The good news is now finally out! Wordpress 2.8, with code name “Baker,” is now available. Once you log on to your Wordpress you will be receiving a notice on the availability for download of this latest Wordpress version.

The most significant feature of the Wordpress 2.8-Baker is its capability to browse for themes from the Dashboard of Wordpress. This means that you are able to specify your color choice, the number of columns that you require and choose between flexible or fixed width, among others.

Wordpress 2.8 comes with a new widgets interface design with enhanced speed. Another great thing about this new version is that it offers solutions for over 790 bugs of the older version.

The other notable features of Wordpress 2.8 include:
* Improved widgets API and widgets admin interface
* Plug in and theme editors with function lookup and syntax highlight function
* Improved loading speed of admin pages through compression and concatenation of script

If you had problems with widgets with the older version, this latest release may well be the solution to your problems. This latest release comes with an enhanced widget interface design which is not available in the 2.7 version. This feature provides multi-functionalities like widgets on the fly editing, multiple copies of widgets, and a lot more.

This latest version of Wordpress is equipped with an enhanced CodePress Editor which will come in handy when you are making tweaks and edits to plugins and themes from your Dashboard. It also comes with contextual documentation capability which is an essential element for the functions in the file that is being edited.

With that said, will my free themes work on this latest version? I made it clear that my free themes will be compatible with the latest Wordpress version so I am taking the time to test my themes on Wordpress 2.8 at the moment. I will announce in Twitter and the theme pages whenever a new theme version that works on WP 2.8 is released.

I stumbled upon a post on Yoast.com outlining the 10 criteria of a perfect Wordpress theme. Without hesitation, I went ahead and check my themes against those criteria eager to see how I score for my themes.

The 10 checks are as follows:

The following is the report:

Requirements:

- In header.php, it should have a small piece of PHP code that looks exactly like this wp_head(); or this do_action(’wp_head’);, usually just before a piece of HTML that looks like this: .

- In footer.php, it should have another small piece of PHP like this wp_footer();, or this do_action(’wp_footer’);

- In comments.php and/or comments-popup.php, it should have a piece of code like this: ID); ?>, just before the HTML tag.

Yoast said it is a standard to include all the 9 BASIC files below in a theme to avoid installation problem. Each file represents a standard Wordpress feature/structure.

home.php, single.php, page.php, category.php, author.php, date.php, archive.php, search.php, 404.php

Out of the above mentioned files, I only have home.php, single.php, page.php

Does that mean I am missing most of the Wordpress features? Not at all. I actually simplified the file structure even more by merging category.php, author.php, date.php, archive.php, search.php, 404.php into one single file, index.php

Read the rest of the criteria

My Wooden Fence theme has got a candid review by WPtavern.com, a fast growing site focuses on topics about Wordpress and projects under Automatic Inc.

Thanks for the review, I found a few things that I could improve for my future themes. However, I also need to clarify a few things about the review here.

Let’s talk about the license and the footer part of my themes. The CC license looks complicated but my main intention is only two things:
1) you have to keep the footer link and a footer script intact
2) you can’t use my themes on your commercial sites.
Other than that, you can manipulate my themes freely without any cost.

Unlike other themes, my themes are coded using the most basic elements. No options pages and plugins are found on the Wooden Fence theme as well as most of my themes. I created them that way because of 3 issues as follows:
1) Some plugins might not be compatible with the latest Wordpress version and the plugins designers fail to fix the problem.
2) Some plugins have security loopholes. I don’t want your site to get hacked because of the security faults pertaining to the plugins.
3) I’ll be able to fix the Wordpress compatibility issues in the shortest time whenever a new Wordpress version is available.

With that said, I am actually planning to design a theme with extra options for advance users. Anyway, it is still in the conceptual stage.

As for the graphic design, I am appreciated to see some great pointers to improve the graphic part of this theme. I am especially grateful for one of the commenters, Terri for his critics from the aspect of a graphic designer. I take his words in mind.

For those who want to suggest some useful features that I could add to my themes, please share with me your suggestions and ideas. I appreciate it.

Wordpress.org is operated under a company named Automattic, Inc. Besides Wordpress, there are several big projects which are gaining a lot of popularity.
bbPress - a forum software with a twist
BuddyPress - a suite of WordPress plugins and themes aim to let members interact socially.
Wordpress.com - a hosted and completely maintained Wordpress platform

In my search for the Wordpress resources, I have yet to see a site which includes ALL the projects under the Automattic umbrella until I stumbled upon Wptavern.com. It looks interesting to me so I decided to find out more about this site.

