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.

To those who don’t read the archives of the “Site News” category, today is exactly one year after Theme Lab was launched.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone and everything who made all of this possible, go over a little Theme Lab history, as well as let you know what is in store for the future.

This post will be very long and gushy, so if you don’t like long and gushy posts - you should probably stop reading now.

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It was recently announced by Ryan Boren, that WordPress 2.6 Beta 1 has been released. Here are some things you should know:

• They are targeting a mid-July release.
• It will have post revisions.
• Theme previewing, which I guess will make this plugin obsolete.
• Improved SSL support for the administration panel
• Ability to relocate content directory
• Ability to relocate config file (with database and other sensitive configuration information)
• You can bulk delete, activate, and deactivate plugins
• Customizable default avatars

Complete list is here, along with a download link if you want to test it out. Remember, this is not the final release - and is not recommended to be used on production blogs.

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…

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Thanks to the great feedback I received on the previous WordPress theme, I decided to go out and look for another “non standard” WordPress layout. I came across some great templates from Six Shooter Media. One in particular, called Motion, caught my eye - and I decided to port it into WordPress.

This WordPress theme has no comments, no pages, no single posts, no sidebar, no widgets, no Gravatars - nothing but a one column main index template. In fact, the only theme files included are index.php and style.css.

Live Demo | Download

As you can see from the demo, it has some pretty cool Javascript features. I hope you like it. Let me know what you think in the comments section, and if you’d like to see any more of Six Shooter Media’s templates ported into WordPress.

On a WordPress site of mine, I was perplexed as to why it was not getting indexed in Google or other search engines.

I verified my site in Google Webmaster Tools and tried to submit a sitemap. In the webmaster tools panel, it informed me that my robots.txt file was blocking Google from grabbing my sitemap.

This confused me, as I know I would never knowingly make a robots.txt file to block search engines.

Read on to find out what the problem was, how to fix it, and how it happened in the first place…

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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!

Today we have an interesting free WordPress theme, based on a design by Solucija. This theme does not have a standard blog layout by default, as you can see from the demo. It is designed for a more CMS look, and has a few features you wouldn’t expect to see in a normal WordPress blog theme. More info on how to use the theme will be gone over below.

Live Demo | Download

And now more information on how to use the Small Studio theme…

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It was recently announced that WordPress.com blogs have XML sitemaps, which are automatically submit to search engines for better search indexing and optimization.

Now, most of you reading this are probably self-hosted WordPress users. How do you get your own sitemaps for your self-hosted blogs? This is where the Google Sitemap Generator plugin comes into play.

Contrary to the name, the plugin will actually automatically generate and submit sitemaps to not just Google - but also Live, Yahoo, and Ask. This will provide a similar automated sitemap solution, similar to the feature WordPress.com recently rolled out. More information on this plugin can be found in this WordPress SEO tutorial, an earlier article featured on Theme Lab.

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.