The Frances Wright – A Simple Yet Elegant Blogging Theme from WordPress Mods

The Frances Wright WordPress theme is a new blogging design from ThemeSweet. It is a simple clean design with beautiful typography and would be a good option for a personal blog due to its simplicity.

The sidebar is on the left hand side though this could be changed easily with a few edits to the templates and the stylesheet. It lacks certain templates such as dedicated sitemap and author templates though there is a links template for your blogroll.

If you plan on editing the theme a lot, you will be pleased to know that the code is very clean. Annoyingly the developer has chosen to store the 3 stylesheets the theme uses in a sub folder. This means that you can’t edit your theme directly via the admin area. I would recommend leaving the reset.css in the sub folder as it is unlikely you will ever need to modify it, though it´s worth copying the code from tablet.css and theme.css to style.css so that you can edit everything in the admin area.

The theme lacks its own options area (though the website states that it does have one). I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing as it doesn’t really need it and any changes you want to make can be made through the templates directly. On the plus side the top navigation menu is powered by the WordPress menu system, the sidebar is widget ready and it supports WordPress custom header and background images.

The Frances Wright is free to download however the website promotes a pro version that has a responsive design and social media integration. There is no way to actually purchase the pro version at the moment (though I suspect this will be coming soon).

It is currently being used by ThemeSweet developer Nikki Snow for his personal website so I recommend checking that out if you want to see what it looks like on a live website.

Thanks,
Kevin

The Frances Wright: Information | Download | Demo

The Frances Wright – A Simple Yet Elegant Blogging Theme is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at The Frances Wright – A Simple Yet Elegant Blogging Theme WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications

Login To WordPress By Scanning A QR Code from WordPress Mods

No More Passwords is a cool new WordPress plugin from Jack Reichert that lets you login to your WordPress powered website by scanning a Quick Response Barcode with your smartphone.

Once you have activated the plugin you will see a QR barcode in your login page. The idea is that you scan the code with your QR application and it automatically logs you into your site. In the video below Jack shows you how it works.

The plugin is definitely in beta mode. I initally installed the plugin on WP Mods and in my WP Mods test blog. The QR code showed in my test blog but didn’t show on WP Mods, which suggests that it was perhaps clashing with another plugin.

I scanned the code with my iPhones QR reader in my test area and it took me to a login page on my phone. After I entered my login information the plugin should have automatically logged me in on my computer though it didn’t work as planned, perhaps in part because the test blog I tried it on is in a sub directory of a domain that also has WordPress installed. So instead of redirecting me to www.testsite.com/testblog/wp-admin/ I was redirected to www.testsite.com/wp-login.php and asked to sign in again.

To find out if this was caused by me testing the plugin in a sub directory I installed the plugin in the root of the domain (e.g. www.testsite.com). This time, the plugin worked, though I still had to login via my phone every time (perhaps I didn’t set it up right).

Even if the bugs are ironed out in this plugin, I can’t see myself using it. I recognise that this type of login system can make your site more secure as keyword logging software can’t track your login details, though the process makes signing in more time consuming. It only takes me a few seconds to login using my username and password though by logging in with my phone I need to get my phone, launch the QR reader application and then scan the code. It seems like a long way for a short cut.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a cool idea and it’s encouraging to see a developer create something that little bit different. Those of you who are concerned about your username and password being tracked should give it a try. Please bear in mind that it’s still in beta mode so it might not work correctly for you. More information can be found at the links below

Good luck,
Kevin

No More Passwords: Information | Download

Login To WordPress By Scanning A QR Code is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at Login To WordPress By Scanning A QR Code WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications

City Theme – A City Portal Theme That Misses The Mark from WordPress Mods

CityTheme is a premium WordPress theme that was designed for city guides and directories. It’s a great looking theme though during testing I came across a lot of problems that made using the theme difficult. Before I speak about these limitations, let´s look at the main features of the design.

Citytheme has a magazine layout with space for a large 728×90 banner above the main design. Strangely, the design has a Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet and AddThis share button above the main navigation area. Thankfully these links are also shown underneath the main content area and the right hand side of the footer area though I doubt the share buttons at the top of the page will be used too often.

The theme has similar layout to most magazine designs with a featured slider on the home page and thumbnails used for latest posts from your categories. Although it is marketed as a city portal, the only thing that really distinguishes it as a city portal are boxes at the bottom of the home page that link to hotels, restaurants, activities and shopping categories.

