The following are three new WordPress themes I think you’ll love:

Longhorn

It’s always a good thing to give your blog readers as many options as possible to subscribe to your blog. RSS feed and email are the most common. But how about letting them subscribe using their mobile devices like a PDA.

You’ve got a couple of options. For one, there are a couple of WordPress plugins that can make your posts viewable on a mobile device:

WordPress PDA Plugin: Wordpress PDA plugin enables the wordpress blog viewable for PDA browsers. It is really simple plugin which detects the browser agent and loads a simple theme on fly. The plugin comes with a theme folder which acts like normal theme with all the functionality of wordpress theme.

In Part 4, Episode 2 of Our Love Affair With WordPress, we chose the Harmony WordPress theme as our template for Perfect Fit, our fictional bra-fitting business. Again, bearing in mind that Perfect Fit is an unusual business, the theme layout is standard but we want to add a little something extra to make it special. In Episode 1 you learned what steps to take to create your ideal blog or website. At this stage, we’ve already decided on the tone or mood of the website, the layout and navigation. And now we have a theme on which to recreate our ideal structure and navigation before setting the mood. The next step now is editing your theme so that the layout is exactly what you planned before dressing it up in something sexy.

The Harmony theme is almost the ideal layout for Perfect Fit. Only a few things need to be moved around or added:

In the last installment of Our Love Affair with WordPress we discussed blog design in all its glory and step by step. You learned that design is more than the way the blog looks, it’s also the way a blog is structured. Now, let’s assume you’ve followed the first three steps in the seven steps to blog design in Episode 1: you’ve defined the purpose of your site, set goals, have a mood in mind and have developed an information architecture (structure and navigation) that’s ideal for your site. Now it’s time to put it all together using WordPress as your content management system.

You can approach creating your blog in two ways: 1. Use and modify one of hundreds of free themes available at the official WordPress themes site themes.wordpress.net, or other unofficial but equally wonderful sites like Wordpress Themes, WordPress Theme Park or visit Using Themes at WordPress.org for a non-exhaustive list of sites with free WordPress themes you can download; or 2. Visit WordPress’s Stepping into Templates page on how to create your own theme from scratch.

The following are plugins that I think all WordPress blogs should have to make your blog ideally functional:

Aksimet and Spam Karma 2: Aksimet is the great default spam killer that comes with every installation of WordPress. Spam Karma 2 is an additional essential plugin that not only gives your blog extra security and you more piece of mind, you also have the option of sending yourself a digest of spam stats, or you can just check the stats and modify many settings in the WordPress admin area so you can control more spam the way you need to.

All-in-One SEO Pack or, Add Meta Tags and SEO Title Tags: SEO is essential for your WordPress blog if you want search engines to find your blog.

WordPress Database Backup: You should definitely backup your database as often as possible and this plugin gives you the option to do so by either downloading it your computer, emailing to yourself or saving it on your server, hourly, daily or weekly.

Sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to write a post for you blog. Sometimes it’s hard to find what to write about. Writing every day, or every other day for a blog is time consuming and mentally exhausting. You won’t always know what to post next. The best advice I can give you is what I learned at school as a writing major, don’t think so hard. Explore the world around you. Take a nap. Socialize. Work on something else. History proves time and time again that you often find what you’re NOT looking for and that inspiration comes from all corners of your life.

‘Tis the Season for all the family mania. Who’s doing what, when, where and how. Thanksgiving is fast approaching and Christmas will be just around the corner, then New Year’s. Many of you are in the midst of planning where you’ll be spending the Holidays and with whom and for how long. Phone calls, email lists, letters, cards, yadda, yadda. Why not step into this new generation of online communication. Blogs, Forums and Social Networks are ideal for staying in touch, planning and updating family members and friends from across the globe, especially during the Holidays.

Think about it: events happen all the time; times and places are always changing; you often live in different cities, states, countries and continents; and when it comes to keeping in touch, we’re all a bit lazy and avoiding phone calls is a staple of being a part of any family (blood or non-blood related). Not to mention, your phone bills may decrease dramatically. You can love talking on the phone, but there are those certain friends and family members who simply do not. Enter the Internet. Emails are great, but they can get unruly when trying to plan trips, events and so forth. Enter, blogs, forums and networks.

It’s a difficult thing to write and non-writers take it for granted that readers don’t want to read bad writing. Bad writing is like bad singing. If you’ve seen the auditions for American Idol, you get my meaning. Anyway, bad writing is especially offensive on the web because the web is meant for readers irregardless of this new dawn of videos, photo galleries and emoticons. Just like the web won’t replace books, no matter what people say (and fear), images won’t replace text as the major form of communication no matter how evocative the image. Not that an emoticon can be that evocative to begin with. And yes, a picture says a thousand words, but the words they say can’t always be left to the imagination of the viewer if you’re trying to get your point across. I’m a big proponent of distinct communication. What I mean by distinct is that no matter the medium and no matter the context, what you’re saying should be evocative of the the tone in which you mean it, and the context in which you put it. Obviously you should write what you mean as clearly as you can, but more than anything, humans being what they are, the way something is said is as important as what’s being said. This may seem like a lot of effort for web content, but to stand out on an Internet with over a 100 million web pages, it warrants a little consideration at least, right?