Like the title says, I want to know how you feel about sponsored WordPress themes. If you don’t know what a sponsored theme is, basically - it’s a theme with one or more “paid links” included, usually located in the footer.

One of the most authoritative sources for WordPress theme releases, Weblog Tools Collection, will not allow sponsored themes to be featured on their main blog. WordPress’ official theme viewer dumped sponsored themes near the same time, about a year ago.

On one hand, sponsored themes sort of defeat the purpose of the free and open WordPress community spirit. On the other hand, theme authors need to pay the bills - and sponsoring themes is an easy way to help do that.

In the comments, I’d like to know what you think of them - sponsored themes that is. Would you use a sponsored theme? What if the links were too “spammy” in your eyes?

First of all, happy 4th of July (to my US readers)! We have a few weekend resources today which I’ve collected over the past week. Here they are:

What Plugin Coders Must Know About WordPress 2.6 - If you’re a WordPress plugin author, then you should probably read this article. With WordPress 2.6 allowing you to change the location of your content directory and config file, there are some important things you may need to know.

WordPress Parent-Child Themes - I have to admit this is something I didn’t realize you could do with WordPress. This tutorial goes over how to use a WordPress child theme to redesign your blog. If you have no clue what a WordPress child theme is (like I did) I suggest you check out this interesting article.

Using Sliding Doors with WordPress Navigation - This post at Hack WordPress goes over how to use sliding doors navigation with your page and category lists, as well as offers a “hack” to make use of the wp_list_pages and wp_list_categories functions with it.

Thanks for reading, and if you know of any other recently published WordPress resources, feel free to let me know in the comments.

Today, July 1st, is officially Unofficial International WordPress Day, sponsored by the people over at WPCandy. I hope it’s not too late in the day for my post. I just wanted to make a quick “thank you” to Automattic, because:

• WordPress is a great blogging platform and CMS
• It has an excellent community, of which I’m proud to be a part of
• I run pretty much all of my sites with WordPress
• Akismet is an invaluable spam fighting service
• bbPress is a great forum script, the perfect complement to a WordPress blog

I really can’t thank Automattic enough for making WordPress what it is today.

In the comments, why don’t you say why you love WordPress? Would you ever consider switching away from WordPress if a bigger and better platform came along?

It may also be worth making a comment over on that WPCandy post to be entered in their competition.

Happy Unofficial WordPress Day!

Only a few weekend resources this week - both related to customizing the WordPress administration panel.

Four Alternative WordPress 2.5 Admin Themes - While I use the default WordPress admin panel, these alternative themes may be useful to those who want a branded look for their WordPress-powered sites.

For the Love of 2.3 - James Dimick, author of the Easy Admin Color Schemes Plugin, has released a new color scheme for the 2.5 admin panel resembling the old 2.3 admin panel.

That’s all, thanks for reading! If you know of a quality WordPress resource published recently, feel free to let me know in the comments.

It was only a matter of time before a superior WordPress SEO plugin came along to dethrone the extremely popular All In One SEO Pack. After a change of ownership, questions arose as to whether the new owner would keep it up to date with the latest SEO trends. Others would be happy as long as it would remain compatible with future WordPress versions.

A few days ago, a new plugin was released known as Platinum SEO Pack. This appears to be a “fork” of the All In One SEO pack. It claims to do everything All In One SEO does, and more. Here are a few new features in this plugin:

• Ability to add index, noindex, follow or nofollow, noodp, noydir meta tags to any post or page
• Automatic 301 redirect if you change your permalink structure
• Choose to block indexing (using noindex tag) on RSS feed pages
• Nofollow external links on front page
• Nofollow links to archive/category/tag pages

Some of this stuff might be considered “SEO overkill” although all of these are options in the backend.

I was using it myself (on another site) earlier today and didn’t find any problems or bugs. You can get the plugin yourself here.

What do you think? Has All In One SEO Pack been trumped in favor of Platinum SEO? Share your thoughts in the comments.

A great free WordPress theme, called Chocolate, has been released by Pancak.es. I made another video, similar to my last video review of a theme by the same author, Nick. Here are a few of the features present in the theme.

• Able to view and add comments from the main index with Ajax
• A live search which grabs results without loading a new page
• Fallback support for those with no Javascript enabled
• Alternative “White Chocolate” color scheme
• Comments with Gravatar support

Read on to watch the video…

Read the rest of this entry »

Another week has passed, here are some more WordPress resources collected throughout the week.

