WordPress Station

If you are seeing this, then you are on the Media Temple server install, not the previous ASO server. I had many issues with ASO’s shared server environment, and even more with their customer service. I understand that shared environments are potentially troublesome, and you get what you pay for, but when an issue goes on for weeks and you do nothing to ease the mind of your customer, then say “we will do nothing to keep you from moving”, screams to me you don’t want my business. So, Media Temple, here I am. I can only hope you will not take the same approach if similar issue arise.

I’ll be migrating WP Station over the next few days to Media Temple, and hopefully making a few changes, possibly design wise in the process. Hopefully functionality won’t be affected, but if it is, I apologize in advance. Also during the move, I’m upgrading the site to the latest SVN, so there might be issue along the way, but for a multitude of reasons, I need to stop using 2.1.x branch. Anyway, just a heads up for any that care.

The “official” WordPress theme viewer appears to be suffering some server issues.

Undersigned comments on the site

The server times out due to excessive traffic and poor connections. We are still working on it. I was told some needed changes will be made within the next few days. Thanks for your patience.

With the recent healthy discussions about the state of the theme viewer, hopefully this is a blessing in disguise, and the issues will be resolved, as well as a decision on how to proceed with sharing of themes that are solely released with the intention of selling sponsorships.

Icon Buffet
Not WP specific, but who doesn’t like icons? Especially if you are looking for an easy way to customize your site. Icon Buffet has recently “relaunched” with a new system, albeit confusing at first, to trade icons. Icons carry weight in tokens to receive, and stamps to send, and they also have a VIP membership that not only gets you more tokens, but gets you a $25 discount on all purchases. They have quite a few $30 sets, which means VIP members get them for $5 a piece, which considering the quality, is well worth the membership.
So if you are interested in joining, it’s free (VIP is the paid version), and want me to hook you up with some icons right away, follow the link and join as my friend. I’ll be sure to send out icons as soon as possible (I’ve got plenty of stamps, and get more when people sign up).

ThinkFree
Ever had the need to include Office documents with a post? Powerpoint presentations, spreadsheets with graphs and charts? Now you can with this plugin from ThinkFree.
Not tested, but the demo and instructions seem to be easy as pie. Activate the plugin, attach the file to the post, and a “view” icon is automatically added to the post. Clicking the view, a lightbox like box opens up with the document overlaying the page. I did notice that one has to have javascript enabled to view the document. A plugin like this can really expand a businesses use of blogging, as they can share all kinds of documents, either internally or publicly.
Well, you can scratch that last part, I just read the TOU,and it appears the plugin is strictly for personal non-commercial use.

This service, however, is limited to non-commercial usage. Users publishing documents for commercial purposes will be terminated. Your subscription and right to use the service are personal to you as an individual and do not extend to use by or on behalf of any association, organization, corporation or other entity comprised of multiple persons

No mention of a for-pay service, which seems short sighted to me.

lifehack.org
I’ve posted some links to reviews to some blogging clients in the past, but this is a nice, concise wrap up of most of the currently available ones.

I’ve personally been playing around with Ecto, and intend on testing Scribe Fire, however I still find myself just using the little bookmarklet included with WP.

However, if you write longer, more in depth blog posts, you might like the freedom a desktop client provides, as you can work on the draft anywhere, not just while online. You can then just publish, with all your settings in place.

m@hu_D
A nice little tutorial for adding calendar style post dates to your theme, including a graphic to use.