Wordpress4Dummies, wordpress blog ,SEO, Articles, Templates, Plugin, Skin, Download, pdf

This guest post was written by Jean-Baptiste Jung, who maintains a blog over at Cats Who Code that covers WordPress and other webmaster stuff. If you have webmaster or WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a post for WordPress Hacks, please contact us.

Inspired by the well-known Mimbo theme by Darren Hoyt, OpenBook is a free Magazine style Wordpress theme, which doesn’t require you to manually edit a file.

I first realeased this theme in January, but at this time it was only available in French. So it is the very first English version.

Download OpenBook

Download OpenBook 2.2 Wordpress Theme: zip archive

If you’re looking for a live demo, check out my personnal blog which uses this theme.

OpenBook Features

Here’s what you can expect in OpenBook theme:

• Magazine-style homepage, including 2 columns and SmoothGallery for your featured posts.
• 100% Gravatar compatible.
• Custom fields to insert images on the homepage gallery, on homepage posts and in categories posts.
• Magazine-style dropdown-menu for your categories.
• Not manual editing required. After installing the theme, you’ll find an OpenBook tab under Design, where you can set up the options for the theme, including featured posts, featured category, blog logo, number of posts to display on the gallery, categories to display on the blog homepage…
• If you hate Internet Explorer 6 as I do, you’ll probably be happy: OpenBook have an option which litteraly crash IE6 if checked. If unchecked, IE6 will not crash and people who (still) use it will see your blog just as other users.
• Compatible with Firefox 2, Firefox 3 beta, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 6. (OpenBook is also probably compatible with other browsers like Konqueror, I just haven’t tested it myself)
• Widget-ready sidebar
• SEO-friendly titles
• Page templates for Links and Archives
• Compatible with Wordpress 2.3 to 2.5.1

Installing OpenBook

OpenBook install is like installing any Wordpress theme: Unzip the archive, and upload the openbook22-en directory into the wp-content/themes of your Wordpress install.

Then, go to your WP administration panel, Design » Theme and select OpenBook.

Now, you should go to Design » OpenBook and fill the various fields:

• Your blog logo url
• ID of your featured category
• Number of posts to display in SmoothGallery.
• IDs of categories to display on the homepage.
• If you want to make any IE6 crash, just check the related checkbox.
• Number of posts to display on the homepage, by category

Configuring SmoothGallery

SmoothGallery is a very pretty mootools script by Jonathan Schemoul which display posts along with big images. In order to configure it, you must create a new category (In this exemple, we’ll call it featured) and report its ID to Design » OpenBook.

When you want to show a particular post in the SmoothGallery, just edit the post and check the featured category. Of course, you can add the post to other categories as well.

Now, you should define an image that will display in SmoothGallery. Juste create a custom field, give it featuredimg as key and your image url as value. Once saved, the post will be displayed in SmoothGallery.

The ideal SmoothGallery image size is 600*250 pixels. You can use different size, but the image will be cropped or will not fill all the available space.

Using custom fields to display images in posts

As I said above, it is possible to assign one or more image(s) to a post. Theses images will be displayed on the homepage, or in categories pages, depending of the custom field used.

Here’s the custom fields keys, and the place where the images will be displayed.

• featuredimg » The image will be displayed in SmoothGallery (Only if the related post is in the featured category)
• Image » The image will be displayed along with its related post, on the homepage.
• catimage » The image will be displayed in category pages. Ideal size is 125*125 pixels.

Please note

The OpenBook theme is (and will stay) 100% free. I also try to always help people who use it as much as I can. The only thing that I’m asking, is that you leave my link on the theme footer. Thanks in advance

Edit on July 3, 2008: I just wrote a simple tutorial for modifying OpenBook color scheme. You can read it here.

