I know it’s been a couple weeks since the last issue of WordPress weekend resources. The following links cover a massive amount of WordPress theme development information, so hopefully it makes up for it.

How To Create a WordPress Theme - This series of posts by Ian Stewart over at ThemeShaper will take you through the process of making your very own WordPress theme from scratch, similar to a series of posts made by Small Potato over at WPDesigner over 2 years ago. This really is a must-read series if you’re interested in WordPress theme development.

Power Tips For WordPress Template Developers - This article by Jacob Goldman over at Smashing Magazine goes over a number of useful tips for theme developers, complete with code examples and screenshots. Topics such as how to code a featured post and members only pages are covered.

That’s all for this week. As always, be sure to let me know of any other recently published WordPress resources in the comments.

It was just announced yesterday that the official commercially supported theme page has been launched on WordPress.org. Right now each of the sites listed there are rotated, so there’s an equal chance of any of the sites being displayed at the top. If you have a commercially supported theme site, here’s how to get listed:

• Distribute 100% GPL themes, including artwork and CSS.
• Have professional support options, and optionally customization.
• Your site should be complete, well-designed, up to date, and professional looking.
• Include a haiku about yourself to be included.

Not really sure what haiku is for, although I’m looking forward to see what these commercial theme developers can come up with their Haiku writing skills.

I think this is great news because it encourages commercial theme developers to adopt a “100% GPL compatible” license. Even though PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, and artwork and CSS don’t, a pure PHP theme (without graphics or stying) would be pretty much useless to most end users.

I really hope this is the final word on commercial themes and the GPL, although I’m sure we can still find something to argue about, right?

And on the topic of commercially supported WordPress products, I’m wondering if there’s any similar commercial plugins page in the works, or do plugin authors still get no love?

The lack of changelogs in a lot of WordPress plugins is something that’s bothered me for a while, and I wasn’t the only one. I’m very wary of upgrading plugins, and when I see that a plugin needs to be upgraded in my WordPress dashboard, I’d like to know exactly what’s being changed. It might be a major security fix, it might be a minor bug, it might not be a necessary update at all. Changelogs give this information to end users about changes from version to version.

Well, there’s some good news for all of you who like to check out the changelogs before upgrading plugins, but it’ll require some action on behalf of the plugin authors. There is now a standardized way of adding changelog information to the plugin’s readme.txt file. To plugin authors wondering how to do this, read this post on Peter Westwood’s blog. This information will then be displayed on a dedicated “Changelog” tab on the plugin’s page on the WordPress.org plugin repository.

I know themes aren’t usually updated as often as plugins are, but I’m wondering if it would be difficult to implement something similar for WordPress themes hosted in the official theme directory. Anyone have any thoughts about changelogs for themes too?

For those not following the latest WordPress and GPL theme news lately, some big stuff has happened in the past week or so. First, iThemes announced they were going GPL, and WooThemes followed suit later in the week.

Some people reading this blog might have no idea what I’m talking about when I’m referring to GPL themes, because I’ve never discussed it here before. Why? Because most of the discussions I’ve seen regarding the GPL and WP themes are extremely arduous, and more importantly…inconclusive.

Basically the GPL license says while there is nothing wrong with charging for GPL software, users are free to modify it and redistribute code without permission of the original author. This means someone could legally buy a commercial GPL-licensed theme, and re-release it for free.

Alex King reminded people of this fact, and the mere idea of exercising the rights granted by the GPL led to quite a bashing in the comments. Some commenters even went so far as to say they’ve lost “all respect” Alex, again, for merely pointing out the idea, not actually doing it. Alex later apologized for that post he made earlier.

While I think those people who lost “all respect” for Alex King (as a result of that post) completely missed the point, it did bring up some interesting questions. While I don’t believe there’s any doubt that modifying and redistributing GPL themes is in fact legal, I think the real question is: is it ethical or not?

In my opinion, piggybacking off the hard work of these developers, who are trying to make a living off their themes, by undercutting them for a few quick bucks is not ethical. I believe the true value in buying almost any commercial theme is not just the theme itself, but also quality support. In my eyes, there’s no better place to get support than the original source.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Is it ethical? Are commercial theme authors truly embracing the GPL? Sound off in the comments. This is probably the first and last post I’ll ever make on this topic, so make it count.

Since WordPress 2.8 was just released yesterday, I thought it might be a good idea for this week’s issue of WordPress Weekend Resources to focus specifically on 2.8-related content.

WordPress Version 2.8 - The WordPress 2.8 page over at the Codex. The page is broken up into 4 parts: highlights, new features, advanced features, and features that did not make it. Definitely worth skimming through to get an idea of all that was added.

WordPress 2.8: What’s new - An extensive post on what’s new in WordPress 2.8, mostly from a developer’s point of view. Things like the new body_class function, proxy support, and relational navigation links, among other new features are all covered on this article.