If you have a look at the theme demo you will see that the single post template looks great. The content is easy to read and post thumbnails are placed at the top left hand side of posts by default.

Theme Settings

The theme includes a basic options area which lets you upload your favicon and add your Google Analytics code. You can also upload your logo though this is done from another page in the settings area (not sure why it’s just in the general settings area). You can add custom CSS here, select whether you want comments on posts, pages, both or neither and whether excerpts or full content is shown for posts.

Thumbnail settings can easily be adjust through the admin area too and you can enter the banner code for the 728×90 banner area at the top of the page and the 468×60 banner which is shown between the community updates area and info boxes on the home page.

An SEO settings area is also included with the theme. You can disable this and choose to use All-in-One SEO and Headspace 2 though other 3rd party plugins such as WordPress SEO by Yoast.

The SEO area lets you change your page title and which areas of your site are indexed (e.g. author pages, category archives). You can also change the description and keyword meta information.

Several page templates are also included with the theme including archives, a blog template, business template, contact form, full width form, image gallery, magazine, redirect and sitemap.

Major Problems With This Design

I was very impressed with the CityTheme when I first checked out the theme demo. Unfortunately, when I tested the theme I found a large number of problems with it. Although it’s marketed as a city portal, there isn’t really anything that makes creating a city portal with this website any easier than any other magazine theme. In reality, the theme makes creating your own custom portal much more difficult.

For starters, you can’t change what categories are shown on the home page or change what categories or posts are used for featured posts. You have to do all of this manually as everything is hard coded into the templates. This makes the theme pretty much unusable for those of you are who aren’t comfortable modifying templates. Everyone who purchases the theme will have to go through the index.php template and change what categories are shown on the home page.

For example, the code below is used in the index.php template to display sports news. If you have a different name for your category and/or a different page slug, you will have to change this area. Not only will you have to change the title and link at the top of the box, you will also have to modify the array so that the posts from your correct category are displayed.

                <h3>Sport News</h3>
 
                    <p class="more-news"><a href="<?php bloginfo('siteurl'); ?>/category/sports/">More News</a></p>
 
                </div>
 
                <ul class="post-list">
 
				<?php 				       
					$paged = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; 
					$args = array( 'post_type' => 'post', 
								   'category__not_in' => '',
								   'category_name' => 'sports',
								   'posts_per_page' => 3,
								   'paged' => $paged ); 
					query_posts($args);		
				?>
				<?php if (have_posts()) : $count = 0; ?>
				<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); $count++; ?>

Unfortunately, the problems don’t stop there. The theme is littered with dozens of examples that suggest that the theme has never been tested. For example, the demo showcases a large banner at the top of the sidebar. I suspect that this is because the background image makes it unsuitable to place a regular sidebar widget here as the text is unreadable. The demo also uses short titles for each category name. If you use two words for your category name then you will quickly find the category label at the top of an article breaks the design.

The theme is powered using the WooFramework from WooThemes. It appears that many of the framework features have not been implemented well or have been changed incorrectly. One example of this is the option to enable or disable comments in the settings area.

I was keen to see how the theme comments were styled as the theme demo only shows comments via the external commenting system Disqus. Unfortunately, the theme doesn’t allow you to display comments. Even when the option for comments is enabled in the theme options area and in the specific post or page, no comments are shown.

I see no reason for an option to enable or disable comments in the settings area anyway as WordPress already has this functionality though if it is going to be included, it should at least work. The fact that comments aren’t displayed is a major negative and is sure to frustrate many people who purchase this design.

I was particularly disappointed with the footer area. Rather that using a 2, 3 or 4 column footer that was widget ready they have opted for a navigation menu at the left hand side of the bottom and a footer text field on the right hand side. The footer has a fixed design which means that if you have a big menu the design will break and the text on the right hand side is aligned to to the right instead of the left (not a major problem but I would prefer it was defaulted to the left).

The Facebook, Twitter and AddThis share links are displayed for the third time in the right hand side of the footer. I don’t see any major benefit of placing share buttons at such a low point of the design. An image credit link back to CityTheme is also placed at the right hand side. This can be removed very easily by modifying the footer.php template but by doing so you will have a a box area with nothing in it. You could always place a different image here or change the footer and stylesheet accordingly so that it wasn’t there, however I would much prefer a simple text link was built into the design rather than an image.