Author: Kaltura

DOWNLOAD PLUGIN

This is not just another video embed tool - it includes every functionality you might need for video and rich-media, including the ability to upload/ record/import videos directly to your post, edit and remix content with an online video editor, enable video responses, manage and track your video content, create playlists and much more…

Highlights:

• Upload, record from webcam and import all rich-media directly to your blog post;
• Edit and remix videos using Kaltura’s online full-featured video editor;
• Easily import all rich media (video, audio, pictures…) from other sites and social networks, such as YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, CCMixter, Jamendo, New York Public Library, any URL on the web etc.;
• Allow readers and subscribers to add video and audio comments, and to participate in collaborative videos;
• Manage and track interactive videos through the management console;
• Sidebar widget displaying thumbnails of recent videos and video comments
• Complete administrative capabilities. You decide who can add and edit each video;
• Supports more than 150 video, audio and image file formats and codecs
• Three different video player styles to choose from
• Custom sizing of the video player
• Advanced sharing options for videos
• Easy installation that takes just 4 steps and a few minutes.

This new Version 2.1 includes several fixes and tweaks as well as a cool new widget for the blog sidebar showing all recent videos posted and video comments.

Additional capabilities coming soon:

• The ability to create, manage and display video playlists
• Podcast recorder and player
• The ability to create video galleries
• Advanced playing features such as: subtitles, download button, credits, content discovery, etc.

Showcase your blog, see examples and pictures of the plugin and get support in our forum: http://community.kaltura.org/viewforum.php?f=4

Offline Mode

This plugin enable admin to put up a splash page to show that the site is down for maintenance. Come with a timer to tell how long the site is down. User can customize their own splash screen or get a list of splash screen from author’s site.

Resize at Upload

By using this plugin you can resize all your images when you upload them to your WordPress installation. It lets you specify the maximum width according to which it resizes your images keeping the aspect ratio proportional.

Albumize

This plugin lets you display the images uploaded through the WordPress gallery option in different albums. By organizing your galleries as multiple child pages of one parent page, you can use this plugin to see a preview thumbnail and description of each gallery.

Different Posts per Page

This plugin provides you with freedom to have total control over the number of posts you want to show in home, category, archive or any specific pages of wordpress.

WP Greet Box

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it.

Automatic SEO Links

Forget to put manually your links, just choose a word and a URL and this plugin will replace all matches in the posts of your blog. You can set the title of the link, target, rel and also you can know every moment how many times a word has been changed.

Advanced Code Editor

Integrates the EditArea advanced code editor into WordPress. This adds real time syntax highlighting, line numbering, full screen editing, and more to the code editor to the “Add New Post” and “Add New Page” screens.

Add Post Footer Plugin

Automatically add any custom paragraph, HTML code, advertising codes, technorati tags and/or related links list to the end of every posts. All global options are fully customized via WordPress admin options.

Twitter Tools

Twitter Tools is a plugin by Alex King that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.

Eventr

Eventr lets you create events and provides your visitors with a form that lets them register for the event. There is also an option to show the entire attendee list to blog vistors as well.

Sorce : here

WP e-Commerce plugin for Wordpress

Description: The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.
WP e-Commerce is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind.
Note: This is by far and away the most complete and powerful Shopping Plugin you will find for Wordpress. The feature list goes on and on, have a look for yourself here: WP-Ecommerce Features.

Quick Shop plugin for Wordpress

Description: QuickShop supports any Wordpress that has the Sidebar Widgets installed, really. It adds a SideBar widget that shows the user what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items, not to mention a TinyMCE button to easily allow you to add products to your posts/pages.
Features: A TinyMCE button. This is practically a copy and changeover from the NextGen Gallery ; Full range of formatting for widget layout in Admin -> Options -> Quickshop ; Two widgets - one is Paypal, the other is set for your custom solution ; Now has both Paypal Subscription and Donation tags ; Ability to create different product options in a drop-down.

eShop plugin for Wordpress

Description: There is a fair few features for this powerful plugin, here are some: use Wordpress pages, or posts, to create products ; list multiple products, with add to cart form, on a single page ; products can have multiple options ; upload downloadable products ; basic Statistics ; download sales data ; 3 methods for calculating shipping charges, plus various zone settings via Country or US State… and a few more.

