I took the opportunity to install the latest changes to the WordPress software we all know and love. Right now, the Administration Panel footer says I’m using 2.4-Bleeding - - it is the latest build as of 2.12.08. There are some things I just love about - - other things? Not so much. I do understand the design work on it is not completed yet. With a release date of sometime the middle to the end of March.. I would say WP has a ways to go.

The Dashboard. Have a look:

While I am not in love with the design… the colors or the layout - - what I am in love with is the ability to edit certain sections of the dashboard.. mainly the RSS Feeds that are fed into the Dashboard:

This question came in via my email today, from a reader of my WordPress For Dummies book, regarding adding themes to a WordPress.Com blog ¹ :

How do I set up my wordpress.com blog to use your xMark theme? The setup instructions on the website say to send the xMark folder to the server, but that sounds like a wordpress.org setup. …. Recently I’ve tried again using the wordpress.com setup, and found that was more my speed. Now that my blog is up, http://dominickrusso.wordpress.com/ I’m trying to find a fluid theme, and that’s why I wanted to try xMark.

1. Management of themes on your WordPress.Com account is covered in WordPress For Dummies in Chapter 5. [↩]

Blue, orange and white - that is the color scheme of the new WordPress administration panel. Why are they changing the theme? No clue - from what I’ve seen, so far, it reminds me of an earlier Blogspot admin panel, for some reason. Maybe it’s the use of the orange that makes me think that. I quite like the current design of the administration panel in WordPress, though…I’m a little dissapointed that they aren’t staying with it and building from it, for congruency’s sake. That’s just me, though - there will be plenty who applaud this change and I’m sure I’ll embrace it as well - I’m just a damn creature of habit! Heh.

At this time, the two big changes in the top menu in the Administration Panel is:

• Presentation is now labeled “Design”
• Options is now labeled “Settings”

Do you run a WordPress MU site? Are you thinking of running a WordPress MU site? Do you know anyone who runs a WordPress MU site?

This post is about WordPress MU - could ya tell?

If you answered yes to any, or all, of the above questions - then run.. don’t walk - to download Farms Really Big Theme Pack

Just like the title of the theme pack suggests… it’s REALLY BIG!

In Farms own words…”Here’s my latest pack.. and it’s a whopper. It contains all the themes from the last pack, updated with Nevin’s fixes and a stack more besides. All in all there are 67 themes, all Widget compatible, all tested and in use of popular WPMU sites…”

Get ‘em while they’re hot (and they ARE hot!)

With the release of the latest version of WordPress 2.3 came the added functionality of tagging. I’ve recieved several emails and questions from client to clarify what tagging is, exactly. The most popular question by far:

Why use tags when I can use categories? Aren’t they, essentially, the same thing?

Yes…. and no. I look at it this way - I can use tags to further describe and archive my posts by topic, but I don’t have to have a super huge long category/subcategory listing mucking up my theme and the tag clouds are trendy at the moment - so what the heck? Tags also get indexed with the rel=”tag” attribute, making them attractive to tag crawling services like Technorati and search engines, like Google, because tags are treated like keywords (because of the rel=”tag attribute).

It’s true! However, unlike the service you’re using to blog on WordPress.com - customizing the theme is not free. At the time of this post, the current cost is $15.00 per year to obtain access to the Custom CSS feature on your WordPress.Com account.

WARNING: The WordPress.Com Custom CSS feature is not for the faint-at-heart. It does require knowledge of CSS in order to accomplish the task (or hire someone to accomplish it for you).

In your WordPress.Com administration panel, click the Upgrades tab in the top menu to access the place you need to be in order to purchase the option. Once done, you are granted access to the CSS editor and are able to edit the CSS to style your template the way you’d like.