New plugins Auto Read More Generator will put a “Read More…” link for each post of the blog page after the first image and the first paragraph. GetMeCooking Recipe Template makes it easy for you to add recipes within your blog posts in a consistent, Search Engine friendly format and it allows your visitors to easily view and print the recipes. Updated plugins Slick Contact Forms creates a widget, which adds a contact form using either a floating, drop down button or a sticky, sliding tab.

The first release candidate of BuddyPress 1.5 has been released. Long considered to be the one true social networking solution for WordPress, there is a lot to look forward to in BuddyPress 1.5, and this is the first solid glimpse of that. Though the developers have not exactly cleared this release for use on live sites yet, now is the time to test it out if you’re handy with discovering bugs, and there’s even a test installation available for you to get your hands dirty with.

Brand New Day is a fun illustrated theme in four “flavors,” perfect for personal websites or blogs. Elegance is a simple, elegant, and monochrome theme featuring attractive typography. Utility is stylish, customizable, simple, and readable.

bbPress 2.0 RC 5 has been released. bbPress 2.0 has been making huge leaps over its predecessor with several bug fixes and new features, including highly demanded full integration with WordPress as a plugin. The developers are confident that this is the last release candidate and that it is ready to run on a live site, so if you want to test this out, now’s the time. If you run into any bugs, please don’t hesitate to report them and communicate with other users on the support forums.

New plugins Lazy Widget Loader provides lazy loading for widgets to improve page loading. Vocalyze Widget is the first wordpress plugin that give your blogs a voice. Your readers are now able to listen to the blog articles no matter they are driving, mutli-tasking or simply resting their eyes. Updated plugins Easy Retweet lets you add retweet or Tweet this buttons for your WordPress posts, together with the retweet count. Posts By Tag provides sidebar widgets which can be used to display posts from a specific set of tags in the sidebar. Smarter Navigation generates more relevant navigation between single posts, depending on which archive page the user came from. Twitter Avatar Reloaded adds a new field to the comment form to get the user’s Twitter usrename and uses it to replace the Gravatar with their Twitter avatar when the comment is displayed.

BlogoLife is a simple theme for personal blogging that supports post formats and several customization options. Foghorn is a minimalist theme built off the foundation of Twenty Eleven. Grafitti is eye-catching with fresh and bright colors.

Feature-wise, WordPress is quite huge, so there are bound be a few useful features that you never noticed, especially those that have been introduced recently. If you think that you know all there is know about WordPress, check out Sheri Bigelow’s Top Ten Features You Aren’t Using from this year’s WordCamp San Francisco. You might be surprised.

New plugins Add Descendants As Submenu Items adds a checkbox to each menu item that is of a hierarchical post type (i.e. pages). Checking this box will automatically display all descendants as submenu items on the front end of your site. Updated plugins Cleeng Content Monetization is a unique monetization solution that satisfies both the publisher’s and user’s interests by enabling publishers to sell articles, videos, images and downloads. Humans TXT allows you to credit the people behind your website in your humans.txt file. Slick Social Share Buttons allows you to add Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Digg, Google Buzz, Linkedin, and Stumbledupon social media buttons in a floating or slide out tab. Social Media Tabs allows you to add Facebook, Google +1, Buzz, Twitter and RSS profiles and feeds to any widget area with stylish sliding tabs.