Make Your WordPress Site A Delicacy With The Buttercream Theme

by Tom Ewer May 17^th, 2012 2 Responses

Buttercream theme.

Say it out loud. It has a nice flow, doesn’t it?

In fact, the word “buttercream” alone gets me hungry, and that’s before I’ve even looked at the theme.

As free themes go, I am really impressed by this one – the design is great, it supports all post formats, custom backgrounds, a footer menu and a fully responsive design (more on that shortly).

You also have a choice of three different styles (fairly subtle changes to the color scheme and header image) – “confetti”, “chocolate orange”, and “red velvet”.
However…

Plugins

Create Your Own Customized RSS Feed Ticker With Super RSS Reader

by Tom Ewer May 16^th, 2012 Leave a comment

There is no doubting the fact that open source is awesome. But there is a blunt edge to the open source sword – the barriers of entry are non-existent. For every excellent WordPress plugin, there are 100 crap ones. It can often take a long time to sift through the garbage to find a diamond.

With that in mind, I always like it when a plugin simply works. When it meets or even surpasses your expectations in carrying out a singular task effectively.

Super RSS Reader is one such plugin. Check out this video for a quick overview:

Plugins

WP-ShowHide: Embed Text Within Your Posts With A Show/Hide Link

by Tom Ewer May 15^th, 2012 4 Responses

If you’re an experienced WordPress user, you may have heard of Lester Chan (otherwise known as “gamerz”). Lester is the author of no less than 19 plugins, of which 4 feature on the WPMU Top 100 Plugins list. That’s more than the likes of Joost de Valk, Automattic, or anyone else for that matter.

I recently interviewed Lester for ManageWP, and so had the opportunity to take a closer look at all of his plugins. One that caught my attention in particular was WP-ShowHide. It is very simple, but what it does, it does well.

WP-ShowHide: Embed Text Within Your Posts With A Show/Hide Link

Opinion

The Solution To Facebook’s Link Insert Bug

by Tom Ewer May 14^th, 2012 9 Responses

A new bug reared its ugly head when Facebook rolled out their new page design. A bug that was driving me nuts. But fortunately, I soon found an extremely simple fix.

I first wanted to check and make sure that I was not the only person coming across the problem. But after a quick straw poll amongst some colleagues, I discovered that I was not.

Here’s the problem:

Themes

The Top 50 Free WordPress Themes For Your Site

by Tom Ewer May 11^th, 2012 13 Responses

If you’re looking for a free theme for your site, you have just hit the jackpot. I have spent the last couple of weeks sorting and compiling the following list, which features 50 highly rated themes currently available at no charge in the WordPress themes directory.
Before We Begin…
If you just want to get straight onto the list, feel free to skip the following.

*Assumes a defensive stance*

The Top 50 Free WordPress Themes For Your Site

Plugins

WP-Property: WordPress Powered Real Estate and Property Management

by Tom Ewer May 10^th, 2012 8 Responses

I have a confession to make – I stole the headline of this post directly from the tagline of the plugin I am featuring. But when a tagline so aptly describes the functionality of a product, what better words are there to use?

WP-Property: WordPress Powered Real Estate and Property Management

Opinion

Comments – Striking a Balance Between Healthy Moderation and Despotism

by Tom Ewer May 9^th, 2012 3 Responses

I never thought that I’d get to use the word “despotism” in a WPMU article. Actually, I’d never thought about whether or not I would, but if the question had been asked of me, I would have certainly thought it unlikely.

On the other hand, I do tend to wander onto some pretty strange paths at times, so I shouldn’t be that surprised. The point is, I am rather pleased with myself for shoehorning despotism into this post. I am even more pleased with myself because it is actually relevant.
Do You Use a Comment Policy?

Comments - Striking a Balance Between Healthy Moderation and Despotism

Multisite, Multisite Tutorials

A Beginner’s Introduction To Multisite

by Tom Ewer May 8^th, 2012 2 Responses

You may have noticed that Joe recently published an interview with a successful WordPress multisite user as part of a planned ongoing series. If you did, you may be wondering what on earth multisite actually is.

It’s not an unreasonable question – you could happily use WordPress for many months, or even years, without exploring the possibilities that multisite offers.

So if you are a total multisite newbie, consider this your initiation.
In a Nutshell

Opinion

How Quickly Do You Upgrade WordPress?

by Tom Ewer May 7^th, 2012 14 Responses

Back in April I wrote an article entitled The Great Plugin Backwards Compatibility Debate, in which I referred to some data showing that a considerable proportion of WordPress users have not installed the latest version (or even the previous latest version, or others before that).

Those figures will be somewhat skewed by inactive sites and the like, but I don’t think anyone could dispute that there are (and probably always will be) a proportion of WordPress users who choose not to upgrade to the latest version of the software.

But why? I would say that there are three common “fears” associated with upgrading:

Opinion

Is Tagging Actually Beneficial to Bloggers?

by Tom Ewer May 4^th, 2012 7 Responses

We are self-confessed tag addicts here at WPMU. Tagaholics, if you will. We tag with wild abandon.

However, I don’t touch tags on my own blog. Given that tagging is fairly widespread in the blogging world and I appear to be missing out on all of the fun, I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at why tags may be useful – and in contrast, why they may be useless.
What is a Tag?

Is Tagging Actually Beneficial to Bloggers?