Each week we do our best to gather together the best links the WordPress community has produced. Sometimes we miss a week, which is still okay. Why? Because that results in a much larger list of links when we can get them collected.

In other words: we have a big list for you this week.

As always we’ve got the blogs posts that are worth a read:

• Dre Armeda gave http://dre.im/ a new lick of paint, also implementing Post Formats.
• WPBeginner wrote an article on how you can help save other WordPress users some time by using the Plugin Compatibility Check on the WordPress Plugin Repository.
• With it being WordPress’ birthday the other day, Mashable looked back through the past 8 years, and posted a screenshot of what each version looked like back when they were released. It’s safe to say WordPress has come a long way since it’s initial release!
• Joshua Strebel also posted about the design evolution of Page.ly and how it’s changed.
• Gaelian Ditchburn of Binary Balance wrote an interesting article on how he’s started to contribute to Open Source in general, but the same can apply to WordPress too.
• Ipstenu walks us through how to support your plugin(s), it’s a great read I tell you.
• Michael Fields shares his thoughts on plugins along with a few tips.
• The Next Web featured a fantastic article from Joel Falconer on WordPress, the free software with a big economy, and how you can get involved with it all.
• BP Tricks left their thoughts on the current state of BuddyPress (a critical analysis) which sparked a pretty interesting discussion in the comments, and is well worth a read.
• Matt Mullenweg was listed in the Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2011.
• Digging Into WordPress ran a poll on the best caching plugin for WordPress?
• Aaron Jorbin and his thoughts on Post Meta Boxes within WordPress.
• Ever wanted to use PollDaddy Survey for a contact form, well Donncha O Caoimh wrote an article showing you just how, in only 8 steps.
• Curtis McHale offered up his thoughts on using plugins, or the themes functions.php file?
• Yoast posted some guidelines when it comes to SEO in WordPress Themes, and also discussed some different permalink considerations that could help with SEO too.

Then it’s on to the tutorials:

• Daniel Pataki over at Smashing Magazine runs through how you can have better image management with WordPress, and understanding how to use them. Which leads on to an article Samuel Wood (more known within the WordPress Community as Otto) wrote on how to create photo galleries, without the need of using a plugin.
• In a 45 minute video, Blog Design Guy shows us how to go about designing a minimalist blog using just Headway, right from scratch, and with no images involved.
• Alex Denning of WPShout takes us through 3 tips to stopping WordPress comment spam.
• Justin Tadlock talks about adding contextual help to your plugin and theme admin pages.
• Pro Blog Design runs through how you can add shortcode buttons to the TinyMCE Editor, which will bring up an options window once it’s been clicked, before you insert it.
• Smashing Magazine shows you (in Part 1) how to build a media site on WordPress, using Custom Post Types, Custom Taxonomies and working with Custom Post Templates.
• Pippin Williamson shows us how to create an ajaxified contact form shortcode.

And finally we have some cool resources to finish it off:

• StudioPress released Post Format Icons that you can download for free.
• Have you ever been stuck trying to find a font stack when designing your custom WordPress Theme, you might find CSS Font Stack is your friend.
• WPEngineer released a plugin which helps with styling your plugin, and keeping it in line with the rest of the WordPress Administration.Very handy indeed!
• Alex King posted a little code snippet for detecting the “Main” Loop in WordPress.

And that wraps it up for this week (or the last couple of weeks). If you have a link you’d like to share send it our way and we’ll see about featuring it next week.