WP Live-Shopping plugin for Wordpress

Description: This widget enables you to display all relevant live shopping offers within your Wordpress blog in one single widget. You can add the widget to your sidebar and customize its appearance as you like inside the boundaries of LiveShoppingWidgets presentation options.

YAK Shopping Cart plugin for Wordpress

Description: YAK is a simple shopping cart plugin for WordPress, associating products with weblog entries — thus the post ID also becomes the product code.
An options screen is used to configure settings for the shopping cart. There are 3 pages in the WordPress Management screens; one for showing and fulfilling orders, another for product management, and basic sales reports.

Are PayPal plugin for Wordpress

Description: This plugin is used to monetize wordpress blog content using PayPal. It is designed to sell your knowledge.
Features: Post/Page can be set to contain hidden content ; Instead of the hidden text user is shown a message about the action he has to take to be able to see the content ; Content can be set as hidden for unregistered users and visible for registered ; Content can be set as hidden for unregistered-unpayed users and visible for registered-paid users ; Gogglebot can index hidden content so users can search for a hidden content but can not see it. Other search engines will see only visible content ; Administrator can grant users to access payed content ; All the features are configurable using administration screens ; Plugin uses PayPal IPN - Instant Payment Notification protocol so payment/content delivery process is fully automated.

Paypal Shortcodes plugin for Wordpress

Description: This plugin allow to insert Paypal buttons in your posts or pages, just using a shortcode. This plugin doesn’t have a management panel at this time, you will need to edit paypal-shortcodes.php and follow the comments.

EasyDonation plugin for Wordpress

Description: EasyDonation allows Wordpress users to easily embed a PayPal donation button with one tag.

WP Auctions plugin for Wordpress

Description: WP Auctions is a revolutionary plugin for WordPress which allows you to host auctions on your blog and to sell ANYTHING, completely fee-free!
You no longer need to worry about listing fees, seller fees, final value fees, gallery fees or any other type of fee for anything you want to sell online from this day on! Once you list your auctions, you can register your plugin with the WP Auctions Live page and generate some traffic for your website.
Features: Create and host as many auctions as you like ; Upload multiple images for each auction ; Sell items only on ‘Buy It Now’ basis ; Show 3rd party ads when there are no auctions *new ; Get payment via PayPal (PayPal account required) ; RSS feed for your auctions, and many more…

ArtPal plugin for Wordpress

Description: ArtPal is a free (GPL) Wordpress plugin, originally written for Artists, to seemlessly integrate PayPal with their Wordpress blogs so that they can sell their work online.
Features: Easy PayPal integration–all you need to supply is your PayPal email address ; Real-time sales updates–as soon as your item sells, ArtPal will disable it from being sold. You’ll never worry about your item selling twice ; Professionally supported–businesses mean business. Digital Sublimity provides commercial support, so you can be rest assured that your critical application will stay up and running when you need it.

What is not to love about Wordpress? It is extremely extendable, an open source project, has a selection of thousands of plugins, in addition to the support community being simply massive. Wordpress has proved itself as a great blogging platform and content management system.

For us developers and techies the out of the box capabilities is more than we ever need to manage, edit, and add content in any shape or form. However many of us don’t simply build website for ourselves, and we have to think about our clients as well.

While Wordpress has a user friendly interface it is still blogging focused, and there are some usability enhancements that could be desired when those who are not technically savvy (which fits the bill for most clients) will be the primary users.

In this situation there are a few steps to improving the interface to make it easier for our clients.

1. Tweak the Admin Panel

The administration panel is with out a doubt focused on blogging, which makes sense since Wordpress is a blogging platform. Any time you aim to create more content, “Post” is always listed before “Page” and even the labeling “Write” feels more journalistic than page focused.

While it is not a perfect solution, there is a great plugin out there that greatly enhances the layout of the latest versions of Wordpress called Leopard.

