For those of you domainers who have a lot of unused domain names earning nominal revenue at old-fashioned domain parking services or simply collecting dust and not doing anything, read on. Developed domains will almost always outperform one-click landers at parking sites. One of the easiest ways to do quickly develop a domain is to set up an automated WordPress blog. In this tutorial I’ll go over:

• Where to host your WordPress auto blogs
• How to install WordPress and configure it with SEO in mind
• A free WordPress plugin you can use to set up an auto blog
• How to use use RSS feeds to generate relevant content
• How to monetize your website with Adsense and other revenue streams

Now is the time to dump those stagnant parked pages and start developing your unused domains into dynamic and content-rich websites.

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Here’s an interesting looking free WordPress theme. This one is another Rambling Soul template which I ported into WordPress. It has a widget-ready footer. The Menu sidebar isn’t expandable (just an image background) so it wouldn’t really make sense to widgetize that. Anyway, live demo link is here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

I just stumbled upon this post about an exploit which allows a hacker/spammer to inject links and HTML into your WordPress installation. If you see a /wp-content/1/ directory in your FTP, you have likely been affected. Over 9000 other WordPress blogs are in the same boat.

As you can see, ringtones, gambling, the usual spammy stuff. I’m not going to directly link to these results as some of these links have been reported to be malware-infested. Definitely not a good idea to visit them. Google will likely penalize you if these spam links on your exploited site are crawled, so you should delete this directory ASAP along with all files under it if you see it.

As of yet, no official word from WordPress developers on this vulnerability has been released. Until then, it’s best to use good security practices (which should apply to all websites, not just WordPress-powered ones). Password protect your directories, don’t publish the version of the script you’re using, disable indexes on WordPress core directories - to name a few. I’ll be posting some general WordPress security tips up on Theme Lab soon.

Note: More information available on this WordPress.org support topic, where the exploit was initially reported.

Today’s free WordPress theme is another ported template by DemusDesign called Pushing Borders. It is a 3 column theme with 2 widget-ready sidebars. You’ll notice the big text in the top right corner will change depending on what type of page you’re on. View the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

As a follow up to my Wpdesigner for sale blog post (which was in turn a follow up to my membership giveaway), I’m here to announce that Wpdesigner has finally sold on SitePoint for a cool 66 grand. Yes, you read that right, $66,000 American dollars. I’m glad Small Potato got a great price for it, and I’m also glad that he seems to have found a good buyer, Pawel Ciszewski. On this post announcing the change of ownership, Small Potato states the themes club will continue, so no worries to those who got the free (and paid) memberships.

Today we have a very special release of a feature packed, high-quality WordPress theme. You may remember over a month ago I coded and released the Simply AIO theme, originally designed by Nuvio Templates. In the comments someone expressed interest in coding their Transmission template as well. After some collaboration with Nuvio, it’s finally ready. You can see the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

Now let’s get onto the features…

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Here we have another ported theme, again from FreeCSS.info. I think the name of the theme describes it pretty well. It’s sleek and glossy with a bit of blue added to the mix (in the header). This free WordPress theme is widget-ready and has a theme options page to control which pages get displayed at the top. This was added since it can look quite messy if you have too many pages. You can see the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

But wait…there’s more! Included in the download is a PSD for a logo designed just for this theme. Check out the original template for a demo. Simply edit the PSD, save it, uncomment a few lines (and remove the old text logo) and you’re all set.

With web 2.0 in full swing, social networking sites have played an ever increasing role in the evolution of the internet. Sharing, creativity, and collaboration are all vital factors in this web 2.0 trend. Sites such as Facebook, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg, Mixx, Del.icio.us, Reddit, and the like have changed the way content is distributed online. These sites can turn into valuable marketing tools for your website if used correctly.

In this tutorial I’ll go over a few things to make your WordPress blog more social-networking-friendly:

• How to use the Sociable plugin to add icons to your posts and pages.
• How to use the ShareThis plugin to combine all these icons into one.
• How to add a dynamic Digg button to your posts.

If you’ve been wondering how to add those social bookmarking icons to your posts, read the rest of this tutorial.

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Here’s another great template from Rambling Soul ported into WordPress by myself. Widget-ready sidebar, as usual with all my free WordPress themes (with a few exceptions). You can see the live demo here. Download it here. Screenshot is below.

Yes, I know I’m a couple days on this story, like my last news story. Anyway, the release WordPress 2.5 has been hyped up for a while now. Being scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, and postponed some more. Matt from WordPress recently announced the release of WordPress 2.5 RC1 on the WordPress development blog. There have been a lot of layout changes to the admin panel, focusing more emphasis on common tasks (like writing) and less emphasis on menial tasks such as activating plugins. WordPress 2.3.3 is still the latest stable release. If you want to try it out for yourself I’d recommend it be installed locally or an otherwise “non production” blog.

In case you were wondering, RC stands for release candidate. This basically means it isn’t an officially “stable” release yet, although it will probably work okay. The purpose of releasing this version first is to work out any last few bugs that may be present before the final 2.5 release. This is why it’s probably a good idea to stick with 2.3.3 until then.