WordPress Station

Rather than a series of posts, I’m going to simply do a wrap up post covering any links I’ve saved over the past month theme related, and then return to my normal posting methods.

First up is Grid Lock, a magazine style theme, which was recently updated. If you aren’t familiar with it, as I said it has a magazine style approach to the home page content. This means a featured category gets top billing, and sub categories have smaller sections below. There’s an options page to configure the categories. While looking at that, check out Gridlock-K2, a K2 style based on the original.

Next up, a very stylish 2 column theme from Justin Shattuck, Salmon. Beautifully designed with a darker, modern feel, a great example of a quality theme.

AboutMyDot.Net has several nice looking themes. Unfortunately, the previews aren’t working, so can only go by the screenshots, but the theme, A Nice Touch seems particularly well done.

And to wrap up, Smashing Magazine has done it again, rounding up 10, Fresh, Elegant and Clean WordPress Themes.

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.

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.

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.