But, I thought it would be valuable to list out numbers 11-20 as well, since those are also very good. Remember, this list is solely based on the number of downloads!

Check it out:

1. WP e-Commerce
2. Twitter Tools
3. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
4. GD Star Rating
5. Simple Tags
6. Easy AdSense
7. Smart YouTube
8. Page Flip Image Gallery
9. SEO Smart Links
10. Lightbox 2

Again, don’t miss out the top 10 most downloaded WordPress plugins here if you missed it.

ECHO Conference is streaming it’s event live and it looks pretty simple and slick.

316 Networks is providing the streaming and chat technology while they are using Juitter for their Tweets.

Great job guys!

This definitely had me rolling.

[HT: JoshHarris]

Let’s take a look…

Face Lift

As outlined in the preview, we’ve attempted to provide a better look and feel and overall user experience.

To that end, we’ve attempted to pull this experience through the entire theme. Aside from a brand new administration panel:

We’ve also provided a refresh of the default style that ships with the theme:

On top of that, we’ve made it even easier for you to customize the look and feel of your blog even without touching the custom.css.

We’ve included some new framework level options that make it incredibly easy to move the navigation and sidebar, add custom background images, and even support for custom menus:

Brand New Shiny Things

In addition to a full set of new features, we’ve also written a couple of plug-ins specifically for Standard Theme.

This includes a new Follower Count Plug-in (coming soon in a stand-alone release) that will showcase the total number of Twitter followers and FeedBurner subscribers:

On top of that we’ve included a brand new version awareness functionality such that Standard Theme will notify you when your theme is out of date and that it’s time to upgrade. You do have the support license with free lifetime upgrades, don’t you?

Finally, there is no need to reconfigure each installation of Standard Theme as we now offer the ability to import and export settings from the previous version of Standard Theme.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, But a Video is Worth…?

Yes, there’s more more to say about what we’ve introduced in the new version of our WordPress Theme, but perhaps the video tour would help to demonstrate what you can expect:

But That’s Not All!

We’ve covered more features, licensing updates, and general notes about our new theme over at the Standard Theme blog.

So before grabbing your copy of Standard Theme 2, head on over and check it out, and don’t forget to subscribe!

That looks pretty darn neat. Apparently this is the ‘Control Room’ for LifeChurch.tv‘s Online Campus Experience.

Word.

I suppose it just makes sense when you have that many online experiences, right?

[HT: JohnOtjen]

I thought so too and I instantly checked ManageWP and their web service that advertises the ability to manage multiple WordPress blogs with one easy-to-use dashboard.

Here’s what I found…

Signing up with easy and painless. The system uses WordPress as it’s application core, so it’s very familiar.

I was able to easily add multiple blogs quickly, which was nice:

And within seconds I had a few of the 8BIT blogs registered and linked (you have to download and activate a plugin too though).

I quickly got to the management screen and was pleasantly surprised at the ease and simplicity of the UI:

Then I tried blogging  a post on one of the properties and that’s where we hit some bumps.

For starters (and this was the deal breaker for me) you are not able to upload images to the posts. I was very disappointed.

In addition, the rest of the posting functionality (like categories and tags) was not intuitive and easy to use.

Too bad. I was really hoping that this could have been a healthy solution that I’ve been looking for!

My guess is that with a little continued development that this could be a real ball-winner. I’d imagine that most serious users that need this type of functionality won’t find this useful since most owners of multiple blogs are power-users and need all the functionality that WordPress has natively.

Hope it continues to mature as a product!

But, I had no idea that there was a “right” and “wrong” way to do it; have you reviewed the “High Five Etiquette” recently?

Check it:

And knowing is half the battle…

Now they are at it again with a little “easter egg” of sorts. Did you know that you can play snake on YouTube? Yes, I had to try it myself before I believed the possibilities of having something to do while a video loaded or when I was bored.

Head over to YouTube, find a video that has the newest player (usually on all new videos submitted. You can recognize the new player by the glass or transparent play button at the bottom of the video). Once you find a video let it play for a second and then hit pause. Give it a second to load out some more and then hold the left arrow key…and boom, you are playing snake.

As you can see, when we have free time at the 8BIT Network we like to play snake and watch Andy Stanley videos.

Enjoy and don’t hit the walls.

Part of this is probably because I’m not a famous person and I don’t use Facebook as much as many other people. It’s just easy to avoid with all the other online properties.

But, let’s say that you were a victim of a cyberstalker – how do you get rid of them? Apparently you do these three things:

1. Call the National Center of Victims of Crime (1-800-FYI-CALL)
2. Keep all copies of emails, texts, voice mails, etc.
3. Don’t respond. Ever.

You can read more about the other “levels” of engagement and stalkery here in this article from CNN.

Creepy.

In fact, it’s easier to spend a Sunday afternoon googling local churches, and reading through their respective websites, than it is to get all the kids bathed, dressed, fed, loaded into the Tahoe, unloaded, registered, and wrestled into an oh-so-unfamiliar Sunday school environment just to “try out” a new church for the first time.

Let’s face it, your website will either be a bridge or a barrier for new church members. If this is true, and I believe it is, how can you make it a bridge?

We’ve blogged before on the basics of good web design for a church, so if you’re looking for a high level checklist, check that out.

But what’s got me thinking about all of this again is the fact that we’re reading the book Making Vision Stick by Andy Stanley and, as usual, it’s loaded with practical wisdom on web site design. OK that’s not exactly true. But in his usual fashion, Andy delivers a Z-Pack of principles that transcend a single application.

For example I found this gem:

What people complain about communicates their understanding of the vision.

But when I read it with my web developer X-Ray goggles on, it said, “What people complain about your website communicates their understanding of the vision for your website.” Chances are if you have a church website, someone’s complained about it at some point!

Three things to consider:

1. Your church should have a vision.
2. Your vision should be clear on your website.
3. Your vision should be accurate on your website.

If you don’t have a vision, then you probably have bigger problems than your website. Go address those.

If you have a vision, it should be obvious on your home page before you even scroll.

If you have a vision articulated already, make sure it’s accurate. Are attracting the type of visitors that stay? What’s your bounce rate? The vision on your site may not be matching up to what is communicated on Sunday morning.

We look for opportunities to connect with people who are disconnected from God, and sometimes you’ve only got one shot (one first impression) to make it stick.