Checking the archive and the “About” page is a good way to get an overview of a blog. The first article was posted on Jan 23, 2009. It seems that Jeff, the owner of this site, has a clear vision about what to do with the site. He bought the domain from Wphacks.com and aims to make this site a central community for Wordpress users.

Let’s take a look at the site structure of Wptavern. Since this site discusses everything about the Automattic projects, it is good to create different categories for the projects. Wptavern only has categories for big projects like bbPress, BuddyPress and WPMU. There is no designated place for the smaller projects yet. I think having a category listing all the articles relating to the smaller projects would help users to find what they want.

One limitation in fostering good relationship with the readers using the blog comment system is that the interaction interface is not as friendly as the forum. That’s why Wptavern installed a forum and used that as the main communication channel instead of the blog comment system.

I am wondering since bbPress is a forum software developed by the Automattic team, why doesn’t Jeff use it instead of the vBulletin. bbPress may be less functional than the well-developed vBullentin, but wouldn’t it be exciting to install it in the first place and witness the improvement of this software made along the way?

There is another innovative way that Jeff promotes his site. Every week, a new podcast is posted (in fact, more than 1 podcast is posted weekly). Anyone can participate in the podcasts discussing a wide range of topics about Wordpress. You can even find podcast interview with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress.

Instead of being a fanatic follower of Wordpress, Jeff looks at the projects undergoing in Automattic in a critical way. He doesn’t always agree with the decision made within the team. One of his posts foresees 6 ways in which Wordpress could die. I cannot be more agreeable with the article.

Just as I am committed to making my themes a success in the Wordpress community, I can see that Jeff is also committed to making his site a prime location for Wordpress users to hang around.

Having been with Hostgator for about a year, I am very happy with their service so far. Indeed, finding a good host is not easy especially if your site/blog is getting a lot of traffic.

I want to find out besides Hostgator, what other hosts stand out from the crowd. So I did a search for the keyword “web hosting” on Google and took one of the top 10 site, Webhostingsearch.com and decided to do a review on this site.

Web Hosting Search is a web hosting directory listing different types of web hosting services from basic hosting like shared and php hosting to advanced hosting like dedicated and coldfusion hosting. I like the way they group the hosting services.

Every host listed on the site has its own review by both the Webhostingsearch’s editor and the users. The editor rates a host base on a few factors: support response time, support quality, server uptime, server response time, features and control panel usability. The users, on the other hand, can participate in the review process by rating the host based on the score from 1 to 10 on the host review page. They can also input their comments about the host.

I think this type of the review process involving both the editor and the users are less biased. However, there are only a few input from the users. I am hoping to see more reviews from the users to get better judgment about the quality of the hosts. With that said, generally, I think the hosting providers found on Webhostingsearch.com are of high quality because some of my sites are hosted by Bluehost and Lunarpages (and of course, Hostgator) having no big issues so far.

You can also do a specific search for a web hosting plan using their advance search feature. It is such a powerful feature that you can refine your search by web hosting type, control panel and even easy-install forum programs. You can also find a list of hosts with built-in Wordpress program for easy installation. Simply select “Wordpress” under the “Easy-install Blogs”.

This site also has a knowledge base section about web hosting and design. I particularly like the video tutorials. The tutorials are presented in a step-by-step manner and in a simple but professional way. It is so well-presented that I include the Wordpress installation tutorial in this post. I hope the webmaster will later add a video tutorial detailing the steps of installing Wordpress theme. I have made the proposal. Hope they’ll consider it

For those who are seriously into WordPress, the latest news is that WordPress 2.8 Beta version is up and running. As in the previous cases, it would be best to try this latest version under a trial setup, rather that applying it on a live blog or Website. It is safer to wait until the release candidates before using it on a live site.

Here are a few of the major features of Wordpress 2.8 Beta 1 version:

• The new version comes with a new Theme Installer routines
• The Plugin and Theme editors has been added with CodePress syntax highlighting
• Allows the use of Custom Header for the menu text and revise Default theme to indicate the changes
• It does not require confirmation when marking comment as spam
• It features Autosave page and post when the Command+S/Control is pressed
• Upgraded installer that assist users entering erroneous email addresses
• Displays absolute dates instead of the relative ones for the scheduled posts
• Displays the Tools menu for all users allowing them to use Turbo
• Requires a unique email address to Add/Edit users
• Handles more than one gallery in a single page.
• Provides for per page option for plugins
• Has case insensitive logins option

In the past one month, I have received about 6 requests regarding the custom theme service. This makes me think about whether I should offer custom theme design and earn extra income.

