What Does WordPress, iThemes, Goodwill, Home Depot, and Target Have in Common? Your Identity and Security.

We received a new credit card in the mail today to replace our old one AGAIN. An “unsuccessful attempt” to access our secure security data happened and this is a precaution the bank is taking to protect us. I have no other information so I’m left wondering. Yesterday I received an email supposedly from Home […]

Blog Herald WordPress News: WordPress Scholarship, 800,000 WordPress 2.7 Downloads, XML-RPC Problem, and Top Plugin Authors

I just published WordPress News: Weblog Tools Collection Scholarship Fund, WordPress at the Supreme Court, Top Plugin Authors, XML-RPC Trouble, and More, this week’s Blog Herald WordPress News report. WordPress 2.7 downloads now passing 800,000. WordPress goes to the Supreme Court. Weblog Tools Collection announces college scholarship fund for WordPress students. WordPress 2.7 problems with […]

Parent/Child Themes in WordPress: The Future of WordPress Themes

WordPress 2.7 now features parent/child WordPress Themes, a new feature that protects installed WordPress Themes while allowing customization. Customizations are storied in the “child” Theme, which loads first. If a Child Theme isn’t detected, WordPress loads the “parent” Theme. If you do not intend on making any customization to your WordPress Theme on your WordPress […]

How to Remove WordPress.com Ads From Your WordPress.com Blog

Matt Mullenweg has just announced that you can go “ad-free” on your WordPress.com blog. While you may have never noticed, those who are not logged into WordPress.com will see ads on blogs across the WordPress.com network. two years ago, WordPress.com started experimenting with Google ads to help support the cost of the experimental and state-of-the-art […]

Designing WordPress Themes For the Slowing Web

Jonathan Bailey of the Blog Herald wrote about Surfing the Slow Web, a summary of his recent experience trying to connect to the Internet as an evacuee from Hurricane Gustav. While most web designers are pushing the limits of heavy handed design towards high bandwidth, the world still doesn’t work that fast or wide. According […]

WordPress.com Marketplace and The Theme Debate

Last week, Matt Mullenweg made public his idea on creating a WordPress.com Marketplace to add more options to WordPress.com bloggers for a fee, especially meeting the demands of so many for more, more, and more. Among the proposals under consideration, and I stress that, since this is not a done deal but an idea, is […]

WordPress Themes: The Ignored Footer

Have you looked lately at the average WordPress Theme footer? That little bit of color and text at the bottom of a WordPress Theme? Lately, it seems that the only time it gets any attention is when people are looking for design credit, embedded links and ads, and other nasties. Sometimes I think the web […]

Heads Up News on WordPress 2.3

In the most recent WordPress Wednesday News on the Blog Herald, I covered a ton of resources, news, tips, and WordPress Plugins for the upcoming release of WordPress 2.3, due September 24, currently still in beta testing. I wanted to share some of the news with you here. In summary, tags will be built-in, and […]

Weekly Digest: Guest Bloggers Galore, Theme Spam, Blog Scraping, and Personal Blogging

It’s been a week and a half of fabulous guest bloggers bringing some color and excitement to Lorelle on WordPress. Wow! And some babble about WordPress Themes with link spam and vulnerabilities that must be addressed, and blog scrapers stealing content from WordPress.com Blogs. And one of my guest bloggers begins a series on the […]

Are You Risking Your Blog With an Unofficial or Vulnerable WordPress Theme?

Recently, Automattic and WordPress decided to clean up the WordPress Themes Viewer, removing all the “sponsored Themes” from its database. There has been a lot of debate over the definition of a sponsored WordPress Theme. In theory, any WordPress Theme design which was “paid” for development and construction is a sponsored Theme. Those aren’t the […]

Weekly Digest: On The Road to WordCamp, Sponsored Themes, Selling Your Blog, NoFollow, and More

The Weekly Digest from Lorelle on WordPress this week will be shorter, and do not expect a Weekly Digest next week as I will be in San Francisco playing with my WordPress friends. I’ll have a ton of news on my blog following the WordCamp conference! To subscribe to the Weekly Digest category of Lorelle […]

It’s Official. Sponsored WordPress Themes Are Out.

Matt Mullenweg has made the WordPress policy on sponsored WordPress Themes official: Before WordCamp all sponsored themes should be removed from http://themes.wordpress.net. He’s not alone. Mark Ghosh on Weblog Tools Collection declared that he would no longer feature sponsored WordPress Themes on Weblog Tools Collection, one of the most important sources for news on new […]

Google’s Custom Search Engine Helps Sites Search by Theme

Google Blog announces a new Google Custom Search Engine, a customized search engine for your own blog. This isn’t your normal site search engine. In fact, I wish they’d called it something else more distinctive to clarify what this is. The Custom Search Engine can be used on your site to do themed and targeted […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Designing WordPress Themes

WordPress Theme design is fairly unique in web design techniques as a WordPress Theme isn’t just about the design of the website, it is about web design based upon generated and controllable content. Programming code helps to create each page on a WordPress blog, influencing the look and feel of every element of a WordPress […]

Blogging Pro WordPress Themes and Plugins Contest

Blogging Pro started a WordPress Themes and Plugins Contest on June 23 with a deadline of June 30th. The goal of the contest was to 1) revitalize the WordPress creative community, and 2) feature the best new Themes and Plugins on Blogging Pro to help promote them. Unfortunately, it was a flop. I found that […]