Another week gone by, another set of WordPress weekend resources.

Guided Tour Of The WordPress Theme Directory - This 12+ minute screencast by Jeff Chandler of Performancing.com takes you on an in-depth tour of the new WordPress theme directory.

Create An Archive Page For Your WordPress Blog This post by Jean-Baptiste Jung over at Hack WordPress goes over how to create an archive page on your WordPress blog through either plugins or doing it yourself with a page template.

That’s all for this week. If you have a recently published WordPress resource, feel free to let me know in the comments or via e-mail.

Some of you who frequent Theme Lab’s support forums may have noticed you aren’t able to login anymore.

Why is this? WordPress 2.6 - that’s why.

The cookie changes between 2.5.1 and 2.6 are so “radical” they render the WordPress-bbPress integration useless.

When is the bbPress update coming? Apparently, not any time soon.

WordPress-bbPress users are encouraged to stick with WordPress 2.5.1 until a stable bbPress update is released, but don’t hold your breath.

If you’re using a Theme Lab theme and need support, feel free to post a comment on the release post on the blog, and I’ll try my best to get back to you.

Today we have a simple, but nice looking WordPress theme - designed by Ceneb, and ported by myself. This theme has all the normal features of a blog theme here at Theme Lab, including Gravatar support for comments, a widget-ready sidebar, and native WordPress tag support. This theme also 125×125 ad ready, which can be edited through the sidebar.php file.

Live Demo | Download

It was just announced on the WordPress development blog that WordPress launched a new theme directory. This will be similar to the official WordPress plugin repository, which hosts thousands of WordPress plugins. Here are steps to follow to upload your theme to the new WordPress theme directory.

• You can login with your WordPress.org account.
• Make sure your theme meets the requirements.
• Upload your theme here in .zip format.
• Themes will have to pass a manual review before going live.

Since the old “official” WordPress theme viewer (themes.wordpress.net) has been dysfunctional for so long, theme authors have been distributing themes on their own websites. Hopefully in the future this can become a centralized source of free WordPress themes. So far it seems like no new themes have been approved.

It’s Friday, which means another issue of WordPress weekend resources.

Evolution of WordPress: B2/Cafelog to WordPress 1.0 - A nice flashback in the history of WordPress. This post by Keith Dsouza of Weblog Tools Collection goes over the evolution of WordPress from the b2cafelog platform.

The Ultimate WordPress Commenting System - This post by Jeff Chandler of Performancing lists 7 separate WordPress commenting plugins that combine to create the “utlimate” commenting system. I use a few already on Theme Lab such as the the “Subscribe to comments via e-mail” plugin.

Only a couple this week. If anyone knows of any recently published WordPress resources for next week, feel free to let me know.

Today we have a nice looking theme, ported from a Six Shooter Media template of the same name. This WordPress theme would be ideal for any sort of real estate or housing blog. This theme is widget-ready, has Gravatar support on the comments, with native WordPress tag support.

Live Demo | Download

On another note, the demo site has been upgraded to WordPress 2.6 as well - with no apparent issues with the themes. I think it’s safe to say all Theme Lab themes are WordPress 2.6 compatible.

Minus one minor problem with an outdated WP-DownloadManager plugin, upgrading to WordPress 2.6 was relatively painless. The aforementioned plugin, which I use for managing the theme downloads here at Theme Lab, was updated by the author - correcting the bug. Here are a couple articles with tips on upgrading your own WordPress install:

• Backing Up Your WordPress Site
• How To Upgrade WordPress

You should always be taking regular backups of all your sites, especially in preparation for something like a software upgrade.

I’d like to know how your WordPress upgrade went. Any issues?

It was announced today that WordPress 2.6 has been officially released. Here are a few features in the new version of WordPress:

• Post revisions - Manage older post saves, very useful for multi-author or collaborative blogging
• Google gears - Designed to speed up your WordPress admin panel
• PressThis - Easily blog about something from wherever you are on the web
• Theme previews - Preview a theme before it goes live
• Bulk management of plugins, easily activate and deactivate in bulk

And much more. The below video will illustrate some of these new features included in WordPress 2.6.

I have not tested the themes here with WordPress 2.6 yet, but I don’t expect there will be any issues. If you notice a problem with the themes and 2.6, feel free to let me know.

Have you upgraded to 2.6 yet? How do you like it?

Let’s face it, not everyone who comments on your Gravatar-enabled blog has a Gravatar.

Instead, commenters lacking their Gravatar are assigned a boring default icon.

What if these commenters could have their own uniquely generated icon, that remained constant as long as their e-mail remained the same?

That’s where these WordPress plugins come into play:

• Wavatars
• WP_MonsterID
• WP_Identicon

Each of these plugins will provide your Gravatarless readers with their own custom made avatar. Read on to learn how to use them…

Read the rest of this entry »

I came across the Thematic theme about a week ago and decided to do a quick video review on it. It is described as a WordPress theme framework. Here are just a few of the features:

• Options for multi-author blogs
• Several widgetized areas
• Quick link to the admin panel for logged in users

And here’s the video…

Overall I’d say Thematic is a great quality theme that’s relatively easy to use for beginners. The separate widgetized areas for different sections of the theme are also a plus, giving the theme user lots of customization options right out of the box.