• How to Move your Blog from WordPress.com to a Personal Web Domain with WordPress.org – There comes a time when WordPress.com is just too small for your britches and you want to branch out to a self-hosted WordPress blog. There are a lot of tutorials out there, and Digital Inspiration offers a simple and easy step-by-step approach to help you make the move from free to paid blogging with WordPress.
• Moving WordPress – WordPress Codex – If you are thinking about moving your WordPress blog, whether within your site or between servers, don't forget this great WordPress Codex article on how to move your WordPress blog setup.
• Adding Dynamic Copyrights – BuyNowShop – Many of us have long used PHP time date functions to add dynamic dates to our copyrights, but this post goes further to highlight methods of adding even more customization to your copyrights on your WordPress blog.
• Google & Microformats: Drive More Traffic – Yoast – If you haven't added microformats to your WordPress Theme, it's time to start as the day has finally arrived and Google is now paying attention to microformats. Yoast discusses the various microformats you should be using on your WordPress blog, and tells you why.
• hreview in your WordPress Theme – Yoast – Yoast does a followup to his microformats post on how to use hreview microformat in a WordPress Theme for post ratings.
• 5 Steps to a BlogHer-Approved Giveaways Page on WordPress – Desperately Seeking WordPress – If you have many giveaways on your blog, consider checking out this post on how to maximize how WordPress works to customize and extend your giveaway promotion and styles.
• WordPress tip: Create a PDF viewer shortcode – WP Recipes – Do you have content worth PDFing? WP Recipes wrote up the code shortcode you need to add to your functions.php WordPress Theme template file to quickly make PDF files open in Google Docs.
• Most Wanted Twitter Hacks and Plugins for WordPress – WPBeginner – Want to bring Twitter back to your blog? WPBeginner offers a variety of hacks and WordPress Plugins to help you merge your social together on your WordPress blog.
• A browsable, searchable archive of tweets – stopdesign – StopDesign offers tips for setting up your own Twitter archive on your WordPress blog, bringing those tweets home to roost.
• Greasemetal: Greasemonkey for Google Chrome – For those dependent upon Greasemonkey in Firefox for their WordPress userscript goodness, you can now use Greasemonkey in Chrome with Greasemetal.
• How to Do “XYZ” Without a WordPress Plugin – Weblog Tools Collection – Do you know that you don't have to do everything with a WordPress Plugin? Sometimes, digging into your WordPress Theme is easier than you think, making life easier and not so Plugin top heavy.
• Passing Parameters as Variables vs Passing Parameters as An Array – Weblog Tools Collection – Keith Dsouza tackles passing parameters as variables and arrays in WordPress within functions, a must know for serious coders and hackers and WordPress Theme developers.
• How To: Adding An Author Page To Your WordPress Blog – If you are the only author on your blog, your About page should suffice in helping your readers know more about you. If there are multiple authors on your blog, you need to know how to create a custom Author page to help them showcase themselves and their work on and off your blog.
• WordPress Tutorial: Add Custom Stuff to RSS Feed – Binary Moon – Feed subscriptions are critical to the success of a site's ability to extend its reach. Binary Moon offers a great tutorial on how to add custom content to your feed, such as links to Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites you're on, copyright notifications, related posts, etc.

Related Articles on WordCast:

• Around the WordPress Community: Post Thumbnails, Videos, Permalinks, Multiple Bloggers Blog, and Designing for iPad
• Around the WordPress Community: The Perfect Sidebar, SQL Queries, Videos, and WordPress CMS Style
• Around the WordPress Community: Plugin Tips, Weather Reports, Google Maps, and Google Code

Wandering through the wild fields of the WordPress Community, I turned up these colorful finds to help you improve your WordPress blog.

• Speed Up WordPress With Better Permalink Rewrite Code – ghacks – While the basic functionality of the WordPress Permalinks works fine, if you are a serious webmaster who wants to control your pretty permalink structure, this would be of interest to you.
• The Ultimative Guide For the_post_thumbnail In WordPress 2.9 – WP Engineer – In case you missed it, this is a great guide which was updated not long ago on how to handle the new post thumbnail feature in WordPress 2.9.
• Useful WordPress Tricks – StylizedWeb.com – Published in 2008, this interesting collection of WordPress Theme tips and tricks still works, featuring a variety of simple but effective code snippets WordPress Theme developers should bookmark for their collection.
• WordPress.tv – WordCamp NYC Video Recap: WordPress as CMS, 5-Minute Talks, and More – A huge roundup of videos from WordCamp NYC have hit WordPress.tv and there is some good stuff – so don't miss a minute.
• An Automated Way to Take Screenshots of any Website – Free – Binary Moon – Ben Gillbanks uncovers a neat trick on the WordPress network to showcase website and theme images without making your own screenshots. He created a Plugin to automate the process even more.
• nvie.com – Git branching model for software/web app/anything releases – If you are working on a WordPress Theme, WordPress Plugin, web app, network, blog, or any online production, this Git branching model is a great structure for structuring your work and project flow.
• Jean-Baptiste Jung – Managing and Enhancing Multi-Author Blogs with WordPress (Part 1) – Jean-Baptiste Jung, author of "WordPress 2.7 Cookbook," shares tips on how to customize your WordPress Theme for multiple bloggers in two parts on PacktPub's site promoting his book. While most of these tips apply to WordPress 2.7, they should work for current versions.
• Greasemetal – a Greasemonkey Extension for Google Chrome Users – While Firefox still wins hands down for the bloggers, Chrome is growing up. Greasemonkey scripts offer a ton of power blogging tools for Firefox, and now you can add them with Greasemetal. Not all will work, but many will.
• How to easily monitor your web server using PHP – Cats Who Code – Jean-Baptiste Jung shares a php script you can add to your WordPress blog to help you monitor your server's status.
• Genesis is Not Thesis, and Thesis is Not Genesis – Brian Gardner – The developer behind some of the most popular WordPress Themes takes time out to explain why Thesis is not the Genesis WordPress Theme and what the difference is.
  

