For a few years now I have been working with a few friends on conjuring up a personable news source for our local community: happy hour specials, entertainment, events, and the normal local news. However, I have found it very difficult to bring the creativity from my brain to the table of development. Honestly, using Wordpress as the blog engine and CMS makes perfect sense; but what about a theme to really utilize its full potential.

There are various elements that one really must utilize to make a news source or magazine style website successful. Lots of content, accessible content, feature rich columns and navigation and a beautiful design to go right along with it. Adii from Live Wire has done just that with his new professional news and magazine themes at Live Wire Series from PremiumNewsTheme.com. The themes are feature rich and hearty with design flavor. They’re very top-notch, similar to the styles found at Revolution Theme from Brian Gardener.

I spent a few moments surfing around today and checked out Gazette and the Red Live Wire Series templates. They’re both absolutely beautiful! Then, my good friend David introduced a give-away he is having on , to give away a theme from Adii!. It does not get much better than that, if you asked me.

So, what would I do with the theme? I would hack it all to hell and make it completely functional for my personable news site, which URI will keep secret for now. However, I would definitely put the theme to work and overtime in providing news and content to my fellow local community bloggers and readers. Travis would probably appreciate the fully developed theme to work with as well.

Now how do I acquire it… thats the real question! Working capital for blog startups is always ridiculously tight around here. I often use my pocket book to fund projects that I can guarantee a little return revenue, but I think this is completely worth the money spent.

Great work Adii!

For those who are not familiar with theme and plug-in development for Wordpress; it is not exactly a simple task or undertaking. It takes an incredible amount of time to strategically plan, develop, design, release, and support these resources.

The Wordpress community is enormous!

Imagine having a plug-in that is being tossed around the internet like a viral video of two beetles playing texas hold’em. Next, imagine the influx of mail messages in your inbox related to support, feature requests, questions, and overall kudos from fans. Although I enjoy every message I get, despite not being able to respond to every single one — the overall quantity is overwhelming.

Therefore, I have an idea. I’ve noticed that most developers and designers have a method for contributing to their cause. I’m not asking you to contribute just because you use my work. I’m simply suggesting that you give back. If my plug-ins, themes, comments, statements, link love, suggestions, negativity, feelings, photographs, conversations, or any other element you can conjure up and give me credit for has effected you in a positive way — return the favor.

I keep a pretty busy schedule between my work, projects, education, and modest social life. Therefore, I have to prioritize the projects and scenarios that are going to benefit my website, pocket book, and overall me the best. If donations come and I can justify sitting in front of my monitor for four hours cranking out bug-fixes, hacks, tweaks, or any suggested mods — I will.

I do not want anyone thinking I do not pay attention to what is said and such in comments related to these plugins and themes. I definitely notice; at the same time I cannot get too into the testimony from everyone to fix things; because it isn’t bringing anything in to make it worth my while other than some “publicity.” Then again, my website is not well monetized to even make that worthwhile..

Cash donations are not the only compensation efforts I will accept; have an idea.. contact me.

First, I just read an article, Sponsored themes over at Weblog Tools Collection’s Blog and I found it very entertaining. I’ve noticed an increasing number of theme sponsors amongst the sitepoint marketplace crowd over the previous year as well. Overall, I find the idea of sponsoring a theme pretty interesting. However, put into perspective, make sure your sponsorship offer is worthy of the theme itself.

The newest version of my website has become quite popular amongst the various css design galleries on the internet. Because of this growing support for my website and its presentation, I have decided to release, in the form of a Wordpress theme, a previously mocked design version for my website. The design was initially worked on with Elena, just as version four-final was for my site.

Introducing Comment Relish, a wordpress plugin developed to add a little zing to your weblog. Check out all the details here, feel free to download it, and let me know what you think.

A vulnerability in WordPress has been discovered which can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks. Input passed to the “year” parameter when used in wp_title() is not properly sanitised before being returned to the user. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user’s browser session in context of an affected site.

The vulnerability is confirmed in version 2.1.2. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution

The vulnerability is fixed in the SVN repository (revision 5003).

Wordpress is dangerous, Upgrade now! seems to be a headline that is traveling the blogosphere in reference to the Wordpress 2.1.1 release. According to numerous websites, there are a number of vulnerabilities that are included within the 2.1.1 release and Wordpress.org is notifying their users of a dangerous release and asking everyone to download the new 2.1.2.

What I find interesting is how Wordpress.org is informing everyone that someone, aka a cracker gained access to their file-system and modified the original source of the WP2.1.1 download. Not all users were affected? According to the Wordpress XSS/CSRF advisory that was posted on February 27, 2007 the vulnerabilities existed within the post-parameter of wordpress.

I apologize! Okay! I’m sorry! Seriously! This is what I get for not testing thoroughly across all possibilities. Any-who, I wrote a plugin, launched it, and well — let’s just say I forgot to fix something. I’ll have it up and online for download very soon.. my bad!!

Update: plugin has been moved here.

I’m preparing to do a little house cleaning on my website. I’m wanting to consolidate some categories and move articles around to get them nestled into their new categories easily. Essentially, I have some how become confused and logged articles in different categories, however, both categories have the same definition. Therefore, in an attempt to become more productive with my blog, I’m asking, “How should I organize my posts?”

That’s right, introducing ad space for 2007! I have decided to monetize the traffic to this website for a limited amount of time for a handful of organizations, companies and individuals. Details surrounding the topic of sponsoring this website is simple and affordable.

The nitty gritty..

• $500.00 flat-rate for 365 days of wholesome advertising space within specific areas of my website for maximum exposure and click-through rates.
• Access to reports and live statistics for ad performance as well as suggestions and assistance in increasing your ads performance.
• Regular updates and articles. I typically average twenty full articles of unique content per month, however, this year has been extremely busy and next year has a better schedule. Therefore, I can testify that I will be writing at least fifteen articles per month, not counting small asides, notes and blurbs.
• Articles discussing, displaying and promoting your product(s), service(s) or website ventures. I promise to write honest, opinionated articles, whether positive or constructive criticsm. I enjoy sharing my opinion, so if you have something that I might like to write about — let me know.
• Fresh, attractive and interactive design for 2007! I have a new design for version four that will be launching very soon. The new layout has ad spots embedded into the page(s) that will provide a great amount of exposure for your website. I will be keeping advertisements up to date with the design style as it progresses. I often change my design style two to three times a year!
• You are not limited to one ad spot. I am accepting sponsors that I feel fit the audience of my website