Introducing Jigoshop: A High Quality Free WordPress E-Commerce Plugin

by Sarah Gooding June 28^th, 2011 5 Responses

A new free e-commerce plugin has arrived on the scene for WordPress users. Jigoshop launched last month with the tagline: “A WordPress eCommerce plugin that works”. The plugin prides itself in being lightweight, extensible, and awesome right out of the box.

Jigoshop comes with a wide range of widgets and shortcodes for displaying products anywhere within posts and pages. Shortcodes are available for featured products, recent products, products by ID, products by SKU, and products displayed from multiple IDs and SKUs.

Custom Widgets Include:

Shopping cart
Product search
Layered navigation
Price filter

Community, Development, Freebies, News, Themes

Trending: A New Free WordPress Theme for the Hybrid Core Framework

by Sarah Gooding June 23^rd, 2011 1 Response

Expert theme developer Justin Tadlock has just released a new free theme for his Hybrid Core Framework, which is also completely free and open source.

Trending is a parent theme for Hybrid, but it also comes with a sample child theme to help you get started.

Awesome built-in features include, but are not limited to:

Cool sticky post design with a custom image size.
Multiple nav menus.
Per-post/page layouts (one-column, two-column, and three-column layouts).
Art direction (the ability to add custom, per-post stylesheets).
Custom widgets (overwrites the default WordPress widgets with better alternatives).
Several sidebars (you can add widgets in several places).

Community, Freebies, News, Themes

Expositio: A New Free Portfolio Theme for WordPress from WP Shower

by Sarah Gooding June 20^th, 2011 6 Responses

WP Shower is an excellent resource for both free and commercial WordPress themes. We’ve been following WP Shower for the past year or so and have enjoyed watching their theme collection grow. They’ve just added a new free portfolio-style theme over the weekend.

Introducing Exposito – a Simple, Clean Portfolio Theme
Exposito allows you to showcase images or portfolio items in a with a unique scrolling layout. Here’s a screenshot of one of the portfolio pages:

The Exposito theme features:

Custom Homepage – Allows you to set elements of the page manually.
Typography – Choose 6 fonts, set the size and color.

Freebies, Themes

10 Free Responsive WordPress Themes

by Siobhan McKeown June 16^th, 2011 47 Responses

Responsive design has been buzzing on the internet since Ethan Marcotte’s post on A List Apart last May. It takes into account the fact that there is a growing number of devices that people are using to interact with the web. Everything from smartphones, tablets, large monitors, small monitors, e-readers, mobile phones, games consoles, netbooks and even my little Nintendo DS. Responsive websites respond to the device upon which they are viewed. That means that when new devices arrive on the market a responsive site should look great on it. I’m looking forward to seeing a responsive website projected onto the back of my retina. I love the future :D

Community, Development, Freebies, News, Themes

17 Free WordPress Themes You’ll Actually Want to Use

by Sarah Gooding June 14^th, 2011 16 Responses

Are you tired of sorting through hundreds of WordPress themes for just one that you might be able to use? We’ve scoured the internet for the best free themes available so far in 2011, so you don’t have to spend so much time searching. Grab a cup of coffee and start bookmarking your favorites!

WordPress Diary Theme
Demo | Download

News Theme
Demo | Download

Imbalance 2
Demo | Download

gRID! Theme
Demo | Download

Melville
Demo | Download

Spectre
Demo | Download

Lysa Theme
Demo | Download

AutoFocus+
Demo | Download

Abtely
Demo | Download

Grading Theme
Demo | Download

Twenty Eleven
Demo | Download

Yoko
Demo | Download

Video
Demo | Download

Beauty & Clean
Demo | Download

Splendio
Demo | Download

Spectacular

Community, Freebies, News

Free Ebook! Download a Copy of WordPress and Ajax

by Siobhan McKeown June 13^th, 2011 3 Responses

If you’re interested in learning about using Ajax with WordPress then you should grab yourself a copy of the free WordPress and Ajax ebook. WordPress and Ajax is a comprehensive review of using Ajax with WordPress. From the website:
The book contains three real-life examples that provide the rationale and logic behind coding decisions, the reasons for Ajax’s use, and the steps from inception to completion of the examples.
The book works through three main stages:

Foundation: get a good foundation for sending your first Ajax request;
Sending that First Request: learn the code to send your first request and carry out server-side work;

header image - wordpress and ajax book cover

Community, Freebies, Themes

Grab a Gorgeous Free HTML5 WordPress Theme with Responsive Layout from Smashing Magazine

by Siobhan McKeown June 8^th, 2011 5 Responses

Smashing Magazine have been up to their tricks again, yesterday launching a brand new free HTML 5 Theme for WordPress. The theme, called Yoko, was designed by Elmastudio. It’s not just got HTML5 hotness but it has been built with CSS3 media queries for a responsive layout. This means that the theme adapts itself to the size of the browser, making it optimized for the biggest desktop screens and the smallest smartphone screens. . Here’s what they’ve got to say:

Community, development, Freebies, News, Plugins

Quickly Clone and Migrate WordPress Sites with the Duplicator Plugin

by Sarah Gooding June 8^th, 2011 63 Responses

Cloning a WordPress site for use in another location can be sometimes be a fairly involved process, requiring the use of an FTP client, phpMyAdmin, and multiple file edits. I’m excited about the Duplicator plugin, because it reduces this process to three easy steps:

1. Create a package
2. Download
3. Install in the new location

Primary uses for the Duplicator plugin:

Migrate a site from one location to another location
Pull a production site down onto your local machine
Push a local development to a production server

BuddyPress, BuddyPress Development, Community, Development, Freebies, multisite, News, Plugins

Free Plugin Lets You Use WordPress Multisite to Power Multiple BuddyPress Social Networks

by Sarah Gooding June 3^rd, 2011 55 Responses

Currently the default support for BuddyPress within WordPress Multisite is only for the main site. But what if you could have multiple social networks running on one WordPress installation, each having its own separate environment? BuddyPress enthusiasts have been asking for this feature ever since the plugin came on the scene. Now there’s a plugin for that!

Community, Freebies, News, Plugins, WPMU DEV

Introducing the free WPMU DEV Google +1 WordPress Plugin

by Siobhan McKeown June 2^nd, 2011

The Google +1 button is a brand new way for visitors to recommend your content. By clicking the button your visitor is telling the world “hey, this is great content” or “you should check this out.”

The new, free, Google +1 plugin from WPMU DEV lets you install the Google +1 button onto your site without the need for touching any code. Add Google +1 to your posts and your pages and show the world how awesome you are.
Features

Readers can vote for posts and pages using Google +1
Google +1 widget
Unregistered visitors can vote
Custom post type support
4 button sizes