Assembly has fluid width, two columns, right sidebar, is widget ready, has valid XHTML, and is neutral in tone using metallic gray, steel grey, white, cream and features transparencies for depth and a modern look. picoclean is a clean, elegant, minimalistic and fast theme. Showcaser has a really clean and minimal design ideal for sharing photos and content online. thetalkingfowl is a semantic, HTML5 minimal template with plugin-free flickr and twitter feeds.

New plugins bbPress is forum software with a twist from the creators of WordPress, available for the first time ever as a plugin. jQuery superbox image enables a lightbox effect on post images. Updated plugins BuddyPress lets users register on your site and start creating profiles, posting messages, making connections, creating and interacting in groups and much more. It’s a social network in a box. GD Unit Converter allows fast conversion of value for different units in supported categories.

There has been some interesting discussion on how many plugins you should use on your WordPress blog, and whether that number contributes to any problems along the way. The fact of the matter is, it’s really hard to say. In most situations, using an excessive amount of plugins won’t cause any problems, but plugins use memory when they run, and shared hosting provider love to limit the memory that you can consume at any given moment. If you’re running into memory errors, there are a few things that you can try, but you should probably consider using less plugins or moving to a better host. Outside of hosting limitations, the number of plugins doesn’t play much of a role. We use 36 plugins here, and I have worked on a blog before that used 82, both without issue. If you’re running into other errors, that’s more than likely just one […]

gazpoMag is a clean and featured-rich magazine style theme. Girly Girl has fluid width, two columns, left sidebar, is widget ready, has valid XHTML, and features feminine colors like rose pink, gray, and lime green. Insomnia is great for online magazines and personal blogs. PhotoClick is a one column theme for photography and personal blogs, with a three column widget-ready footer.

bbPress 2.0 has been released. With BuddyPress 1.5 launching just a few hours earlier, this is a great day for major WordPress-extending plugins. That’s right, there’s no more complicated installation and integration instructions. bbPress is now a WordPress plugin, and it can easily integrate with Akismet and BuddyPress too. Simply by activating bbPress 2.0, any standard WordPress theme is suddenly capable of having support forums, user profiles, topic tags, and custom topic views. Your users are able to mark topics as favorites to read them later, and can subscribe to be notified via email to topic replies, so they never miss out on the conversation. If you’re currently using the old version of bbPress, this new version comes with a handy importer to get you started, and there are importers for other forum platforms planned for the future. If you run into any trouble, please feel free to contact the […]

BuddyPress 1.5 has been released. With “hundreds of bug fixes, enhancements, and all-new features,” this is one of the largest updates that the WordPress-powered social networking platform has received in quite some time. Some highlights of this release include a new installation and update wizard, a new profile manager, integration with WordPress navigation menus, and a greatly improved default theme. Before upgrading, you may want to stop by this handy guide for some tips as well as plugin and theme compatibility reports. This release has been well tested over a few beta releases and release candidates, but if you run into any trouble, please feel free to contact the BuddyPress support forums.

New plugins PHPLeague allows you to to manage your sports leagues and can be used for many different sports like football (soccer), basketball, handball, volleyball and even ice-hockey. Updated plugins Google XML Sitemaps will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog. Posts 2 Posts allows you to create many-to-many connections between posts of all kinds. WP-Table Reloaded enables you to create and manage tables in your admin area. No HTML knowledge is needed.

Cash is designed for blogs of a financial nature. Neo_WDL has featured posts, social icons, twitter updates, threaded comments and widget support. SimpleBlogger is an easy to use, lightweight, yet advance theme that can be easily customized to make your own.