I’ll be the first to admit that security is far from a fun issue to deal with. If it wasn’t for this cool masthead I whipped up for the occasion, I probably wouldn’t even be excited to talk about it!

But in all seriousness, without taking these precautions you will, eventually, suffer the consequences. It happens to big sites hoping to profit and smaller personal weekend blogs. No one is safe. The most you can do, and the smartest you can be, is to follow the steps I’ve outlined below. With any luck you’ll avoid any WordPress security issues in the future.

First: un-cross your fingers. That won’t help you at all. Okay, now proceed.

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So far in our quest to create our own theme framework we’ve taken a moment, a brief pause, to learn from the greats who are already managing popular WordPress theme frameworks. Now it’s time to start putting this know-how into practice.

In this part of the tutorial we’re going to nail down a flexible HTML structure and very basic CSS. From here we’ll be able to build out our WordPress theme files and start adding in some of what makes a framework a framework.

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In an effort to keep up to date on the weekly news within the WordPress community, well known WordPress blogger Jeff Chandler has prepared a community roundup post for us. If you come across any news (or create any yourself) feel free to drop a post in the Theme Playground forum and we’ll try and include it in next week’s roundup. — Ed.

Another Font Technique For WordPress Designers

SitePoint takes a look at a technique which uses Cufon, a method of text replacement which uses JavaScript to replace HTML text with canvas elements. Could this be the answer designers are looking for?

Popularity Contest 2.0 Beta 2 Released

Alex King has released beta 2 of his popularity contest plugin. Since beta 1, a number of things have been added or changed such as tag reports, bug fixes, etc.

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Everyone knows how easy it is to publish a blog. At this point, who doesn’t have one of their own? But where blogs have picked up and become more mainstream, podcasting has yet to reach the Mom Plateau. The Mom Plateau is a name I just made up to describe the point at which my mom knows about and understands just what something is. Podcasting isn’t quite there yet.

The only way podcasting will ever reach that plateau is if it’s as easy to start up and publish a podcast as it is to start up and publish a blog. Luckily, with WordPress, a Plugin, and a bit of guidance, anyone can publish their own podcast.

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Now that we’ve realized the value of building your own theme framework it’s time to start building it. The best laid plans a happy framework make, so we’re going to start this the smart way. What are the frameworks of today, and how can we learn from them?

I’d like to take this quick second to praise each of these developers for doing what they do, and for supporting the GPL. By embracing open source (and no doubt being embraced back, but I’m not talking) they’ve made our review session here possible. You all rock.

Now, let’s go steal some of their work and improve it.

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Now that commercial GPL themes are on the forefront of everyone’s mind (not that it’s a new idea, of course) all sorts of prickly ethical issues have been popping up. The most general version of these issues is: “How do we play nice with each other in this new environment?”

To be clear, anything released under the GPL license is very much available for any means of modification and distribution. This goes for my GPL themes, your GPL themes, and anyone else’s GPL Plugins. (Let’s set aside the question of whether anything built on WordPress can be non GPL. Use the forum for that bickering.)

Alex King was torn apart last week for supposing a scenario, based on what I’ve said above, wherein someone so inclined could redistribute the now GPL themes being sold by major WordPress theme developers. You know who they are.

Alex was making a point, illustrating a possible, and likely, scenario (see his followup post, by the way).

The question: how far should developers go when using others’ GPL themes and redistributing them, whether for free or for profit?

I propose an answer: don’t be a douchebag.

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If “premium theme” was the talk of WordPress Land in 2008, I’d wager a bet that the favorite talk of 2009 will be over “theme frameworks.” There are plenty of awesome frameworks out there for you to use, too.

This series of posts is going to offer a method for developing your own theme framework. We’ll learn from the aforementioned awesome themes, develop a plan of action, and follow through with building it out. Care to join?

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In an effort to keep up to date on the weekly news within the WordPress community, well known WordPress blogger Jeff Chandler has prepared a community roundup post for us. If you come across any news (or create any yourself) feel free to drop a post in the Theme Playground forum and we’ll try and include it in next week’s roundup. — Ed.

WooThemes Goes GPL

Last week we told you that iThemes had switched their licensing to be fully supportive of the GPL. This week, it’s WooThemes making the announcement.

→ On the forum: A growing trend toward GPL support

WordPress As A Social Platform

Cozmoslabs published a great writeup earlier this week looking at how WordPress is becoming a social web platform.

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In an effort to keep up to date on the weekly news within the WordPress community, well known WordPress blogger Jeff Chandler has prepared a community roundup post for us. If you come across any news (or create any yourself) feel free to drop a post in the Theme Playground forum and we’ll try and include it in next week’s roundup. — Ed.

WPTopics.com Launched

Darren Hoyt who is most well known for creating the Mimbo Pro theme for WordPress has launched a new project called WPTopics which is similar to AllTop but more focused on WordPress than other topics. Users can vote on the content they want to show up at the top.

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The photos below were all taken by either Ashley at WordCamp Chicago last weekend or taken from the official Flickr Group. Feel free to use any of our photos, but do ask those responsible (marked in the photo comments) before using theirs. Thanks!

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