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Looking for a new theme?

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If you’re looking for a new theme, there are a number of theme directories that can help you find what you’re looking for. One interesting one is Top WP Themes, a collection of WordPress themes that are great for any circumstance. There are themes you can use for plain blogs, themes you can use for ecommerce sites; themes you can use to sell ballet shoes and themes you can use can use to sell Baldwin hardware; themes to set up a college blog , or themes to set up a celebrity blog.

Check it out, you may find something exciting.

WordPress eStore Plugin

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Ever had the need to sell eBooks online? Well, there’s a great plugin that lets you do this: the WordPress eStore. So what does the plugin do? Here’s a short synopsis:

In a Nutshell… this sleek WordPress shopping cart plugin allows you to sell any form of digital products and services from your wordpress blog securely with complete automation. What I mean by complete automation is that once you set it up the whole process (The buying and the delivering of the product without revealing the real URL of the product) works on its own

That’s a pretty powerful product, and a plugin I probably wouldn’t mind paying for. You can use it to sell eBooks for example, about any topic you like, from web programming all the way to how to get the best auto insurance quote around. Check out WordPress eStore

Hiding the work in progress

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mykitchenpitch.wordpress.com/2007/09/11/inippu...
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I just got a question from a friend who asked me if it’s possible to customise a new theme while keeping her WordPress site available to normal visitors on the old theme. I didn’t think this was possible, so my first instinct was to suggest using Maintenance Mode to put the site offline while she’s customising the theme. I’ve used this plugin extensively in the past, but it was always involved in the creation of a new site; and she didn’t really want to expose her user to any downtime.

That’s when I came across Theme Test Drive. It’s a plugin that lets Administrators see and customise one theme, while everyone else uses the standard theme. It’s particularly useful if your new theme has dirty tricks like hidden links or links to the “best colon cleanser” site that you really prefer search engines not to see. It’s a great addition to a WordPress developer’s arsenal and comes very well recommended.

The WordPress Foundation

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It’s great to see that the WordPress team has set up the WordPress Foundation with the express aim:

The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come.

It’s a sure sign that the platform is maturing and it’s nice to see that care is being taken to protect the brand and the software. It doesn’t matter if you’re building healthcare job search engine, or a joke shop; the platform you run on is paramount to the longevity of your business.

Some new WordPress sites

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With WordPress 2.9 downloaded almost 2.5 million times so far, you can easily imagine how many new WordPress sites get deployed every day. That number is probably just a subset of the number of WordPress sites out there, after all, many don’t get refreshed every time a new version of WordPress comes out. Just this week, I’ve pushed out SherrilynneStarkie.com and am working on jcc.im. I know that a friend of mine is working on the All Saints, Hove site too, and that’s just today.

I think part of the attraction is the fact that it’s so easy to do build something. Putting a site together is quite easy and I actually quite enjoy popping into a coffee shop, relaxing in one of their modern sofas, getting an Internet connection and tweaking one of my sites.

Are you using WordPress yourself yet?

New site: SherrilynneStarkie.com

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I’ve just put a new WordPress site live called: SherilynneStarkie.com which, as you probably guessed, is my friend Sherrilynne‘s new website. She decided to go down the personal brand route and this site pulls together information about her, her new blogging platform and a platform for her lifestream. They’re all things that are easy to do with WordPress regardless on if you have a personal website, or a site about the Outer Banks.

The site uses a free version of a theme called Arthemia which works really nicely and comes very much recommended. Next time I might even use the premium version.

Focusing on the User Experience

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Interesting post down on the WordPress blog that talks about the plans that are being made for 2010. There are some interesting developments, from new mailing lists and new initiatives. The User Interface and User Experience is a pretty important part of a system, because it’s the part that users see every day. And focusing on this is a sign that the product is mature and handling the day-to-day really well.

In my mind, a User Interface is like one of these plasma mounts for your new TV. It’s not the reason you bought your TV, but living without it just makes it so much harder, doesn’t it?