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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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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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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We know it’s possible to make money with WordPress. We’ve looked into that and have heard from the big players in the past.

But let’s take a step back. Before we can hope to make money with WordPress, however we choose to do it, we have to be in a position where we are recognized as WordPress professionals.

Establishing yourself isn’t an exact science. Some will succeed greatly while others, not so much. But there are some things you can do that will improve your odds quite a bit.

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I’ll be the first to admit that not every website needs a forum, not by a long shot. Not many blog communities are very conducive to a full blown discussion board. Most of the time a comment section works just fine.

But if you decide a forum is appropriate, as I have decided, and you happen to run your website on WordPress, as I do, then you should absolutely consider using bbPress to run your forum. I did that last one also.

For those who don’t know, bbPress is open source forum software built by Automattic, the same people responsible for the continued development of WordPress. The bbPress template system is comparable to the WordPress system, but there are slight differences here and there that I’ll talk about as I walk you through how I built the Theme Playground bbPress theme.

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If you manage a website, the load time of your site should be of your utmost concern. While many of us are living in the broadband fast lanes (that’s what the kids call them, right?) this isn’t the case for everyone, and this is especially not the case for anyone trying to browse your site using a mobile device.

Around here we use WordPress, and just as many problems can pop up with WordPress as any other system out there today. There is one building block to our sites that is somewhat unique: Plugins. Other content management systems have their own names for what WordPress Plugins do: some call them modules, others extensions. You get the idea. Plugins give us the ability to add further functionality to our sites. They also can add some nasty speed bumps and (dare I say the word) bloat to our pages that can slow down the load time.

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Disclaimer: I’m not about using WordPress to make a quick buck or run any sort of scam. This post is purely about beginning and continuing a career using WordPress.

One thing that really inspired me when I was first able to meet and speak with Matt Mullenweg was this little tidbit, which he actually repeated in the interview I did with him that I posted here. In the particular part that inspired me, he said:

One of my personal dreams is to have thousands of people earning their living from WordPress, which I wrote a bit about here:
http://photomatt.net/2007/05/10/meaningful-overnight-relationship/ — Matt Mullenweg

That’s awesome to hear from the project leader of WordPress, a system that so many of us use. But it also presents the question: how exactly should we earn our livings with WordPress? What works, and what doesn’t?

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Every WordPress site uses Plugins to some capacity. Some use them for simple things like dishing up a geeky quote like the Hello Dolly Plugin that comes with every WordPress install, while others are doing complex things like turning your blog into an eCommerce platform.

In this post I’d like to offer up my selection of Plugins that every WordPress site should use, particularly because they represent the features that every website, in general, should have. I’m interested in quality over quantity here, so don’t expect a huge list. This is about finding a manageable, dare I say memorizable, list of go-to Plugins that get done what we need done.

Sound good? Let’s get started then.

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