WordPress 2.8 And 10 Things That You Should Know Before/After You Upgrade - This post goes over 2 things to go over before upgrading, and 8 things you should be aware of after upgrading. Aside from the obvious theme/plugin compatibility check, it also goes over a number of the updated features present in 2.8, complete with screenshots.

There are a few more in-depth articles on specific WordPress 2.8 features, although the above are mostly roundups. If you know of any other WordPress 2.8-related resources, feel free to post in the comments.

Another week has passed, which means more WordPress weekend resources.

10 Sites That Produce Quality WordPress Content - The title pretty much says it all. This post by Nathan Rice lists 10 sites that produce WordPress-related content on a regular basis. I can think of a few more quality WordPress resource sites that fit the bill, however it’s a good roundup nonetheless.

How to create a Simple Directory in Wordpress using Grandparent, Parent, and Child Pages - This tutorial by Rebecca Markowitz over at WordPress Garage goes over how to set up a simple directory on your site. Includes all the code you’ll need, as well as a live site using the code outlined in the post.

10 Ways to Speed up Your WordPress Blog - This post by Alex Denning over at Pro Blog Design goes over 10 easy to follow ways to speed up your WordPress blog. Some are relatively easy to implement (deleting unwanted plugins) while others are a tad more complicated (adding spammers to an IP block list) however following some of these steps will most likely make your WordPress sites faster.

5 Useful WordPress Functions You Didn’t Know Existed - Nathan Rice makes the list again with this post about five relatively unknown WordPress functions, hidden deep with WordPress’ source code. I admit I knew of a few of them already. These functions can do things like send e-mails, or parse RSS feeds. I wonder what other useful (but unknown) functions are lurking in the source code.

That’s all for this week. As always, be sure to let me know of any recently published WordPress resources and they may be included next week.

Another week has gone by, which means another set of weekend resources.

WordPress 2.7 User Guide - This is a free 56-page PDF download released by Spectacu.la. I skimmed it and it looks like it would be very useful to those just starting out with WordPress. While the PDF is free, they will also have an editable Word file available to members of their site.

Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes - This post by Ian Stewart at ThemeShaper goes over how to use action hooks in your WordPress theme. Also includes a practical example of how to insert a “welcome blurb” on the homepage of your blog, without touching any existing code.

The complete guide to creating widgets in WordPress 2.8 - This post by Justin Tadlock goes over how to make widgets in WordPress 2.8. If you don’t want to read the entire tutorial, there is also an “example widget” download near the bottom of the post.

As always, if you know of any recently published WordPress resources, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Another week has passed, which means another set of weekend resources.

30 Untypical WordPress Sites - Aside from all the confusion about the word “untypical” on Twitter, this is actually quite the collection of interesting WordPress-powered sites.

How To Design A Popular WordPress Theme - A very interesting article by Ian Stewart which analyzes the success of Chris Pearson and his popular and “powerfully simple” blog designs.

Take Your WordPress Theme to the Next Level - A nice article over at the Theme Forest blog which goes over how to internationalize your theme, among a few other things.

How To: Hack WordPress Theme Template Pages - Another great article by John Pratt over at WP Hacks which goes over things like the template hierarchy and the WordPress loop.

That’s all for this week. As always, if you know of any other recently released WordPress resources, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Another week, another set of weekend resources. Got some good ones this week.

How To: Use WordPress Conditional Tags to Hack Your Theme - This post by John Pratt over at WPHacks goes over, well, how to use WordPress conditional tags, as well as a number of ideas on what to use them for. For more info on this, check out this previous post I wrote here on WordPress conditional tags

Customize your 404 page from the WordPress admin - Okay, I admit it. The 404 pages of my free WordPress themes suck. This is a relatively simple (but useful) technique of widgetizing a theme’s 404 template. I’ll be using this method from now on, as it really is the perfect solution for dealing with 404 pages of public theme releases.

Using shortcodes to show members-only content - Justin Tadlock is on a roll with his WordPress tutorials. This is a pretty cool tutorial that teaches you how to use WordPress shortcodes to show members-only content, and provides all the code you’ll need.

Custom Fields Hacks For WordPress - This post by Jean-Baptiste Jung at Smashing Magazine has an awesome collection of WordPress custom field hacks. If you’ve ever wondered how to set an expiration time for posts, or display the music you’re listening to on a specific post, among other things, check it out.

20+ Tutorials and Resources for Working with Custom Fields in WordPress - For more custom field information, here’s another great collection of tutorials and resources relating to custom fields over at Vandelay Design. My Display Inline Ads With Custom Fields and WordPress was included too.

Wpazo - A brand new link blog brought to you by Ian Stewart (of ThemeShaper). It features links to the best WordPress ideas, plugins, themes, resources, and tutorials.

That’s it. If anyone knows of any other recently released WordPress resources, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Just heard about this pretty cool release by Stefan Vervoort of WP Toy. The WordPress Theme Development Checklist is a free-to-download PDF file that goes over several elements of a WordPress theme you should probably take a look at before going live with a new theme.

It’s broken up into eight parts, which will be gone over below:
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