Just this week Lorelle posted on The Blog Herald asking for some help and feedback on how to improve and continue the weekly WordPress news feature that she puts together there. This post got me to thinking about where I find my new on WordPress. Interested?

This post will focus on blogs that act as news sources, rather than on individuals who at times blog about WordPress. If you’re interested in tracking down the individuals who are responsible for WordPress, and following them on their blogs and on Twitter, see my Who’s Who post from a couple of weeks ago.

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Chris Pearson has put together a nice tutorial all about creating a user-functions.php file in your WordPress installation.

Do you enjoy your widget-ized sidebars? Then you have functions.php to thank. Theme developers can also use functions.php to add extra functionality to their themes. Just recently I customized a functions.php file in order to enable a theme options page, a method I’ll share with you later this week.

Here’s what Chris had to say:

One idea that immediately comes to mind is the creation of your own widgets (think sales boxes, special links, product descriptions, etc.). If you define functions for your most commonly-used widgets, you’ll be able to call them at any point in your theme’s code. This makes it much easier to test how certain elements will look on different parts of the page, which is useful for designers and amateur code-wranglers alike.

The benefit of using a user-functions.php, or a custom-functions.php (naming conventions are up to you), is that you can take your functions with you to any new theme you use, making transitions much smoother. He has also, not long ago, talked about adding a custom CSS file to your theme for added control.

Also, be sure to check out Pearson’s new Thesis theme. It looks pretty solid, from where I sit.

I listened to a really interested podcast last week: an interview with Matt Mullenweg, creator/founder of WordPress. Matt mentioned it today on his blog (good one to subscribe to, if you are a WordPress fan) and it reminded me that I took some notes to post for those who might be interested in the bullet points without spending a half an hour listening to the cast.

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Yesterday Smashing Magazine posted a nice piece on optimizing your WordPress site for search engines. It has some helpful tips, although I don’t agree that WordPress is poorly set up for search engines in the first place. If you know what you need to do, it’s perfectly set up. Just because it doesn’t hand it over to you doesn’t mean it isn’t sound.

If you enjoy Theme Playground, you may well enjoy WPDesigner, a site I’ve just caught wind of that does a lot of what I do here.

For a nice inside look at some of the thinking directly behind the removal of all sponsored WordPress themes from the WordPress Theme Viewer, check out Matt’s post this morning.

Matt shares some interesting thoughts, as well as the fact (numbers shared) that non-sponsored themes are much more popular on Theme Viewer than sponsored ones.

So if you assume downloads are a measure of the public interest in a theme, then non-sponsored themes are about twice as popular as sponsored ones.

Of course you might not accept that assumption, and the data is fuzzy, and there are certainly a handful of sponsored themes that are very high quality, but overall the indications are that they were a net drain on the site. Rather than making one-off exceptions to the no-sponsored-themes policy and being accused of favoritism or of having ulterior motives* I’d rather spend time doing things to reward and encourage the people who are making high-quality themes without embedded advertising.

Read the rest of the post at Photo Matt

If you get a chance, head on over to BlueJar and read a new post entitled How to Buy a WordPress Theme. It has some interesting points that shouldn’t be forgotten when looking into spending some bucks on a theme, particularly how to make sure you only purchase a great theme.

Probably the most valuable part of the post is his list of questions to ask the seller of the WordPress theme:

• Header and footer been modified?
• Individual posting area been modified?
• Is the template widgetized? (basically if it is compatible with the new widget sidebar)
• Are comments section customized?
• Is it tested on Firefox, IE6, IE7, Opera 9, Other?
• Does it come with original .PSD file?
• Is the design 100% unique and only sold once?
• Is it XHTML/CSS valid coding?

Great stuff. I can’t even think of anything to add.

I would suggest finding independent artists to create your WordPress theme. If you happen to be in the market for one right now, I would highly suggest a friend of mine who creates awesome blog designs: Cory Miller. We’ve talked about his work before, and he’s a great place to go if you’re interested in investing in some quality work.

Again, good work BlueJar.

A week or so ago I participated in a blogging project through Daily Blog Tips called Blog Project Three. The results of the contest can be seen at the final list at DBT, where over one hundred entries were submitted. Not too shabby!

Part of the contest involved choosing your favorites from the final list. After looking through them, I chose the following as my picks, and no surprise they focus on web design and WordPress.

• Make Your WordPress Blog More Search Engine Friendly
  A few nice tips for improving your SEO status using WordPress. Actually one idea I’ll be implementing here that I haven’t yet. Good one!
• 3 + 3 + 3 Places Where You Can Get Free Icons for All Seasons and Reasons
  Definitely a list more than a post, but good info nonetheless. I haven’t looked through them all, but since I plan on bookmarking it for future use it must have some value to it, and others should see that as well.
• 3 Reasons Why You Must Learn (the) Ruby Language
  Ruby is the content filling a few books on my reading list right now, so this one caught my eye. While the blog doesn’t seem very populated right now, it’s one I want to keep an eye on. I would say, to whoever wrote this and started the blog: keep it up, don’t stop now!
• Top 3 Mistakes of Rookie Web Designers
  Some very true statements in this one. I can’t claim that I’ve made all those mistakes, but I’m very familiar with the line of thinking that would lead up to them. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

There were a huge number of entries, again, and a lot (especially) on blogging tips. Congrats to everyone seeing some nice traffic from the competition (Theme Playground included) and good luck to everyone as the votes are counted!

Ever find yourself reusing elements from previous designs when starting up Photoshop to create yet another WordPress theme? Whether you have that issue or not, apparently others do.

Area381 has released their starter PSD for creating WordPress themes.  Basically it’s a PSD where…well, check it out for yourself below.

I have to highly suggest this method for creating themes. But don’t be afraid to step out of the box. Oftentimes it’s the design that’s different that will excite the designer in you.

Link via Cory

The Blog Herald has a very applicable post up right now by Lorelle called Tips for Writing Good WordPress Tips. It’s all about good practice and technique when it comes to creating great material focusing on WordPress. I found it an educational read in some respects, and a review in some others.

Overall we scored pretty well on her points. Here are a couple of the really strong ones (editor’s marks emphasized).

• Spell WordPress and Plugins right. Wow, good one. We will be doing this from now on. Ouch.
  
• Publish your code to be copied and pasted directly.
• Provide instructions in a step-by-step manner rather than paragraph-by-paragraph.
• Make the content more important than the money-making process on your blog.
• Provide links to related resources for substantiation as well as more information.

Some great thoughts. I look forward to implementing some of those thoughts around here. Thanks Lorelle!

Link via David Airey