With icons and a simple sidebar it will likely be more familiar to non techies or journalists.

If you like the existing interface just fine, you might want to look into the Simple CMS plugin instead. Simple CMS is a quick and easy way to change the focus from Posts to Pages.

If you want to take it a step further, and wish tweak all labeling and names to feel more “CMS” focused, the Admin Menu Management plugin will let you configure a lot of the dashboard elements to be more client friendly.

Finally cleaning up the interface can go a long way. By default Wordpress has a lot of irrelevant information on the dashboard. Information that the average client doesn’t need to be bothered with. The dashboard editor plugin lets you remove some of these unnecessary elements.

Hopefully when Wordpress 2.7 is finally released we won’t need to install these types of plugins as the interface is greatly improved.

2. Extend Capabilities of Navigation Control

If you are building Wordpress CMS sites then chances are you are using the wp_list_pages(); method of creating navigation. This is an excellent way to let clients extend their site and add pages to the site architecture with out any editing of code.

The function does leave much be desired. There are times where you don’t want particular pages to show up in the main navigation, or only include the top level of pages. Normally this requires code tweaking, which is not client friendly. Additionally your client may want several different types of navigation? For example top navigation, utilities, footer navigation, etc… these all might be slightly different.

Again you could do some hard coding, but that makes it difficult for the client to control. So ideally we would like to give some of that control to the client.

The Navigation List plugin gives you complete control over your navigation, including graphics, styling, ordering, etc.. You can create several different navigation blocks and it all done through a great drag and drop interface.

Now clients can have powerful and easy control over their navigational blocks and areas.

3. Create Custom Write Panels

Some web sites only need a homepage and a typical text/image page for content. However many sites do need “custom content” types. Typical examples may be “houses for sale” or “product pages.” Clients could try and craft the pages in the same way for every page, but that is extremely difficult and cumbersome. It would be much easier to take some of the work away from them and simply have them fill out the details (product title, cost, description, and add a picture) rather than trying to do it manually through the write panel.

There are two ways you can create custom write panels to make creating specific types of content easier for clients.

You can do some manual hard coding, like this tutorial

Or take a look into the flutter plugin

Flutter also has some great front end editing capabilities that you could look into as well.

4. Allow More Control Over the Templates

While Wordpress does make it easy to have additional templates for different types of content, allowing clients to customize templates as needed is a nice touch. A common need for example, is to allow clients to pick which sidebar to use on any given page that they are creating.

Additionally a major drawback with the format of Wordpress style pages is that you can edit / modify a pages main content but there is no easy way to edit any other areas of content. The most typical area would be a sidebar.

Side Content is another plugin that lets you have and define different sets of widgets as “side content” that can be edited on a per page basis.

The PageMash template lets you select and customize sidebars based on widgets as well as providing an easy to use interface. It features a drag and drop ajax interface for ease of client use.

5. Create Great Revision Control

Many clients love the idea of revision control. There is a sense of safety that comes with being able to revert back to a previously flawless page/post. Many clients who are not tech savvy are worried about making a change that breaks the site. Being able to switch back to a working page in a worse case scenario is very reassuring.

There are two great plugins that extend the capability of Wordpress revision control.

Revision Control

Revisions

6. Improve the Easy of Linking

If you have ever had to teach a client how to link to another interior page in Wordpress you will know how difficult the linking interface of Wordpress can be. It would be much easier to get a list of links to pages that exist for selection, rather than having to type it in manually.

AWS Easy Page Link lets you do just that.

7. Enhance Multimedia Support with Utilities

The web has become a rich multimedia experience, so it is no surprised a lot of websites not only need the ability to have multimedia on the site, but also add multimedia over time.

Two of the most common multimedia needs are the ability to add video, and to work with images. In a perfect world all clients would have the tools and knowledge to open, edit, resize and save images. However rarely is this the case.

So the Scissors plugin is a perfect fit for all your basic image editing and resizing needs, all through the administration panel.