Several page templates come packaged with the theme. The contact form is basic but seems to work well; you just need to make sure you enter your email address in the settings area. It doesn’t have any spam protection so I would recommend choosing a good contact form instead.

The business template seems pretty pointless to me. It seems to be just the regular page template however the page title has been removed. Due to the page title being removed the content near the top of the page touches the surrounding background image. Clearly padding needs to be added to this template to avoid this.

The full width page template is even worse. The alignment is all messed up and the content is displayed against the background image, making it very difficult to read text at the top of the page.

The sitemap template has the exact same problem.

As does the image gallery template. This again raises the question of whether anyone actually tested this theme.

In order to use the theme correctly you apparently need to install the WordPress plugins MapPress, More Fields, WP PageNavi and Search By Category. I’m glad that the developers did not choose to integrate these plugins directly into the design though I would have preferred if important theme functionality was not relying on external plugins as there is always a chance that the plugins will stop working or no longer be updated.

Overview

After being initially impressed with the design of CityTheme, I was later disappointed by many errors are prevalent throughout the theme. If you purchase this theme you will have to change a lot of code in the index.php template in order to make it work with your existing website. You will also have to either use an external commenting service such as Disqus or Livefyre or spend some time fixing the problems that stop comments from being displayed.

It’s unfortunate that the developers of this theme didn’t spend time testing their design because as it stands, anyone who purchases this design is going to be very frustrated. There isn’t really anything that makes this a good option for a city portal either. The home page does have boxes to restaurants and shopping sections etc but everything is hard coded so you can’t customise categories for your own website easily.

A standard license for CityTheme retails for $75 and gives you free updates and support for one year. The developer license costs $130 and gives you lifetime support and updates. It also includes the original Photoshop PSD logo.

I would recommend giving the theme a miss though and purchasing a good customisable magazine design instead. It will save you a lot of time, energy and money.

Thanks,
Kevin

Link: CityTheme

* Thanks to CityTheme for providing a test copy of their design for the purpose of this review.

City Theme – A City Portal Theme That Misses The Mark is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at City Theme – A City Portal Theme That Misses The Mark WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications

Make Your WordPress Website More Secure With Secure WordPress from WordPress Mods

The security of your website is something that most WordPress users tend to forgot about. That is, until your site gets hacked. WordPress forum member Kris recently advised that his own website had been hacked despite the website using the latest version of WordPress. It appears that this was caused by vulnerability in a plugin he was using. The whole thing highlights that security should be made top priority, whether your website is big or small.

One plugin I recommend using is Secure WordPress by WebsiteDefender. This free plugin lets you correct 11 security issues that the default WordPress installation has such as deactivating error messages in the login page and removing update options for non admins.

For me, the best feature is the ability to remove the version of WordPress you are using from all areas except for admin. This is particularly useful for those of you who are using an older version of WordPress (though you really should upgrade).

What surprises me is that these security issues have not been addressed in the core version of WordPress. I can’t see why non admin would need to see core, theme and plugin updates anyway so why show them. Until these issues have been fixed in the default version of WordPress, I recommend installing Secure WordPress. It doesn’t guarantee your site won’t be hacked but at the very least it will discourage would be hackers and make things much more difficult for them.

Good luck,
Kevin

Secure WordPress: Information | Download

Make Your WordPress Website More Secure With Secure WordPress is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at Make Your WordPress Website More Secure With Secure WordPress WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications

Jigoshop 1.0 Released from WordPress Mods

Since it was originally launched in May 2011, Jigoshop has went on to become one of the most popular ecommerce solutions for WordPress. Tomorrow sees the release of version 1.0. Jigoshop marketer Dan Thornton got in touch with me today to advise me about some of the great new features the plugin will feature.

The press release notes that:

• Product variations now include virtual and downloadable options. Downloads can be stored on external storage and uploading can be done with the normal WordPress Media Uploader. Mass editing of variations is now possible.
• The Product Admin has a new User Interface, featuring more information in a single screen, contextual help information and less data entry to upload products.
• Products can also have multiple tax classes, which can apply to shipping, or retail plus shipping.
  Stability, speed and security have all been improved, including security contributions from WordPress Lead Developer Mark Jaquith.
• Most importantly – Jigoshop remains completely free to download and use, and comes complete with Paypal and Moneybookers/Skrill integration so you can start making money before you spend a penny on any themes, extensions or support packages.

