Category Archives: Best Of

There are so many themes and Plugins out there. WPCandy’s “Best Of” section is where we highlight the best of the best, through polls, features, and collections.

The Short List: WordPress themes you should check out this week

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The Short List of WordPress themes

In just a couple of weeks (since the last time we looked at The Short List) another crazy amount of themes are out. But who has time to dig through every single last one? That’s why we have The Short List, which lists off only the themes worth a serious look.

There are a surprising number of really unique themes this time around. I’m pleasantly surprised to see themes created for a very specific niche, actually. Things like food bloggers, fitness professionals, or event legal and medical firms. I’d rather see those than another slew of boring business and portfolio themes any day.

Let’s dig right in.

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The Short List: WordPress themes you should check out this week

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The Short List of WordPress themes

Many WordPress themes come out every week. So many, in fact, that few could hope to sort through all of them for any stretch of time. At the same time, not every WordPress theme released is worth much time. There are a lot of copycats out there, and a lot of folks pumping out quick work to try and turn an easy dollar.

Instead of sorting through hundreds of WordPress themes every week or so, trust The Short List to offer up the themes that are actually worth your time to look over.

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Make the P2 theme even more useful with plugins built for it

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The version 1.4 release of the P2 theme brought one intriguing feature: the ability to add to-do items into update messages by starting a line with an “x” (for a checked item) and an “o” for an open item. While crazy useful in and of itself, it got me thinking about plugins made specifically for the P2 theme again.

P2 theme, if you haven’t checked it out before, is a theme from the folks at Automattic made specifically for collaboration and team communication. It’s a bit like a private Twitter, really.

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone, really, that I’m a big fan of plugins made just for a certain theme. Plugins are the most natural way to expand upon WordPress itself, and it shouldn’t be any different for WordPress themes too. Below I’ve put together a small (but hopefully growing!) list of plugins made specifically for P2, as well as a few non-P2-specific plugins that I find particularly useful when used along with the theme.

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The Sweet Seven: Top Posts on WPCandy this week

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This first week of 2012 really started things off on a high note, with a number of interesting stories and discussions. The beginning of any month—let alone the beginning of the entire year—is pretty busy and hectic. To make the best use of your time, I’ve gathered the most popular posts and discussions of the week and listed them here.

Top posts this week were:

  1. Make theme standards your New Year’s Resolution (19 comments)
  2. Jonathan Christopher offers up a new custom post type concept with Hierarchy (17 comments)
  3. Modemlooper stops dialing in for BuddyPress (17 comments)
  4. Dre Armeda Goes Big with his WordPress Tattoo (16 comments)
  5. WP Ninjas unleash the power of NinjaForms on WordPress.org (16 comments)
  6. WordCamp Norway is just over a week away (oh, and sold out) (11 comments)
  7. Max Foundry wants to take your buttons further with MaxButtons Pro (11 comments)

I was happy to see quite a bit of discussion on posts this week—even in the forum, which is always exciting to see. I enjoyed the discussion around theme standards in the New Year’s resolution post that Coen Jacobs sent in. Did you have a favorite post or discussion this week, here on WPCandy on elsewhere?

The Sweet Seven: Top Posts on WPCandy This Week

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Holidays on the internet are always a bit funny, since nearly everyone takes a day (or few) away from computers to do non-internet things. Crazy, right? For those few minutes you take away from family and friends this weekend, curl up with this week’s set of popular posts:

  1. Plugin authors can now add custom header images to their WordPress.org listings (25 comments)
  2. The WPCandy Awards are now accepting nominations (11 comments)
  3. Page.ly gets a facelift, goes responsive with their design (5 comments)
  4. Sweet Plugin: WP Core Contributions Widget (2 comments)
  5. WordPress for Android 2.0 is here, plus a new site design (2 comments)
  6. BuddyPress 1.6 will bring separate admin area for Activity (2 comments)
  7. WPCandy Podcast 29: Christmas, because it’s Christmas and Christmas edition (2 comments)

So there weren’t a crazy number of comments this week, but there’s still a lot of good stuff in those posts so check them out. Was there anything that specifically caught your eye this week?

