WordPress Station

Dr Dave
It’s little doubt by now my belief this is the single most important plugin for WordPress, so it was nice to see the other day when moderating a site, looking past the 964 spam comments SK had eaten, and the mere 7 that were in moderation (all spam after all), that a new version was out.

And while you are updating, donate.

Justin Shatuck has released an interesting plugin that sends new commenters a thank you email for commenting, with the ability to customize the message. I’ve installed it on this site, as I’m trying to develop a bit more of a community, however, with so many WP sites, I know that is a tall task. Anyway, if you want to see how it works, leave a comment, and you should receive a message from me.

imtjk
Pressed for free time, TJK is soliciting donations (and suggestions for the new theme) for creating a new public theme. Granted, there are numerous themes being released, but very few rate as well as the ones already released by JTK.

I have no problems with such an endeavor, and completely understand the author’s point. Personally, I’d rather see 50 people donate $5 to theme authors, than have themes with links to buying flowers online with caveats that the link shouldn’t be removed. So, if you are looking for a new theme, and want to have some input on a quality release, here’s your chance.

I’m not sure if everyone is suffering from this bug, but I’ve experienced it on 2 separate installs WP 2.1.2 (and since this is 2.1.3 RC1 it still hasn’t been addressed). What happens is, when attempting to post, delete, change categories, just about anything that requires some “AJAXy goodness”, you get an error, “you don’t have permission to do that”.

I didn’t come across the nature of the bug until yesterday while doing some research in the support forums, , and alas, in both Safari and FireFox, if I disable javascript, I do not get the permissions error. I’ve done all kinds of other trouble shooting, from a blank install with no plugins, to deleting cookies, caches and the kitchen sink. I really hope this gets addressed soon, it’s far more troubling to me than some remotely dangerous security issue.

Napolux.com
I’ve always wished that more people would comment on this site, about their opinions, experiences, general impressions of the plugins/themes/updates that get posted, but alas, I’ve not had much luck. I’m installing Napolux’s MyAvatars plugin, which uses your MyBlogLog avatar in the comments. Not that I expect that to create a mad rush to start commenting, however it’s always nice to have something visual to put with a commenter. I may have to add one of those widgets as well, as it’s kinda funny to click a link to a site, and all of a sudden see yourself as a recent visitor. What are your feelings on those?

WordPress Theme Viewer
Fans of BloggingPro can now have their blog with a similar look, as this 3 column theme has been released for public use. Nice use of white space, a pale blue 2 column right hand sidebar, with a darker blue 3 column footer all contribute to this stylish theme. A few plugins are required for the theme to work out of the box, specifically for the footer sections with recent comments, posts, etc.

ear-fung.us
For those tuned (ha, get it iPod, tuned) into working out with the combo of the Nike+ iPod gear, and want to share/track their progress on their blog, this seem like the ticket. Using the Nike API, it pulls the XML file and allows for customization via the admin interface, including showing a “power song” and linking to iTunes. Also has the ability to graph the run. This plugin is at v 1.4, so it’s seems well developed with a full demo on the author’s site in their sidebar.

WP-AJAX Newsletter
Housed at Google code, apparently this plugin allows for a newsletter to be emailed to all registrants of blog content. Lots of ability to customize the outgoing newsletter, as well as an AJAX powered registration (including email conformation for registration). I couldn’t decipher if you could include content outside of blog posts or not.

ShinRa House
A stylish, single column theme, with lots of drop shadow effects and gradients. As the name implies, a blue theme, with an abstract header image (though the demo link seemed to open a different theme, so I couldn’t tell exactly what it was).

The theme also employs a AJAXy drop down shelf, a search box that is also some AJAX type effect (though the cross hair icon may not suggest to everyone that it means search), as well as an interesting Accessibility icon that converts the page to a non graphic, non javascript mode. Well thought out for such a design to include.

Well worth the look if you are after a more “web 2.0″ modern feel.

Alex King
Beta 2 is out for the Twitter plugin for WP. I keep reading more and more about this Twitter thing, and am finding it hard to resist to “drink the Kool-aid”.