. Nav Menu Images enables uploading of images for nav menu items on the menu edit screen. OSM displays maps in your WordPress blog using the OpenLayers technology. W3 Total Cache allows you to improve site performance and user experience via caching.

Bubbly is an attractive theme with green and touches of white on a subtle background of light bubbles. Forever makes it easy to wrap your wedding up in a neat little blog. Quintus has an old-style appeal with semi-academic graciousness and elegant typography. Reddle features a minimal design which elegantly adapts to how you want to use your blog and what you want to use it for. Vertigo is a stylish and fun theme with one column, a custom header, and a custom accent color.

New plugins Mobile Content allows you to use shortcodes to display different content, in your posts or pages, depending on the device it is being viewed on. SB RSS feed plus adds post thumbnails to RSS feed items. Shop On Page provides an easy and simple affiliate ad program for bloggers. Updated plugins Authy Two Factor Authentication helps you proctect your WordPress site from hackers using simple two-factor authentication. Fast Secure Contact Form lets your visitors send you a quick e-mail message and blocks all common spammer tactics. Additionally, the plugin has a multi-form feature, optional extra fields, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Jetpack allows you to supercharge your WordPress site with powerful features previously only available to WordPress.com users. VideoPress allows you to manage and embed videos hosted on VideoPress.

There’s no denying it, WordPress is a big thing, so are WordCamps, and 2012 was bigger and better than ever for the popular WordPress conferences! There were a total of 67 WordCamps this year, up from 52 last year, with 34 in the US and 33 outside of the US, serving over 17,000 attendees, with 967 sessions and 877 speakers, all made possible by 498 generous sponsors! The amount of WordCamp videos published to WordPress.tv this year almost doubled to 445, probably due to the expansion of WordCamp Central’s video camera kit program, which does its best to make sure that every WordCamp has an affordable way to record every session. The program now holds 8 kits in the US, 3 in Canada, and 2 in Europe, so there’s probably a good chance that there’s a kit available for your WordCamp if you need it. To kickoff 2013, the WordPress […]

Paradise is an all-purpose clean and minimalistic theme. Placard is a bold, bright, and colorful professional or business theme that is somewhat inspired by the Windows 8 desktop. Sukelius Magazine is a magazine theme with theme options and a content slider.

New plugins Authy Two Factor Authentication helps you proctect your WordPress site from hackers using simple two-factor authentication. Developer helps WordPress developers develop. Updated plugins Achievements for WordPress gamifies your WordPress site with challenges, badges, and points. Ad Code Manager allows you to manage your ad codes through the WordPress admin in a safe and easy way. Custom Javascript Editor allows you to add custom Javascript to your site from an editor in the WordPress admin. Document Feedback allows you to get feedback from readers on the documentation you write. Edit Flow gives you custom statuses, a calendar, editorial comments, and more, all to make it much easier for your team to collaborate within WordPress. 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. Fast Secure Contact Form […]