It was announced a few days ago that bbPress would be releasing a series of 1.0 alpha versions. These versions will be compatible with WordPress 2.6 and above, which is good news for me.

I took this opportunity to upgrade my own forums after sitting dormant for nearly a month after upgrading to WordPress 2.6. For all you people itching to ask questions in the forums, but couldn’t sign up or login, feel free to do so now.

If you’ve been looking for a Digg-like social bookmarking site made specifically for WordPress-related content, it has arrived.

The site is called WP Vote, created by Jean-Baptiste Jung, and so far it looks like it’s off to a good start.

I personally think wpvote.com is an excellent domain name, very descriptive of the site’s purpose. The site design looks great as well.

On another positive note, there doesn’t seem to be much spam - except for a Revolution Theme affiliate link, which was subsequently buried.

I’ve signed up over there as “lelandf” and hope to see you over there as well!

If you’re a WordPress theme author of multiple themes, then you’ll probably want a more efficient way of handling “live demos” than setting up a brand new WordPress installation on each. I personally use the theme switcher plugin on my live demo site. What this plugin will allow you to do is set up a link to preview a theme installed in your wp-content/themes/ folder, whether it’s the active theme or not. This plugin also has a function which will make a dropdown list of all the themes installed on your blog, providing links to preview each theme.

Today we have a great looking theme, designed by Anto. I took the design, coded it in XHTML/CSS and ported it to WordPress. This is just a normal blog layout with a widget-ready sidebar, Gravatar support on the comments, and WordPress tag support. You’ll also notice a “New Post” graphic on the latest post in the main index.

Live Demo | Download

I can’t believe another week has gone by already, but it’s time for another set of WordPress weekend resources.

Build a Featured Posts Section for WordPress - This post by Dan Harper of Nettuts writes a very comprehensive tutorial on making a featured post section in WordPress. This tutorial is slightly advanced, going over custom field usage and the WordPress loop.

Build a Newspaper Theme With WP_Query and the 960 CSS Framework - Another awesome tutorial at Nettuts, this time written by Harley Alexander. This tutorial walks you through making your own newspaper theme. Again, this tutorial is slightly advanced - making use of WordPress WP_Query code.

I hope these two tutorials are enough to last you the weekend. Enjoy!

Justin Tadlock, a well-known WordPress theme designer, has just announced his new WordPress theme club - Theme Hybrid. Theme Hybrid offers 2 types of memberships - free and exclusive (paid), which costs $25 per year. At the moment, there seems to be several free themes and one exclusive theme.

Exclusive members will get to enjoy 2 new “Child” themes per month. These are themes which hook onto a parent theme for added styling and/or functionality. As far as my understanding goes, they can also make it easier to upgrade themes, especially in bulk. Only the “Parent” theme would need to be updated.

I know this whole child theme/parent theme sounds really confusing. Hopefully once I learn a little bit more about them I can start writing about them on Theme Lab.

Be sure to check out Justin’s new project. It looks to be an exciting step forward in the world of WordPress themes.

Today we have a very nice free WordPress theme, originally designed by Styleshout and ported into WordPress by me. The sidebar is widget-ready, has Gravatar support on the comments, and WordPress tag support. This theme has also been tested and working in WordPress 2.6.

Live Demo | Download

It’s another Friday, and a new month. Here’s another set of weekend resources for you WordPress lovers out there.

How To: Turn Off Post Revisions in WordPress 2.6+ - A great tip for turning off your post revisions. I’m personally a “chronic post saver” and in 2.6, that means a lot of extra clutter in my database. Also check out the comments of that post for some more useful tips in limiting post revisions.

15 Awesome WordPress Resource Sites - This post over at Elite by Design (written by Dan from WP Candy) lists 15 awesome WordPress resource sites. Dan was thoughtful enough to include Theme Lab in the list, so there’s 14 other great WordPress resource sites to choose from.

That’s all for this week. If you have any other informative WordPress resources, feel free to let me know in the comments.

I recently came across an alternative version of the Lightweight theme over at x.whatevurr.net, which has been released for download over there. Here’s a screenshot:

It’s a bit thinner than the original, and has a very noticeable pink color scheme. Not sure if any of you like pink themes, but hopefully this comes in handy for someone.

Today we have a simple WordPress theme, designed by Anto, and ported into WordPress by me. He was kind enough to design this so I could practice my XHTML/CSS coding skills. We decided it should be released on Theme Lab after it was complete, so here it is. This is just a standard blog layout with a widget-ready, Gravatar support on the comments, and WordPress tag support. Hope you like it!

Live Demo | Download