Dan also sent me a preview image which shows some of the new changes:

As many of you are aware, when WooThemes were unable to purchase Jigoshop last year they simply released Jigoshop under a new name. To add insult to injury they also hired two of the main coders of Jigoshop. I spoke about the ethics about this move at the time. Many people, such as Grant Griffiths were disgusted with this move. Others, such as Yoast, were more impartial and predicted that in time both plugins would go in different directions.

To the credit of Dan Thornton and the the developers at Jigoshop, they reacted very positively to the whole situation and with this update it looks like Jigoshop will be going in a new and exiting direction.

In particular it’s interesting to see contributions from WordPress lead developer Mark Jaquith to improve the security of the plugin. The new user interface should prove popular too.

Do you use Jigoshop? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts on these new features.

Thanks,
Kevin

Link: Jigoshop

Jigoshop 1.0 Released is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at Jigoshop 1.0 Released WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications

12 Good WordPress Clone Themes from WordPress Mods

They say imitation is the best form of flattery. This is especially true in the design world. Elements from popular websites have been duplicated across the web. Some developers have gone one step further and attempted to duplicate the entire design of a popular service.

You may be surprised at how great some of these imitation designs are. Some of them are so good it’s difficult to distinguish them from the original. If you have been searching for a good clone script you may have found that many of the clone scripts date back as early as 2007 to 2009. The scripts below, even the ones that are slightly older, should still work correctly with WordPress 3+. Bear in mind that if designs that were released in 2010 or earlier are unlikely to have many of the new features that WordPress has added over the last year, though this shouldn’t be a major problem for a clone theme.

Groupon Clone

With daily deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial valued at billions of dollars, it’s no surprise that many people are trying to get in on the action.

1. Daily Deal
Standard License: $89.95, Developer License: $179.00

The Daily Deal theme has everything you need to start your own Groupon style website. Users can submit their own deals and customers can buy deals using one of seven payment gateways. All deals are managed via the WordPress admin area.

Info & Download | Demo

RSS Aggregators

RSS Aggregator websites require very little time to start up and maintain yet they can be a good source of traffic. The success of AllTop and PopURLs has encouraged others to create websites that show the latest posts from popular websites.

2. Accumulo
Basic License: $59.99, Developer License: $149.99

A clean looking AllTop clone that comes with custom widgets for displaying RSS feeds. Social media widgets that display the latest updates from Twitter and Facebook are also included.

Info & Download | Demo

3. OneNews
Personal Option: $65, Developer Option: $149

Originally released in 2007, the OneNews theme was last updated in early 2011 so that it works on WordPress 3-0+ websites and above. A light and dark scheme are included in the package and there are widgets for displaying regular RSS feeds and updates from Flickr and video websites like YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion.

Info & Download | Demo

4. Aggegator
FREE

A great RSS aggregator theme that was released in early 2010 by Templatic for free. Similar to the other AllTop clones, it features a widget based layout for displaying the latest feeds and comes in two colour schemes (though they are very similar and share a white background).

Info & Download | Demo

Digg Clones

Digg is not as popular as it was a few years ago. This may be in part to the growth of social media services such as Twitter and Facebook. Social sharing sites are still popular and many sharing communities are still going strong.

5. Nominate
Basic License: $59.99, Developer License: $149.99

Nominate doesn’t imitate the Digg design though it does imitate its features. Visitors can sign up, submit articles and vote popular articles up and down the page. Spam protection is built in so you don’t have to worry too much about the submission form overwhelming your inbox.

Info & Download | Demo

6. Digg Like
FREE

Digg Like was built for normal blogs and websites. Rather than giving you social sharing functionality, the theme merely mimics the Digg design. The Digg design has changed slightly since this theme was released however it’s very close to the current design.

Info & Download | Demo

Fiverr Clone

The concept of Fiverr is quite simple. It’s a job board for people that are willing to do something specific for 5 dollars. Within the first year of its launch in 2010 there was over half a million jobs and tasks posted.

7. Pricerr
Single License: $69.99, Developer License: $149.99

Pricerr is one of the best clone themes available. Not only is the design identical to the one on Fiverr.com, it can do everything Fiverr can do. Users can post jobs and get paid via PayPal. The theme also has support for Google Maps, Twitter and Facebook and it has a private messaging service built in.

