ikram_zidane’s digital playground v6
This theme, released in the last month, features a single column design, with an AJAX powered navigation drop down that has 3 columns ala the Hemmingway footer. Subtle uses of images, including post separation lend to a nice addition to the themes available these days.
A clean, three column theme, with subtle blues and grays. Center column content, an elegant theme suitable for both personal and professional/business type blogs.
A sharp, two column theme with a black background, it also features fluid width for the header and content column, with static width sidebar. Also incorporated with the theme are several plugins to better present content.
A two part tutorial on how to customize your comments to reflect a different look for author comments and alternating look for visitor comments. Part one covers the code, part two covers the styling.
Several dedicated WP users have given the database a new look and added some new features, though some have yet to be implemented. Still the number one spot to sort through the multitude of plugins available, these much need improvements will continue to allow users to easily customize their site.
WP Station has been victim of this for some time. Someone sets up a generic WP install, and starts scraping content from various blogs that offer WP news, tips, and tricks. They would come and go, and eventually the main culprit of WP Station content theft included links back to my site, so I didn’t think there was anything else left to do. In my hiatus, two new plugins have been introduced to help combat content theft.
The first, AntiLeech, from Owen Winkler at Redalt, creates fake content for sploggers who use bots to steal content from your site.
The second, Digital Fingerprint, from MaxPower, creates a unique “fingerprint” only seen in your RSS feed, so you can track your content on various blog search engines. From there, you can determine if the content is properly referenced, and take actions if not.
I highly suggest reading through the explanations at both plugin sites to further understand the issues at play.
It seems with a few days off from my new offline job, I’ve managed to get a grip on my online endeavors, which means I’ll be bringing back the regular postings to the site. Apologies to anyone who emailed me with annoucements and didn’t get posted, or to those who look to WP Station for their WordPress news. I’ll be trying to catch up on any great releases I’ve missed, and start back with the regular updates shortly. Thanks for being a regular reader.