Welcome to WPMU’s new Best in WordPress, a weekly series rounding-up the best posts from across the web covering – you guessed it – WordPress!

But we’re not just listing random posts. This series features articles and posts that really standout: the most highly commented, often shared, and extremely detailed posts on topics of interest to the WordPress user community, including code snippets, tutorials, design tips, theme previews, plugin lists, and more.

This week we’ve highlighted 8 articles that cover WordPress design, security, and social sharing.

1. How to Scan Your Site for Potentially Malicious Code (WP Beginner)

This post by the gang at wpbeginner highlights a few free plugins you can use to make sure your WordPress website is secure and does not contain malicious code. This is essential reading for anyone thinking of using a free theme.

2. How to Hide The Theme Editor from WordPress Dashboard (WP Recipes)

Every developer has run into a situation where his or her clients click the wrong button or try changing core theme code to edit their own sites. This post from WP Recipes shows you how to remove the theme editor from the WordPress admin menus and prevent catastrophe for your clients – all without using a plugin; and with the ability to specify which user levels can still see all menus.

3. WP Jedi: Handy Social Sharing Statistics Plugins (WP Jedi)

Sharing plugins abound, but few of them offer any real way to view analytics inside your WordPress dashboard. If you’d like to get more information about your post and page sharing analytics, WP Jedi put together this great list of a few plugins which bring statistics to your social sharing.

4. Fee PSD Pagination Files (DesignrFix)

UI design is increasingly more important as the mobile web users continue to increase – your designs need to look great (and be functional) on the big screen and the small. This post from DesignrFix gives you access to more than 20 Photoshop files with UI and pagination elements.

5. Is Responsive Design Still Not Worth It? (Manage WP)

Responsive design is meant to make the user experience pleasurable whether on a big screen or small, which makes it a popular topic for designers today. But this article from ManageWP talks about some of the drawbacks of designing a responsive site, and provides some great food for thought.

6. 6 Cool Image Captions with CSS (Hongkiat)

This post from hongkiat explains how you can create 6 really cool captions in your web designs, including rotating and sliding captions, plus other cool pseudo animation techniques.

7. CSS Questions and Answers (Smashing Magazine)

In this post, Chris Coyier from CSS-tricks.com gives us a answers to the most recent CSS questions from around the web. This is a great series, and this article in particular, addresses topics like image handling, structuring your CSS, importing files, and more.

8. Ultimate Site Finalization Checklist for Professional WordPress Websites (WPMU)

One of our very own writers has put together a great checklist for professional web designers – guiding them through all the potential steps in a web design workflow, from engaging the client to design and development, to delivering the site and continuing with maintenance. This list has it all.

That’s it for this week. Make sure to visit us again next week for the a new batch of the Best in WordPress!