A new premium WordPress plugin store launched the other day called PluginBuddy, the same people behind iThemes. Their latest plugin is called BackupBuddy which describes itself as an “all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration”.

You can check out my quick video tour below where I go through all the menus and take a (surprisingly) quick database backup of Theme Lab.

Features

• Backs up your entire WordPress install (including all files) or just the database
• Use the restore feature to quickly reinstall a previously made backup
• Migrate a full WordPress site to a new web host
• Backup scheduling, includes email and FTP options

The Giveaway + How to Enter

Cory Miller of PluginBuddy was kind enough to donate one single use license ($25 value) and one developer license ($150 value) for a couple of lucky Theme Lab readers.

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For anyone who uses the WordPress.com stats plugin, you’ll notice it inserts a small smiley image in your footer. This image needs to be loaded to track the stats.

Some people might think this little smiley face is “cute”. The rest of you will find the smiley image unsightly (and possibly evil looking) and will look for ways to remove it. This post will go over:

• First of all, what not to do when hiding the smiley
• How to properly hide it, with some extra absolute position goodness for certain layouts
• If you’d rather not hide it, how to easily center the smiley image

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Spectacu.la, a WordPress theme club, has just announced the release of their free threaded comments plugin for WordPress. Basically what this plugin does is replace your theme’s comments template with a new one, generated by the plugin.

In addition to that, you also get pagination and jQuery based roll up of subordinate comments. For those who remember the old Theme Lab which used Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin, it’s kind of like that, except neater.

The plugin should work on almost any theme, even if it normally doesn’t support threaded comments, provided it uses the comments_template() call.

Pictured above is the light and dark styles of the comments which are included in the plugin. Read on to check out my screencast which demonstrates these two styles on a really old theme that wasn’t originally designed to support threaded comments.

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