WordPress Theme Design

This is the series of sites that I subscribe to in order to keep up on WordPress news and to always get better at working with WordPress.

WordPress Development & Announcements

• Official WordPress Blog
  Jane Wells provides great updates on the development status, any new features being released, and also where you can jump in to help the project.
• WordPress UI
  The WordPress UI group works here to discuss improvements to the software that are user interface related. You can get involved with the UI IRC chat on Thursdays at 2:00 PM Eastern.
• WordPress Dev
  From here you can follow the status of the latest WordPress development projects. You can get involved with the main WordPress development IRC chat on Thursdays at 3:30 PM Eastern.
• Matt’s Blog
  The founders blog is always a good place to stay up on WordPress announcements, plus he is a very interesting entrepreneur.
• BuddyPress.org
  The official site & forums for BuddyPress development. If you aren’t already using BuddyPress for a project you should be as it no longer requires an installation of WordPress MU.

Tips & Tutorials

• Smashing Magazine on WordPress
  Smashing always puts out high quality articles and their WordPress posts are no exception.
• NetTuts on WordPress
  Envato has a great section on working with WordPress, not updated too often, but definitely worth subscribing too.
• WP Engineer
  Here you can get more technical tips as well as great previews for what is coming in the next version of WordPress.
• WP Recipes
  Jean-Baptiste Jung’s blog on WordPress tips and tricks. He has some of the best simple tips to help you customize your WordPress blog.
• Justin Tadlock
  I learned all about custom taxonomies and other great ideas from Justin. His blog is a must read for an advanced WordPress developer.
• WP Candy
  This site hasn’t been updated lately, which is a shame, because their old content is really good and helpful.
• Theme Shaper
  Ian Stewart is the creator of the Thematic framework and the Kirby theme which is the foundation of the new WordPress default theme 2010. His blog is great for tips and WordPress news.

WordPress MU

• WPMU.org
  Though mostly focused on WordPress MU, they have recently branched out to standard WP tips as well as lots of great resources on BuddyPress.
• WPMU Tutorials
  Andrea and Ron are two of the most helpful members of the WordPress community. Their blog on WordPress multi-user is a must read!

There are many more WordPress tutorial sites out on the web that I didn’t list here. This is just the collection that I find valuable on a day-to-day basis. If you have suggestions of sites I should add let me know in the comments.

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Our blog will regularly be updated with WordPress tips, theme announcements, and general news. Subscribe to our RSS feed to stay updated.

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We just launched a WP Limits Twitter account. It will feature short (140 characters or less!) tips on WordPress or links to other great articles. Don’t worry, we won’t update more than once per day, so we won’t be spamming your account. Lots of great resources coming!

Make sure to follow the account here: http://twitter.com/wplimits

If you have any ideas to contribute we would greatly appreciate it as well!

Over the weekend I was able to go to WordCamp Utah and hear some great talks. I will have a more detailed write-up coming soon. Our weekly resources post will feature a lot of information from those talks.

1. WordCamp Utah Video Stream – http://www.ustream.tv/channel/wordcamp-utah
   This has all of the videos from the conference. In particular check out Matt’s keynote address and Cameron’s talk on design. By far the best.
2. Good vs. Great Design – http://cameronmoll.com/speaking/wordcamp/
   Cameron Moll is a great designer and very well polished speaker. He has a lot of things to say on the topic of design, and being a great designer. The link is to his slide deck for the talk. You can view the video on the uStream channel linked to above.
3. Carrington Theme – http://crowdfavorite.com/wordpress/
   Announced by Alex King of CrowdFavorite during his talk at WordCamp, Carrington is a new kind of theme. Or rather more of a theme framework. They have a lot of great features and an interesting new approach to theme development. Here is what Matt says about it:  http://ma.tt/2008/09/carrington/

1. How to Create a WordPress Theme From Scratch (Part 2) – http://nettuts.com/working-with-cmss/how-to-create-a-wordpress-theme-from-scratch-part-2/
   Earlier we posted a link to creating a WordPress theme from scratch. Here is the next part in that great tutorial.
2. Easier Theme Development with Sample WordPress Content – http://wpcandy.com/articles/easier-theme-development-with-the-sample-post-collection.html
   Want to thoroughly test your theme for every situation? This post details how you can create sample content to make sure that your theme covers every angle.
3. WP Candy Launches WP Coder – http://wpcandy.com/articles/wpcoder-affordable-psd-to-wordpress-coding.html
   As a bit of community news, the people behind WP Candy have launched WP Coder, a new PSD to WordPress conversion site. There prices look pretty good. If nothing else, the site design is worth looking at!
4. Create a Widget Ready Footer in WordPress - http://help-developer.com/index.php/2008/07/creating-a-widget-ready-footer-in-wordpress/
   Widgets are powerful. Too often people don’t use them to their full potential. Take a look at this post to learn a new way to use them in your footer.
5. Displaying WordPress Categories as a Drop Down Menu - http://anthologyoi.com/wordpress/displaying-wordpress-categories-in-a-horizontal-dropdown-menu.html
   Often for a good magazine layout instead of using pages, you will use categories. This post shows how to create that navigation.

1. Sliding Doors Navigation with WordPress – http://hackwordpress.com/sliding-doors-wordpress-navigation-css-technique/
   WordPress by default cannot support the infamous sliding doors technique, but with this simple change, you can create beautiful navigation to your hearts content.
2. Sliding Doors + Sons of Suckerfish – http://www.jappler.com/blog/archive/2007/11/12/sliding-doors-sons-of-suckerfish-jappler-menus
   Last week we talked about Sons of Suckerfish and how to use them in a WordPress blog. Now we have an article detailing using sliding doors and Sons of Suckerfish (though this article is not WordPress specific).
3. Breadcrumb Navigation for Categories – http://www.7879designs.com/wordpress-tips/wordpress-categories-breadcrumb-navigation/
   A lot of magazine sites use categories as the main navigation to better separate content. We all know that for both SEO and usability breadcrumbs make a huge difference, so why not add them in for categories as well as pages? This article shows you how.
4. Tips on Writing WordPress Tips – http://www.blogherald.com/2007/07/09/tips-for-writing-good-wordpress-tips/
   Want to have your WordPress related content featured on mainstream blogs? Well, here is a list of the criteria to follow to make that happen. It is a great list on what mistakes to avoid when writing your WordPress tips.