And for those sites that need video the all in one video pack makes working with and posting video extremely easy.

8. Give them Control Over Contact Forms

It is rare to come across a site that doesn’t have at least one contact form. Many sites now have several contact forms. Beyond that, simply working with contact forms can be a pain.

Why not give the client control over their contact forms? Contact Form 7 makes it easy to create different contact forms and insert them into posts and pages. It features some worthwhile CAPTCHA spam protection.

9. Do Some Branding and Customization

I just wrote an article about branding your administration area. What came out of that were some great suggestions for plugins to brand the login / registration panels and the administration panel.

The Custom Admin Branding plugin will let you swap out logos in the administration panels for your own, or your clients (depending on how you want to brand Wordpress).

WP Admin Theme Extended will let you easily adjust and tweak the color scheme of the administration panel. Again this will let you either pick your branded colors, or your clients for the administration panel.

10. Ensure Everything is Backed up Regularly

You never know what, when and why something will happen to a website. You can’t count on clients to backup their site themselves, and I doubt you want to be in the business of managing backups for all website you create.

The DB Backup plugin has auto scheduling with a wide variety of options and methods for backing up your important Wordpress database.

Ever since the iPhone first appeared, its potential as a mobile blogging tool was readily apparent. Bloggers on the go would be able to tap out short, informative posts from wherever they happened to be, maybe even using the phone’s built-in camera to post mobile pictures as well.

Of course, there was just one roadblock to this paradise of phone-based blogging: the iPhone unveiled in 2007 didn’t come with any software to support such a thing. That had to wait until Apple released its iPhone SDK and flung open the doors of its App Store to third parties. But now that those two things happened over the summer, bloggers-on-the-go have several choices for making sure that a weblog update is never more than a few taps away.

But which of those choices is the best option for the iPhone-toting blogging set? To find out, I downloaded three of the App Store’s more popular options—TypePad, WordPress, and iBlogger—and put each one through their paces.

TypePad

Let’s Get Started: TypePad offers you three options when you launch the app—create a new post, take a photo with the iPhone’s built-in camera, or add an image from your library.

The TypePad iPhone blogging app—also named TypePad—only works with TypePad blogs. If you are unfamiliar with TypePad, it’s a product of Six Apart, the makers of the Movable Type blogging software. Think of TypePad as basically a paid, hosted version of Movable Type aimed at pro-bloggers who want to use Movable Type but aren’t interested in hosting it themselves.

As soon as you launch TypePad on your iPhone and log into your TypePad account, you’ll see three options: Create a Post, Take a Photo, and Add a Photo. (Note that the app only works with one TypePad account at a time, but you can post to all blogs and photo galleries that are associated with that account.) Tapping on Create a Post takes you to the post creation screen where you can add categories (existing categories are retrieved from your TypePad blog), add a photo (either an existing image from your Photo Library or one you shoot with the iPhone’s camera), and write the text of the post. Text entry is pretty barebones: if you want to add a link, or format text you have to hand type in HTML code.

Take a Photo is a great option when you want to snap a quick pic with your iPhone’s camera and post it to your blog. (Since the iPod touch doesn’t feature a built-in camera, touch users won’t be able to take advantage of this comamnd.) Tapping that option takes you right into the camera app; take a picture and it’s immediately inserted into TypePad’s posting screen. Add a title and a category (if you want), and you’re ready to post the picture right to your blog.

As of this writing, there appears to be a bug in which pictures inserted into posts are slightly cropped. This behavior isn’t limited to TypePad, however; the same thing happened to me when I used iBlogger. (It did not happen with WordPress). Given that this bug exists in two completely different apps, I’m ready to lay the blame at the feet of the iPhone software, not the apps themselves. Still, that doesn’t make the cropping any less annoying.

On the bright side, TypePad inserts pictures in such as way that they are displayed at the largest size that your blog settings allow. The pictures are nice and big on your blog, so everyone can appreciate that photo of what you had for lunch.