Creating a Print Stylesheet in WordPress - This post from Hack WordPress goes over what a print stylesheet is, how they work, and how to make one. Basically what print stylesheets will do is override the default stylesheet when one is printing. If you have content that may be printed (as in with real paper, from a printer) this guide is a must-read.

10 Plugins to Improve the WordPress Admin - This post by Dan Philibin of WPCandy lists 10 plugins used to enhance the WordPress admin panel in one way or another. Some of these admin panel plugins can come in very handy for the WordPress blogger.

40+ Most Wanted Wordpress Tricks and Hacks - A great post highlighting over 40 great WordPress tips, tricks, and hacks from across the web. There are a lot of great links in this post, so I suggest you check it out.

Protecting text strings from theme upgrades - This post by Justin Tadlock goes over how to make your themes translatable. I’ll admit, this is something I do not do with the themes on Theme Lab, but I may start after reading this.

Displaying Related Category and Author Content in Wordpress - This post by Darren Hoyt, author of the popular Mimbo theme, reveals code from the Pro version to display related content. Displaying related content to the category or author is a great way to keep your visitors on your site.

Cool coding tips from around your WordPress community - part 1 - This post over at WP Project is a compilation of several different WordPress coding tips, some already listed here. I wonder when Part 2 will be published?

WordPress Weekly Episode 21 - This week’s episode of WordPress Weekly will go over a few of these topics listed above and more. It will be aired at 10 PM EST tonight.

Quite a few this week, enjoy!

For those of you who aren’t aware, there was a little scare in the WordPress SEO community when it was discovered that the All In One SEO pack plugin, originally authored by Uberdose, would no longer be supported. I heard over at Hack WordPress that the plugin support and development will now be handled by Semper Fi Web Design.

Semper Fi Web Design is not new to the world of WordPress plugins. They have developed other plugins such as WP Security Scan and SMS Text Message, so it seems like Uberdose found a qualified successor.

All In One SEO Pack was one of the subjects of one of my earlier articles: Optimizing WordPress for Search Engines. It’s a great plugin for taking care of duplicate content issues across archive pages, as well as inserting meta keywords and descriptions on pages.

It’s been another week. Time for some more WordPress resources.

WordPress SEO - The Definitive Guide To High Rankings to Your Blog, by Joost de Valk is a very comprehensive article on not just SEO, but blog marketing and promotion in general.

I want a WordPress Plugin to … - This massive page sorts over 450 WordPress plugins in several specific categories. I’ve always had trouble searching the official WordPress plugin directory for a plugin I needed. This just makes everything easier to find in one location.

WordPress Weekly Time Change - Tonight’s episode of WordPress Weekly will be aired an hour later than usual, at 10 PM EST. This time change is to accommodate those viewers and contributers on the west coast (of the United States).

Only a few this week. Hopefully the first link will keep you occupied reading for a while.

Another week gone by, another week of WordPress community links and resources.

Creating a dynamic sidebar - Richard Hooper of WP Project goes over a simple and manageable method of dynamically managing your sidebar, without widgets. It requires some basic knowledge of WordPress conditional tags and PHP includes.

Is that really WordPress? - Another recent post over at WP Project lists a few websites that you probably couldn’t tell were powered by WordPress at first glance. WordPress can be used as a very flexible CMS and this post just further proves the point.

Creative Examples of WordPress Themes Modifications - This post by Pavel Ciorci of WPZoom goes over some creative customizations of WordPress themes. I always love to see WordPress theme customizations and it’s nice to see some of the themes available here on Theme Lab customized beyond recognition.

Have You Created Your Gravatar? - This really isn’t anything new, but still important. Ever since I implemented Gravatars here on Theme Lab, I’m seeing many commentators here lacking their Gravatar. It’s really simple to make, as gone over in the post. For WordPress blog owners, it’s very easy to add Gravatar support to your comments.

31 People To Follow On Twitter - Possibly inspired by WPCandy’s post on following Twitter users, this list at Weblog Tools Collection goes more in depth by providing 31 Twitter users who frequently “tweet” about WordPress news. My Twitter profile is themelab in case you want to follow me.

WordPress Weekly Episode 19 - A new episode WordPress Weekly airs tonight, where they will be discussing several WordPress-related topics. More information on the link.

That’s all for this week, happy blogging!