WP Mods

Modernist WordPress Theme

Kevin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:00:04 +0000

Released last month by Rodrigo Galindez, Modernist is a a WordPress blogging design with beautiful Typography. It is a minimilist design which will appeal to those who aren’t looking for a lot of features in their theme.

The theme is widget ready and has text links to promote posts via Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg and Reddit.

Modernist is free to download however a $25 donation will get you free theme updates and support for the theme via a mailing list.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this theme

Thanks,
Kevin

Download Link: Modernist WordPress Theme

Modernist WordPress Theme is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.

Create a Money Making Question & Answer Website With WP-Answers

Kevin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 08:00:26 +0000

Oli Dale contacted me last week about reviewing his brand new plugin WP-Answers – a new premium WordPress plugin which changes WordPress into a fully functional question and answer site, just like Yahoo Answers.

The plugin comes packaged with it’s own unique theme. 6 colours are available: blue, brown, purple, green, black and red. The theme also has a basic options page which allows you to add your RSS details, about info, Google Analytics tracking code and change your logo and favicon.

The theme is unique and has a clean look, though it does have a ‘WordPress’ feel to it (if you know what I mean!). Just under the header is a large search type bar. This is where users can submit their own questions. If a user is not a member they will be taken to the registration page in order to sign up.

The theme sidebar is widgetized so you can drag and drop a range of WP-Answers related widgets into this area to suit your needs.

The main part of the home page shows the recent questions and the number of answers for each question. It’s very similar in appearance to social media sites such as Digg or Sphinn.

Features

WP-Answers boasts a lot of great features which encourage user participation and allow you to grow your site with little effort.

The main features are:

Points System: The point system is a way of encouraging users to answer questions on a regular basis. Posting a question usually has a negative value (default is -10) whilst answering one will give you points (default is +5). You can also give more points to users who give the best answer, which encourages users to give good answers rather than just answer something for the sake of it.
You can change how points are rewarded and manually change the number of points a user has too, which is useful if you want to run competitions and give points as a reward.
Advertisement Integration: The plugin has built in 125×125 banner integration which allows you to easily add sponsors to your sidebar. It works well though there are many alternative plugins out there for WordPress which do a better job so if you are looking for something more advanced you should try something else out for your sponsor area.
Profile Pages: Every registered member gets a profile page which shows the questions and answers they have posted. The user can also upload an avatar.
Auto Posting: By far one of the biggest features is the ability to pull content from the USA, UK and Canadian Yahoo Answers website into your own. Content can be imported from search tags you specify as often as you like (days & Hours) and placed into specific categories on your site. There is no limit to the number of importing campaigns you can add.
This is not something which should be used long term though it’s a useful feature at the start of a websites life so the site doesn’t look dead.

To see the script in action you should check out 3 websites which are using WP-Answers at the moment: 17 Things, Techmanch and Ghosts.

Overview

I’m sure we will see many more websites using the script over the coming months. Question and Answers websites are quite hard to get established though they can be very profitable in the long run if user participation reaches a good level.

The ability to import content from Yahoo Answers is a welcome addition to the script. It won’t bring you much search engine traffic since it is duplicate content, however it does mean people who stumble across your site will not see a blank page.

A single license for WP-Answers retails for $89, a multi license costs $179 whilst a developer license will set you back $249. All purchases come with a 14 day money back guarantee for those who are not 100% happy with the product.

$89 is a fair price for a script of this kind in my opinion. Before purchasing the script though I would do some research into the niche you want to target so that you can see if there are any existing question and answers services for your niche.

I was sent a copy of the plugin for testing purposes so I’d be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about WP-Answers.

Thanks,
Kevin

Link: WP-Answers

Create a Money Making Question & Answer Website With WP-Answers is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.

Redline WordPress Theme

Kevin — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 08:00:39 +0000

Built upon the WP Framework, Redline is a WordPress theme which was coded using HTML 5 and CSS level 3. The theme could be used for a blog, magazine or news website.

It features a drop down navigation menu, featured article on the home page and a 2 column sidebar.

The theme was recently upgraded to support the custom header image option however some features from WordPress 3.0 remain absent (which is quite common with WordPress themes at the moment).