Add a Photo is very similar to the Take a Photo option, letting you quickly start a blog post with a picture from your camera roll.

TypePad’s mobile edition is clearly designed for writing new posts on the go. You can’t edit existing posts on your blog—in fact the TypePad doesn’t even list your current posts—but you can save a post to your iPhone and edit it later.

All in all, TypePad is great if you’re looking to post pictures taken with your iPhone’s camera to your TypePad blog, though I wouldn’t use it to draft long, text laden posts. That’s mostly a limitation of the device itself—the iPhone’s keyboard and size aren’t ideal for lengthy typing sessions.

WordPress

Get Coding: As with TypePad, the WordPress app for the iPhone and iPod touch requires you to enter any special formatting or links by hand.

Much like its TypePad counterpart, the WordPress blogging app for the iPhone only works with one blogging platform: WordPress, in this case. This is the official WordPress iPhone application put out by the people who make WordPress (and interestingly, one of the first open-source iPhone applications). The app supports posting to multiple WordPress blogs (both self-hosted and WordPress.com blogs are supported), and, unlike TypePad, it will pull down your last 10 posts so you can edit them right on your iPhone. (You can adjust WordPress’s preferences so that you can get more posts.)

Posting works very much like posting on any WordPress blog. Tap the new post button, and you’re taken to a screen where you can add a title, tags, categories, status (published, draft, and the like), and finally the post body itself. (Existing tags and categories are pulled from your blog.) As with TypePad, WordPress requires you to enter any special formatting or links by hand-coding them—there’s no WYSIWYG editor here.

WordPress lets you attach photos to a post—in fact, you can attach as many pictures as you like. You can choose from photos from your iPhone’s camera roll or take a new picture and insert it directly into the post. The WordPress app must use a different method for photo insertion because the photos are not cropped (which happens with the other two blogging apps I’m reviewing here). On the other hand, the WordPress app gives you little control over how the image is displayed in the post. Photos are inserted at the end of the post; if you want to add text after them, you have to do it manually.

WordPress’s iPhone offering also lets you password-protect posts and schedule the date on which they are posted. That latter feature lets you backdate a posts or post something with a future date.

iBlogger

Past Posts: iBlogger shows the last 11 posts on your blog, letting you edit and delete them at will.

From illumineX (the people who make the Mac blogging client ecto), iBlogger is the only app out of this trio that isn’t free. But you do get some interesting features for your $10. First off, iBlogger supports a veritable cornucopia of blogging engines including both TypePad and WordPress as well as Movable Type, ExpressionEngine, and Xanga, among others. That’s a great feature if you’re like me and have a number of different blogs powered by different blogging engines.

iBlogger lists the last 11 posts on your blog, and you can edit and delete those posts to your heart’s content. There is a View in Safari button at the bottom of the post-listing screen which will launch your blog in Mobile Safari so you can check on the status of a post.

Another great feature of iBlogger is the clever Link button in the post form. Typing the HTML code for a link via the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard is a little cumbersome to say the least. The Link button offers a work-around by prompting you for a URL and linking text. iBlogger then inserts the HTML code for you—a big time saver when you’re trying to blog on a bus.

iBlogger takes advantage of the GPS built into the iPhone 3G (or the location features in the original iPhone and iPod touch) by sporting the ability to insert a link to a Google Map that shows where you were when you posted a particular item to your blog. Like all the best location-aware applications, this is both cool and creepy at the same time.

All is not sunshine and trackbacks with iBlogger, though. Even though iBlogger is a paid application, it inserts a link at the end of every post you compose that points to the iBlogger Web site. You can turn this default setting off in the applications preferences, but it seems to me that if I am paying for an app, I shouldn’t have to advertise for it as well.

The Bottom line

All three of these apps are fine blogging clients. The choice of which to use really comes down to which blogging engine you use. If you are solely blogging on WordPress or TypePad then the official—and free—iPhone clients for those systems will suit you very well. If you’re looking for a little more power and flexibility in terms of features and what blogging engines you can post to, then iBlogger is well worth its price tag.