After much thoughts, I figure that if I accept custom theme jobs, I won’t be able to release 4 quality free themes a month unless I hire a good coder to help me out. With that said, I would have to put in some time with the coder to ensure my themes adhere to the high standard as usual.

Here’s what I have decided. I will take my time to find a good freelance coder. If I am lucky to find one, I’ll make him to be my partner and we’ll share profit for the custom theme design.

When I start accepting the custom theme jobs, I’ll make another announcement on this site.

[Help needed] Do you know of any good freelance coder whom you can recommend?

I am looking for a coder who can convert a PSD file into a Wordpress theme which satisfies the following requirements:

1. Compliant with W3C standard
2. Work on the latest Wordpress version
3. Compatible with major browsers that include IE6, IE7 (maybe IE8 later), Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
4. Gravatar supported
5. Follow my CSS coding standard. Basically, it is similar to the Wordpress standard. You can open the style.css file of any of my themes and study.
6. The theme has to score Gold in ThemesPreview.com. See the details of the rating system. If you do the first 5 correctly, the theme should have no problem scoring Gold.

I found one of my themes, Red Light has got a very detail review by Taragana Blog (or otherwise known as Simple Thoughts). At first glance, this site seems to be very big with over 170k monthly visitors base on the Compete data.

The blog has a wide range of posts that include IT-related news release, software, blogging and of course, Wordpress related resources. It seems that there are a group of people behind sourcing for the useful resources because you’ll see new posts with unique views being published almost everyday (sometimes 3-4 posts/day).

Back to my Red Light theme. I am amazed at the way Taragana reviewed the theme. From the layout, header, two sidebars to the date icon, color matching and SEO, the team has done such a comprehensive review.

I was feeling a bit discouraged when the developers thought that the theme sucks at the first look. But the designers were quite impressed.

Excerpt from Blog.taragana.com
The first look inside our team sums it up pretty well, our developers jumped up and said, its too bright and flowery (effectively saying that it sucks), our designers were quite impressed. The bottom line - You need to have a bit of an artistic sense to really understand and value the theme as it is. Let’s analyze its design.

That was the first impression of the developers and the designers. When they get down to the full review, the Red Light theme received well. There is only one part of the theme that needs improvement: the SEO.

The review said that the title is using the standard format (not SEOed) as follows:
Post name << Blog name

A title that is optimized for search engines would need to allow the users to define the title manually instead of using a standard code. This can be done easily by installing a SEO plugin. I have my 2 reasons not to do that:

• I don’t want to install any plugins to my themes to avoid compatibility issues in the future. Imagine when Wordpress upgrades the version and make certain plugins not compatible with the new version. The worst thing is the plugin developer doesn’t upgrade the plugins. If that happens, you have to decide whether you want to upgrade to the new Wordpress version and remove the plugin or continue with the old Wordpress version to enjoy the usage of the plugin.
• I gave assurance to my theme users that all my themes are compatible with the latest Wordpress version. When Wordpress had a major upgrade (eg. from v.2.6 to v.2.7), I have to recode ALL my themes to make them work on the latest version. Imagine fixing 40 themes(by end of the year this site would have more than 40 good quality themes!) one by one manually. That’s a lot of work! Excluding plugins in my themes is to save me time fixing the plugins issues so I can focus on the more important theme issue.

Nonetheless, the other part of the themes are actually optimized for SEO. The text for the post title, page title, sidebar title are defined using H1 to H4. Also, the code is clean and passed the W3C compliance (both XHTML and CSS). Not many themes pass this difficult test.

I would like to thank Taragana blog for doing such a good job in pointing out the goods and bads of my theme. I’ll constantly improve my skills to give my theme users the best they will get.

My next theme, Wooden Fence (as shown under the “Upcoming New Theme” in the sidebar) is supposed to be released by end of April. However, while working on the Seagull theme, I discovered something about the comment section that I have been doing improperly.

Hence, I need to do a more thorough study about the coding now instead of procrastinating until the next release. Whenever I found a problem that will potentially affect the functionality of the themes, I need to get down to fixing it before it affects more themes.

This is a very minor issue so don’t you worry about the themes that you have installed. They work just fine.