The Sweet Seven: Top WPCandy posts last week

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Let’s face it, weeks can get pretty busy. They tend to get even busier around the holidays, so odds are things are just crazy for you this month. No worries though, we have you covered. Below you’ll find a list of the seven most popular posts on WPCandy last week, so you can jump right into the most active discussions and join in.

In the last seven days, these seven posts were the most popular:

My favorite last week (despite the release of 3.3 and all the fun surrounding that) was easily the Tetris game and other easter eggs packaged into the Okay Themes website. If you haven’t heard about that yet, do check it out.

Besides these posts, was there something we missed last week? Let us know in the comments.

The Sweet Seven: Top posts on WPCandy last week

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Weeks can just fly by, can’t they? There isn’t much you can do about it, and before you know it Monday is happening again. To make things a bit easier on you, this post collects the seven most popular things published to WPCandy last week so you can recap and not miss out on all the good stuff. Let’s face it, sometimes things to do will keep you away from interesting reading. We can’t have that!

Without further delay, these are the posts you shouldn’t miss this week:

My personal favorite last week was the first episode of First Taste, though it did feel good to get another podcast out as well. Did anything in particular catch your eye this past week? Speak up in the comments.

The Sweet Seven: Top WPCandy posts in the last week

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Quite a bit happens throughout the WordPress community each week. In fact, it can sometimes be hard to keep track of it all. That’s exactly why we have the Sweet Seven. Below are the top seven posts of the last seven days, determined by pageviews and comment counts. If you don’t read anything else this week, make sure you read these!

Without further ado, this week’s most popular posts are:

  1. Obox says ThemeForest decision was a good move
  2. Exclusive details on the upcoming rocketgenius plugin
  3. Pippin previews his new post type column editor plugin
  4. Words for WordPress and its blue-hearted owl have launched
  5. Akismet launches Partner Program to reward account referrals (in closed beta)
  6. WP Engine will power hosting for Philly attendees for life
  7. Pressed Ads gets a bit more impressive in November

Be sure to jump into the comments on each of these posts, since they all are all host to interesting discussions. I’m a bit partial to the Akismet and rocketgenius stories, since they are exclusive to WPCandy and introduce some fun new projects to the WordPress community. Right now, though, the Obox/ThemeForest discussion has to be the most interesting one.

Among these, what was your favorite this week? And while you’re at it, let us know if you’ve done anything particularly cool with WordPress lately.

The Sweet Seven: Top WPCandy posts this week

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A lot happens in the WordPress community every week — so much so, that sometimes it can be easy to miss out on the big stuff, even when we publish as much WordPress news as we do. That’s why we have the Sweet Seven, where you can catch up on the most popular stories this week, just in case you happened to miss them before.

Without further ado, this week’s most popular posts are:

  1. Themes enabling plugins: this (PHP) class is one you might actually enjoy
  2. Bring out the birthday cake: WPCandy is now four years old!
  3. Michael Fields joins Automattic as a Theme Wrangler
  4. Community Poll: How many custom post types do you use?
  5. Meta Review: WooCommerce plugin from WooThemes
  6. WooThemes announces tweaks to their subscriptions
  7. WP Paintbrush releases eleventh coat, er beta, of their theme

Be sure to jump into the discussions on each of these posts, since they all are all host to interesting discussions. My favorite is definitely the PHP class discussion (number one up there).

Among these, what was your favorite this week? And while you’re at it, let us know if you’re doing any cool WordPress stuff this weekend.

Poll: What’s your favorite new feature in WordPress 3.2?

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Few things bring about the opinions and reflection in the WordPress community quite like a new version release does. We’ve already seen all sorts of opinions in our coverage of the 3.2 development process, but now that it’s out we really want to know is which features excite you the most?

We all know the only way to find out is by holding a poll. It’s just the way things work. The Internet Gods demand it.

So after you’ve had a look through WordPress 3.2’s new features and enhancements, click past the jump and have a say in our community poll.

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