I know, it’s been a while since I posted an article here at WordPress PAD. I have a good excuse, I’ve been hard at work developing websites using WordPress as a CMS (and blog). In the past few months I have learned a great deal about what WordPress can and cannot do…mostly what can be done to it with a little grease, time and patience.

With that said, working on a current project where I had to implement a bbpress forum with a current wordpress blog installation, I realized that bbPress, although a sister software of WordPress, is not the best solution for WordPress forum integration for two reasons. One, it’s quite buggy and two, it’s not a smooth integration.

Hi, welcome back to Our Love Affair with WordPress series. It’s been a while, I know. But, I’ve been busy working with some clients to make their WordPress blogs as fabulous as they can be! So, last time on Our Love Affair with WordPress, we talked about Enhancing Your WordPress Blog With Essentials. Now, let’s say you’ve got a pretty tricked out blog, that both emphasizes your topic without all the unnecessary spinning rims and shiny bling, but you got some seriously phat content, sweet design and sick SEO that doesn’t interfere with the user experience. Now, one reason I very much dislike excess in blog design, and excess in general is because having a lot of anything means there’s that much more to maintain and that much more to look a hot mess when not maintained on a regular basis. With that said, let’s talk about what blog maintenance essentials you should practice to maintain keep your blog hot, and prevent a hot mess.

I like simplicity because of it’s elegance. Awkward moments and people, unnecessarily complicated tasks, and so forth are my pet peeves. With that said, when WordPress 2.6 came out and I noticed I couldn’t simply float left or right my images in my post, let’s just say I had a little “fit”. I love WordPress, but this is a silly bug that shouldn’t even exist. I could fix this by adding style="float:left;" to each image, but that could prove to be annoying after a while. So, here’s a simple solution. Add the default styles for the alignleft, alignright, etc. classes that WordPress assigns to your images when you click the left, right, center, etc. buttons anyway:

If you’ve been searching for a new WordPress theme recently, or have done so in the past, chances are you’ve visited themes.wordpress.net. It’s not a bad theme directory and it is quite substantion. It’s just not very user-friendly. Fortunately, WordPress is working on a new themes directory that will make it easier to search for themes and, if you’re a theme developer, upload your themes as well.

Three upgrades in less than a couple of months is a little annoying, but WordPress aims to please so I forgive. Anyway, the latest greatest version of WordPress is here, WordPress 2.6. There are quite a few little fixes, but I’ll highlight the major ones that are the most useful to most of us:

If the kind folks at WordPress cannot help you install your WordPress for free, see here, there are alternatives. If you are inclined not to even try installing WordPress yourself, you have a couple of solid choices that cost you nothing or very little. First, let me say that it’s not difficult to install WordPress even if you are completely tech-unsavvy. But, I do understand how some would rather not touch complicated looking files in gibberish language. Visit WordPress’s page on the 5-minute installation. It actually takes 5 minutes if you’re somewhat computer savvy, but maybe 10 minutes if you’re not. Also visit WordPress’ main installation pages if you’re installation requires a bit more elbow grease for whatever reason.

Now, on to the nitty-gritty. There are usually two types of installations you can do. Either a new installation or an upgrade. Upgrades may or may not be simple depending on the difference in versions. If, for example, you’re upgrading to the current version, 2.5.1 from let’s say version 1, which I hope to goodness you’re not, things can get a bit complicated…maybe.

WPTouch: This is a pretty cool theme and smart idea for a theme! WpTouch WordPress theme is a complimentary theme installed as a plugin on your WordPress blog or website that will format your content with this Apple-inspired, full-featured theme when your visitors are using an iPhone or iPod touch.

I’ve been using WordPress since I think 2006, maybe 2005 and had absolutely no idea that it was only 5 years ago that the first version of WordPress was released! WordPress, like technology itself has progressed in leaps and bounds.

At the Minna Gallery in downtown San Francisco, WordPress is having their 5th Birthday Party from 9pm to 2am. Read more about it at Upcoming.org or the official WordPress.org blog.