All apps in this round-up are compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running the iPhone 2.x software update.

[Scott McNulty is a senior contributor for MacUser and blogs at blankbaby.]

The rise of so much high caliber goodness available for free never ceases to impress me. Some of these are themes I felt were verging on premium or just themes that were simply special because they met a certain criteria. Whether you need a theme for yourself or a client, these free Wordpress themes are worth a second look.

Portfolio Wordpress Theme by Sorel Mihai

Download it | View Demo

Designed by Sorel Mihai, this theme is everything you need to start showing off your work. It’s got a slick color palette and clean lines that will have you looking like a modern service provider in no time. Great work Sorel.

WP Premium by R.Bhavesh

Download it | View Demo

Loaded to the gills with all kinds of features, this widget ready theme is one solid contender. WP Premium is a great choice for anyone needing a clean aesthetic with a hint of formality. As a bonus, R. Bhavesh has bundled this theme with three color options: brown, black and soft red.

Sharpfoilo by Ed Harrison

Download it | View Demo

Sharpfolio by Ed Harrison over at Web Revolutionary made it on our list for being a simple and elegant solution to those needing a theme that will primarily act as a portfolio. Minimalist styling and neutral colors means you can keep the emphasis off the theme and where it should be: on your work. Nice one Ed.

Zinepress by Andrew Lindstrom

Download it | View Demo

A combination of retro browns with pinky reds for highlights is what you get with Zinepress. Andrew has paid attention to many smaller details in order to deliver this clean theme.

Gossip City by Design Disease

Download it | View Demo

A light color palette and mood on this free Wordpress theme which sports a couple of plugins to make the magic happen. A good fit if you are trying to keep things light hearted and feminine.

Mandigo by OneHertz

Download it | View Demo

If not the prettiest theme around, it certainly comes packed with a ton of customization options. The features and the fact that it comes ready in 30 plus languages won Mandigo a spot on our list.

WP CODA by Greg Johnson

Download it | View Demo

Based on the popular Coda website, this theme lets you get a Wordpress powered site that feels anything but standard. Be sure to try out the left and right arrows to slide through the body content. An original theme based on an original design.

Aspire by Info Creek

Download it | View Demo

The Aspire theme by Info Creek feels like you walked into the sheriff’s office at sunset. A three column layout with aged and antique styling, this one would be a good contender for those requiring some rustic charm.

Box Tube by Dezzain

Download it | View Demo

Glossy and sleek is what Box Tube gets you. This modern theme is widget ready both in the sidebar and footer. A handful of plugins to make it all work as shown but shouldn’t be a problem for anyone with more than a few minutes experience with Wordpress.

Yoghourt by Web Kreation

Download it | View Demo

Mmm Yogourt!? This high contrast theme has everything you’d expect in a basic yet well designed Wordpress theme.

Liquorice Allsorts by Monomo

Download it | View Demo

Visually, it’s like nothing else. Technically, the makers of Liquorice Allsorts have gone to lengths in order to keep the CSS class and ID names exactly the same as found in the default Wordpress theme, Kubrick. Arty and bold; Liquorice Allsorts is a great little theme for the right property.

Mini-WP by Frozr

Download it | View Demo

Ultra simple. This theme is minimalist both in styling, color, and features. Enough to get the job done with a a minimum of fuss.

Retromania by Jay Hafling

Download it | View Demo

Jay has created a retro theme complete with an empty PSD file of the header so you can custmize it to suit your tastes.

Outdoorsy by Function Web Design

Download it | View Demo

It’s no surprise this theme has done the rounds since it’s release. A pixel perfect theme exhibiting tactile goodness on every level. Note: An update has been provided in order to get the file size down of this image heavy theme. Worth checking out if an organic look and feel is what you need.

