While browsing Guy Kawasaki’s blog archive I cam across an interesting article by Dumb Little Man about improving your grammar and your punctuation when writing posts. I mean, let’s admit it, you can be a very good blogger, have a very interesting opinion about something, but nothing can ruin it for you more that some messed up writing. For me, and I think this stands for all bloggers with English not being their native language, this was a really good read. I’m not saying that suddenly English is my middle name, but this definitely deserves a bookmark and I will probably go back from time to time and read it.

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Today we present you the Seo-Design Wordpress theme, which wasn’t created by us, but by our friends over at Publisher Heaven. The theme looks very good and it’s also very functional, with very good Google Adsense integration (or any other type of advertisement).

The Seo-Design Wordpress theme features:

1. This Wordpress Theme was coded so that in the source the elements come as it follows: Header (Upper Adsense block, Logo and search), Articles, Sidebar 1, Sidebar 2 and the footer. This is a well known SEO technique and facilitates the indexation in search engines (Google)
2. This theme comes with all image sources needed to the user (logos, background elements etc. )
3. In the attached archive you’ll find a directory named GOODIES. In there you’ll find 10 more versions of some of the graphic elements for this theme (post title background or post title background on the sidebar) that will help you create 10 different versions of this theme. In time i will create some others, but it think 10 is enough for the moment.

Head over to the theme’s page on Publisher Heaven to preview and download the theme.

Here’s the EasyTube Wordpress plugin, created by Paul Bain and which enables you to put videos from YouTube or Google Video very easy, on your blog. Some of our more advanced readers would ask why trouble and install this plugin when YouTube and Google offer the embed code. Well, the new guys who just started blogging may not know so much about html code and could have som problems managing those videos.

Plus that this plugin enables you to set the videos’ size (width and height) and specify if the video should autoplay or not. Very easy to use and cool plugin from Paul.

Check out the EasyTube plugin’s page HERE or download it from HERE.
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Categories Autolink is a nice Wordpress plugin developed by Alberto Lombardo and I’m thinking of activating it on some of my blogs. When you create your posts, if you write a word that’s also a category on your blog, the plugin automatically transforms the word into a link to that category.

This will be great for the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of your blog, because it will help search engines robots deep crawl your blog, plus that there are more chances your readers will read and stay more on your blog. The installation is very east, just upload it to the Plugin folder and activate it from the Wordpress dashboard.

Visit the plugin’s page

Download the ‘Categories Autolink’ plugin.

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Wordpress announced 2.2.2 and 2.0.11 releases, which include security and minor bug fixes. Because of this, you’d better upgrade as soon as possible, because the upgrades won’t mess your plugins pr your themes.
Click to see the fixes for 2.2.2 and for 2.0.11.

View the official Wordpress announcement on the development blog.

TipMonkies has a list of keyboard shortcuts you can use when writing or editing your posts in Wordpress:

Bold: Alt+SHIFT+b
Italics: Alt+SHIFT+i
Link: Alt+SHIFT+a
Blockquote: Alt+SHIFT+q
Code: Alt+SHIFT+c
Read More: Alt+SHIFT+t

Unordered List (ul): Alt+SHIFT+u
Ordered List (ol): Alt+SHIFT+o
List Item (li): Alt+SHIFT+l

These shortcut may not work in some browsers, or some versions of browser.

Allegory Kiss is a two column theme Wordpress theme, with full widget support that has a right column and navigation links in the footer. The theme is released under GPL License.

Here are some screenshots to give you an idea of how this theme looks like. We do not have a demo available but we promise to come up with one soon.

Click on thumbs to enlarge

Installation

Installation is as easy as it gets:

1. Extract the files in the allegory_kiss.rar archive into your /wp-content/themes/ folder.

2. Log into the admin panel and go to Presentation section and select the Allegory Kiss theme.

3. And that’s it. Go see your wonderful blog

Download the Allegory Kiss Wordpress Theme

If you have any problems, bug reports or just drop us a comment here or use the contact form.

Upgrading Wordpress when new versions come up is a must to, because, beside new features, these upgrades fix some bugs and, most important, fix some security problems that make your blog vulnerable. For some of you, upgrading can be a real pain in the ass, especially that, if you don’t do it right, you can really mess up your blog. But here’s a plugin that makes life easier for everyone. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin for Wordpress upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org.

Here is what Wordpress Automatic Upgrade plugin actually does:

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins

Click HERE to go to the plugin’s page.

Download the plugin by clicking HERE.

Dagon Design released a cool plugin for Wordpress. Called Drop Down Post List, the plugin allows you to display drop-down lists with the posts in a specified category.

You can use this plugin by entering the trigger text in a post or page, or by adding the function call directly to your theme files. You can display as many drop-down boxes as you like, and you have a choice between a standard select box (with button), or a ‘jump menu’ (as the visitor clicks on a post, they will immediately be taken to that page without having to click a button).

You can download the plugin HERE. Just save the .txt document.

The installation is very simple, all you have to do is download the .txt file, rename it to .php, upload it and activate it from the Plugin page in the dashboard. Then you go to DDPostList options page and configure the plugin.

Here are the options available:

Form Type - You can choose to have the plugin generate a ‘jump menu’, or a traditional list with a submit button

Button Text - If using a traditional list, this is the button text

Sorting Method - You can choose to sort by post date (ascending or descending), or post title

Post Limit - This allows you to define a limit for the number of posts in the list (0 for no limit)

Add Before Form - Code added here will be displayed before the generated form

Add After Form - Code added here will be displayed after the generated form

Add Before List - Code added here will be displayed before the list

Add After List - Code added here will be displayed after the list

Go to the Drop Down Post Plugin’s page.

Here’s an interesting widget for. The ‘Most Commented Posts’ widget for Wordpress allows you to display a list with your most commented posts. This is good, because it will outline your most popular posts and you want people who come for the first time on your blog to get to see your most popular posts, because, most likely those will be your most valuable posts.

‘Most Downloaded Posts’ plugin features are:

1. Customisable header text

2. You can select how many posts you want to list (1 to 10)

3. You can choose to list most commented posts for:
* The current month
* The current year
* Since your blog started

4. Output can be customised via four key CSS classes

Go to the ‘Most Commented Posts’ page.

Download the ‘Most Commented Posts’ plugin.