More information can be found at the links below

Kevin

Download & Info | Demo

Redline WordPress Theme is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.

Add Customised Groups to any Post, Page or Template using People Lists

Kevin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:00:36 +0000

If you use WordPress for a company or community website then you will love People Lists; a new plugin which lets you create customised groups for your users. Once you have created your list you can add it to any post, page or template using a simple line of shortcode.

You can create a list for any group of people you like. You simply need to enter the name of the list and then drag the users into it.

There is a default list of shortcodes which can be used in templates to display specific fields however you can also create your own custom profile fields if necessary.

Once you have created your list you display the information anywhere on your website. The plugin User Avatar was developed in conjunction with People Lists to allow you to enhance your list and make it more presentable.

All User Avatar does is allow users to upload a custom picture to their profile. Pictures can be cropped to the users requirements. Once the plugin has been installed you can add it to any users bio page or any list which you have created. It’s worth installing if you use People Lists or just want a quick way of adding a picture to users profiles.

Everyone uses WordPress for different reasons though if you have a lot of registered members on your site you should look into People Lists as it makes it easy to group your members into different categories and list them.

Good luck,
Kevin

Download Links

Add Customised Groups to any Post, Page or Template using People Lists is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.

Coffee Blog WordPress Theme

Kevin — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 08:00:14 +0000

Coffee Blog is a new free WordPress theme from template veterans Template Monster.

The theme features a large header which displays the main navigation links and a large image of a cup of coffee. It could easily be used for something other than a coffee blog if this image was changed.

There are two versions of Coffee blog which you can download – one includes the design psd files, one doesn’t. It’s worth downloading the zip with the psd files just incase you want to do some major edits in the future

Good luck,
Kevin

Download Link: Coffee Blog WordPress Theme

Coffee Blog WordPress Theme is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.

Twitter Announce App Connection Changes

Kevin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:03:00 +0000

If you are a Twitter user then you will probably have received an email from them today regarding their new authorisation rules for applications. As of August 31st 2010, all applications must use “OAuth” as an authentication method.

You will have come across the “OAuth” authentication method many times before. Essentially, it asks for your permission before an app is allowed to use your Twitter login details to give you access.

Hopefully this new change will not affect you however there are bound to be some Twitter WordPress plugins which will need to be adapted to accomodate this new change so bear this in mind if a Twitter plugin you are using stops working.

Twitter also announced their new URL shortening service t.co. They claim their new link service will protect users from spyware and malicious software. It’s a smart move – being able to track click throughs for links will give them a lot of useful data, which advertisers could use to increase exposure of their own products.

Link: Twitter Applications and OAuth

Twitter Announce App Connection Changes is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.

Let Your Readers Promote Your Articles With Sharedaddy

Kevin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 08:00:49 +0000

It’s common for WordPress themes to come integrated with social media voting buttons. However, many themes do not, whilst others simply have simple text links to sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Thankfully there are lots of great plugins which automatically add social media sharing buttons into your site.

Back in March I showed you 11 of the best social media plugins for WordPress. One which would easily fit into that list is Sharedaddy, a new sharing plugin which was released a few days ago.

The plugin lets users share your posts via Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, PressThis, Digg and email. You can also add a print link. It’s possible to add other sharing sites and services too via the settings area.

Once the plugin is installed, all you have to add a social media site underneath your posts is drag and drop the service in the plugin settings area. You can remove the site icons if you like, determine the text which appears before the links and set whether the links open in a new window.

Unfortunately there is not an option to add the sharing buttons underneath pages, it can only be added underneath posts and on the home page.

Sharedaddy is a good option for anyone who wants to quickly add buttons for popular social media sites underneath their posts.

Hopefully the plugin will be developed more in the future to include some much needed features such as adding the buttons to pages as well as posts. A larger list of social media sites would also be welcomed.

Good luck,
Kevin

Download Link: Sharedaddy

Let Your Readers Promote Your Articles With Sharedaddy is a post from: WordPress Mods. As a thank you to all RSS subscribers we have created the WordPress Video Theme. Please visit the RSS Subscribers Theme Page to download the theme.