Simply Ornate by Evan Eckard

Download it | View Demo

Simply Ornate is a sweet little theme by Evan Eckard that comes in your choice of a blue, pink, grey, green and red. Comes with a single Flickr plugin.

Branford Magazine Theme by Der Prinz

Download it | View Demo

And lastly, the Branford Magazine by theme Der Prinz made the list for it’s conservative aesthetic. With an active change log, the theme seems to be well loved and updated and would fit well for those of you targeting an older audience.

A recent article How to Turn a Normal WordPress Installation into a Working Online-Shop discusses how to turn a normal WordPress installation into a working online shop. Although the article is very thorough and well written, it is not the easiest method to turn your WordPress installation into a working online shop. The easiest way to achieve this is by downloading and installing the WP e-Commerce plugin.

e-Commerce Install

Assuming you have a working version of WordPress installed you must do the following:

1. Download the e-Commerce plugin
2. Copy the folder to your local plugins directory
3. Activate the plugin and configure it to your liking

e-Commerce setup

Once the plugin is installed the most important things to do are:

1. Set your default shipping country and associated shipping settings
2. Setup and configure the presentation settings
3. Setup your receipt notification email address
4. Setup your payment gateway
5. Add products
6. Upgrade to gold if you want to add multiple images to products

PayPal Setup

These are the instructions for setting up PayPal for your WP e-Commerce store.

1. Browse to PayPal and sign up using your email address
2. Under Profile > Shipping Settings check the allow transaction-based shipping values to override the profile shipping settings listed above

Google Checkout Setup

These are the instructions for setting up Google Checkout for your WP e-Commerce store

1. Browse to Google Checkout and click sign up now
2. Select whether or not your business has a Google Account for services like AdWords or Gmail?
3. Create your account using your Gmail email address

At your WP e-Commerce store’s Admin

Now that you have a Google Checkout account setup enter your Google Checkout Merchant ID and Key into the payment gateway settings page in the WP e-commerce admin panel

1. Under e-Commerce > Gateway Options choose Google Checkout as your payment gateway.
2. In “Google Checkout Merchant ID” enter your Merchant ID.
3. In “Google Checkout Merchant Key” enter your Merchant Key.
4. Choose your Server Type (Sandbox vs Production), currency, and button style
5. Click the button that says “Submit”

Source :wordpress.org

Categories:

Business and Finance , Communication , News and Media ,

Properties:

2 columns , yellow , red , orange , brown , black , right sidebar , images , fixed width ,

Description:

Business website blog with global map and attrective color and nice look

License:

Can be used on any domain with footer links intact.

I’ve been hunting for an ecommerce plugin for Wordpress at the request of a client, and so far it appears that the WP e-Commerce plugin by Instinct Entertainment is the only horse in town. I’m bookmarking to give it a good test later. There appears to be a “free” and “commercial” version. I listed the “recently added features” (as of WP e-Commerce 3.5.1) below. The paid version is WP e-Commerce Gold which is a reasonably priced $15 for “a single Blogger”. However, i’m not sure what the $250 “Gold Upgrade - For Business” is exactly for outside of “Businesses setting up WP e-Commerce sites for their clients”. For $250, it better be an unlimited (or close to it) license.

Recently added Features

* New - Search Engine Friendly URLs / Permalinks (latest RC)
* New - Marketing options under shop options (latest RC)
* New - Members Only Module
* Customizable pagination for product listing
* Unlimited products & categories
* AJAX powered Sliding Shoping Cart
* Shop front highlighting for newly added products
* AJAX powered Web 2.0 DropShop - additional gold module
* Grid View - additional gold module
* Fancy AJAX Alerts on Add to Cart
* Purchase history for logged in users
* New and improved Audio Player Module for selling MP3 files
* Chinese Language file
* Share this / Digg Product social networking promo tools
* Downloadable CSV files
* Detailed Purchase Log & Filters
* Configurable Tax settings including USA & Canada
* PayPal IPN
* URL linking to products and images
* – Next version
* RSS product feed widget
* Google Cart