  Think of a Honda Odyssey. Now think of a Ford Mustang. Both are vehicles, and that’s just about the extent of their similarities. Yes, they both have 4 wheels, a steering wheel and a few doors, but other than that they serve two very different purposes – and therefore cannot be compared to one another.

• Designing Websites for the iPad – Devlounge – It used to be enough to design a WordPress Theme to handle Internet Explorer with some mobile stylesheets throw in, if you thought about it. Now, mobile stylesheets are a requirement, and Devlounge offers tips on designing for the iPad – expanding the devices a designer must cover. Are you ready?
• Is ChatRoulette the Future of the Internet or Its Distant Past? – New York Magazine – There is a lot of rumbling under the web about the next social wave. New York Magazine tested out Chatroulette! and reviews what some are calling the next social interactive network. Competition for BuddyPress? Somehow, that puts more fear than faith into my heart.
• World’s Most Influential Designers – BusinessWeek – BusinessWeek profiles the most influential designers from around the world, and some design for the web using WordPress. It's nice to see the faces behind the designs that rule our world – and changed it.

Related Articles on WordCast:

• Around the WordPress Community: The Perfect Sidebar, SQL Queries, Videos, and WordPress CMS Style
• Around the WordPress Community: Dynamic Copyrights, Moving WordPress, Microformats, and Twitter to Blog
• Around the WordPress Community: Design, Thesis Hooks and Filters, Comments, and Design Mistakes

We hunted around the WordPress Community for some WordPress news, tips, help, and advice you need to get you through your WordPress week.

• Anatomy of The Perfect Sidebar – woorkup.com – The sidebar is often a repository for a ton of clutter, left over once-good-ideas, links to sites no one visits, gadgets, gizmos, and widgets – instead of stuffing it full of useless stuff, why not explore what a "perfect" sidebar might look like and do a little sidebar remodeling.
• 13 Useful WordPress SQL Queries You Wish You Knew Earlier – Onextrapixel – For most WordPress users, the MySQL database and WordPress blog table within it are a complete mystery, never to be touched nor looked at too closely. Onextrapixel peaked and produced this great collection of tips on using the MySQL database with WordPress.
• Design Trends (Predictions) in 2010 – WebDesignerWall – There are a lot of predictions about where web design will go, beyond just designing for the mobile platform. WebDesignerWall takes a stab at predicting design trends for the next year, which are already being found in WordPress Themes.
• Bulletproof backups for MySQL – Carsonified – We all wish web backups were easier, so this is another reminder to backup your WordPress MySQL database through this method or through the WordPress XML Export options. You never know. Just in case. It could happen to you.
• 110+ Massive WordPress Video Tutorial Collection – 1st WebDesigner – Another blast-from-the-past collection of WordPress tips and tutorials, this post includes more than 100 examples of video tutorials on using WordPress by those who specialize in WordPress. Don't forget that WordPress.tv is the home of GPL WordPress videos, WordCamp presentations, and all kinds of video on WordPress.
• 101 Techniques for a Powerful CMS using WordPress – Noupe – WordPress is a CMS, but if you want more content management control and customization for WordPress, check out the tips from Noupe.

Related Articles on WordCast:

• Around the WordPress Community: Post Thumbnails, Videos, Permalinks, Multiple Bloggers Blog, and Designing for iPad
• Around the WordPress Community: Dynamic Copyrights, Moving WordPress, Microformats, and Twitter to Blog
• Around the WordPress Community: CSS3 Tips and Techniques

The first thing I did before I even spoke to Jean [former site owner] was trying to think of simple things I could do that would add greatest value with least effort. This was a project I wanted to monetize from the start, and I didn’t want to spend months and months developing it.

I intend for the site to be a WordPress resource. A bookmarking and voting site much like Digg. I also wanted it to be easy and free to use.

He describes his process of planning, researching, and developing the site in an ongoing series, beginning with ideas for monetizing the site with ads, affiliate schemes, and future sale of the WordPress Theme for the site, and more. Next came the research, programming, and designing the logo, all leading towards the development and upcoming launch of the site.

It’s interesting following Ben’s thoughts and ideas as he charts out the new Digg-clone site, especially the challenges of developing a Digg-look and feel within a WordPress Theme framework, but something’s missing: Why?

The purpose of such a site and service isn’t clear, nor part of the current selection of articles. Who will participate? Will the WordPress Community support such a site and service? With the popularity of Digg-style sites decreasing, what will revitalize interest in such a site? Hopefully, Ben will offer up some of the behind the scenes thoughts on the purpose of the site to help us all learn as much about that part of the planning as the technical side of things.

Currently, the articles in the series are:

• Building WPVote Part 1: The Beginning
• Building WPVote Part 2 : Planning
• Building WPVote Part 3 : Research
• Building WPVote Part 4 : Design
• Building WPVote : Part 4b, The Logo Revisited
• Building WPVote Part 5 : Programming

Related Articles on WordCast:

• Around the WordPress Community: Post Thumbnails, Videos, Permalinks, Multiple Bloggers Blog, and Designing for iPad
• Around the WordPress Community: CSS3 Tips and Techniques
• Automattic Hires Theme Developer Ian Stewart, Forms “Theme Team”

Topics and links from this week’s show:

• Kym’s design idea
• Widget Tutorial
• Options Theme
• Plugin of the Week: Akismet – Spam protection bundled with WP
• CuteFTP
• SmartFTP

Download this week’s podcast

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