Info & Download | Demo

Newspaper Clones

With WordPress being a fully functional Content Management System (CMS), it´s no surprise that it clones news websites very well. The functionality for publishing a new website is already there, the clone themes simply change your design so that your content is published in a similar fashion to the news website it mimics.

8. New Yorker
Regular License: $39

A pretty good clone design of The New York Times website. The theme is WordPress 3.0+ ready and includes 7 custom widgets and integration with Feedburner and google Analytics.

Info & Download | Demo

9. WPSN
Regular License: $39

Another news clone from PressJunkie. WPSN is a great clone of the sports website ESPN. Like the New Yorker theme it has several custom widgets and support for Feedburner and Google Analytics.

Info & Download | Demo

Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers is the biggest Q & A website on the web. Questions range from practical DIY and computer related problems to completely irrelevant topics such as If the cow goes “Moo” and the sheep goes “Baah” what does the human say?.

10. WP Answers
Single License: $89, Developer License: $249

The WP Answers design comes in 6 colour schemes and is powered by a premium question and answer plugin to help you create a Yahoo Answers website. Visitors can register profiles manually or using their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Members get points for answers questions and using the plugin you can pull content automatically from Yahoo Answers and display it on your site.

Info & Download | Demo

11. Answers
Standard License: $65, Developer License: $99

A beautiful question and answers theme that comes with 7 different colour schemes. It works in a similar way to WP Answwers though there is no option for importing data to your own site (if you don’t want duplicate content on your site this won’t be an issue).

Info & Download | Demo

Twitter Clone

A few years ago there were several Twitter style themes available for WordPress though most haven’t been updated for years and look very outdated.

12. Live Twit
Free

Despite the demo not working any more on Templatic, Live Twit works well with WordPress 3.3+. It comes with 5 colour schemes and lets you publish updates for a specified keyword.

Info & Download

I’ve hope you’ve enjoyed this list of WordPress clone designs. I purposely left out many designs that I thought were too outdated though if you know of a good one that wasn’t included in this list, please feel free to share it in the comment area and I’ll add it to the list if it’s good

Good luck,
Kevin

12 Good WordPress Clone Themes is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at 12 Good WordPress Clone Themes WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications

Manage Series Of Posts With The Organize Series WordPress Plugin from WordPress Mods

Organize Series is a fantastic free plugin that lets you organise posts that are part of a series. This isn’t a simple plugin. Organize Series adds a new taxonomy to your WordPress website and completely integrates into your post structure just like categories and tags.

Adding a new type of series is very straight forward and works the same way as in other taxonomies such as categories and tags. You can also assign an image to the series.

Once you have created your series title you can assign posts to the series via the post list page in the admin area.

Alternatively, you can assign posts directly via the post editor. You can also create a new series directly in this area if you wish.

Posts that are part of a series automatically have a note at the top of the article that states that it’s part of a series. An information box for the series is also attached to the top right hand side of all series posts.

The plugin comes with a widget that lets you display a list of all your series. It’s pretty basic though you can change how many series are displayed and order series by number of posts in a series, name, series slug or series creation date.

A table of contents page is included that lets you list all series on a page. This is a great addition and a good way of promoting your series. Each series has the series title, logo and description denoted.

The URL of your table of contents can be defined in the settings area. You can also change the widget of series icons and set whether core features like the post list box are enabled. All templates can be modified here too and you can style everything using your own CSS stylesheet if you wish.

If you are planning on creating series of posts on your website or blog, I recommend checking Organize Series out. It’s free to download however a variety of add ons are available such as integration with the All In One SEO plugin and grouping series together. Prices range from $5 to around $20 per add on. You can also get support for $49 per year and support and all add ons for $99 per year (a saving of only $5). This seems to be priced incorrectly as you would be paying an additional $50 per year rather than paying $55 one time for all add ons. Lifetime support and add ons are available at $249 those who don’t want to pay on a yearly basis.

They do offer one add on for free. Organize Series Publisher allows bulk publishing of all posts in a series. I’m surprised that this hasn’t been built directly into the core plugin rather than being released separately.

More information about the plugin can be found at the links below.

Thanks,
Kevin

Organize Series: Information | Download

Manage Series Of Posts With The Organize Series WordPress Plugin is a post from: WordPress Mods.

©2012 WordPress Mods. All Rights Reserved.

Original Article can be found at Manage Series Of Posts With The Organize Series WordPress Plugin WordPress Mods : WordPress Mods - WordPress Themes, Plugins and Modifications