With audio posts you can upload a .mp3 file via the wordpress post media manager or link to an external mp3 if you wish. mp3 files are played in a custom player and embedded into your post content.

To post videos simply copy and past the embed code into your wordpress posts, the tumblblog theme uses fitvids.js to automatically resize the video to the correct width to fit your post page.

Some TumblBlog Features

• Integrated Widget Advertising Positions (You could use WordPress Adrotate Plugin)
• Widgetized Footer Section
• Custom Recent Posts, Recent Comments Widgets & Social Box (Mashable Inspired) Widget
• Double Column Pages, Double Column Categories & Double Column Links / Blogroll Widgets
• WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin Integration
• Simple Theme Options Panel
• Left or Right Sidebar From Options
• Logo Upload From Options

Recommended Plugins For This Theme

• WordPress Options Framework (required)
• WordPress SEO (required)
• Easy FancyBox (recommended)

Tumblblog is a wordpress tumblr like theme that allows you to post content to your wordpress blog using the wordpress post format function, tumblog does not use plugins to achieve tumblr link functionality.

One of the main goals with TumblBlog was that we wanted your posted content to remain visible on your site if you ever decided to move away from the TumblBlog theme. After studying other available implementations of tumblr style themes for wordpress this isnt always the case.

Some of the available tumblr themes / plugins use a lot of wordpress custom fields to store you content like Quotes, Links, Images, Audio etc if you then decided to change themes in the future this would require a fair amount of wordpress knowledge and custom coding to get your old content to display in your new theme.

By using wordpress post formats this situation shouldnt arise with TumblBlog and you content will still be displayed with a different theme.

We will go into more details with the theme features when it is closer to release so for now here is a little sneak peek at the theme running the default theme with some custom widgets enabled.

TumblBlog Homepage Screenshot

As always all feedback is welcomed in the comments section.

The latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard.

WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports. Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are the cat’s pajamas:

Download: WordPress v3.3

VisualNews is a theme we developed to give your wordpress site a professional news website feel whil still being relatively light on server resources as standard. The codebase is also easy for even beginners to understand and edit with the minimum of fuss. Coded to wordpress theme standards and checked with the wordpress Theme Checker tool set (The same tool set wordpress.org uses to scan submitted themes to their website) you can be safe in the knowledge that VisualNews is a robust and secure theme will all its code being 3.3 ready. In fact the demo is running v3.3 of wordpress right now.

Some VisualNews Features

• Configurable FaceBook Like and Google+ Button In Header
• Use of Google Custom Search Integrated
• Integrated Widget Advertising Positions (You could use WordPress Adrotate Plugin)
• Latest, Top Rated, Most Read and Most Discussed Sections
• Feedburner Email Subscription Integration
• Widgetized Footer Section
• Custom Latest, Most Discussed, Most Read Sidebar & Recent Comments Widgets
• Facebook Like, Twitter, Google Plus and AddThis Share Button Integration on Article Pages
• GD Star Rating Plugin Integration (Thumb Rating Only)
• WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin Integration
• WP Post Views Plugin Integration
• Simple Theme Options Panel
• Four Colour Schemes, Blue, Red, Orange & Green

All of the VisualNews article images are created by the wordpress internal image function so no resizing is necessary when uploading images to articles you post, this also means no custom fields are used for any of the sites images making posting articles a much quicker task.

We though in todays fast paced news environment that sometimes you may only want to summarise or share you opinion on a news story sourced from another site, VisualNews allows you to add if you wish the URL of the news source when creating a post / article. The full post url will automatically be shortened to only display the source sites main domain name, this links however to the sources original article page. Although the intention of this feature if for referencing external news sources it could also be used for any type of link affiliate, download etc.

With the use of some plugins the theme can also display a Most Read section (calculated by total number of post views) and a Top Rated section (calculated by total number of votes). It displays Latest and Most Discussed without the use of plugins.

Advertising is provided via dynamic widget sections within the theme, we recommend the use of the Adrotate plugin for wordpress as you can really control your advertising and create advertising groups that rotate adverts. Once you have created you advert groups in the correct size you can insert them easily into the theme via Adrotate widgets. To achieve the best effect with your adverts groups should ideally have more than one advert banner so they rotate several, this works great especially for the Grid Layout 728×90 advert positions.

Custom widgets included within the theme are the Latest Articles Widget, Most Read Articles Widget, Most Discussed Articles Widget & Recent Comments Widget.

Available Advert Sizes and Positions

• Header 728×90 Banner
• Grid Layout 728×90 Banner
• Grid Layout 234×90 Banner
• Single Post 486×60 Banner

Screenshot Of VisualNews Homepage

Screenshot Of VisualNews Article Page

As the first release candidate was well-received, we think we’re really close to a final release. Primarily, we’ve ensured that new toolbar (the admin bar in 3.2) has a consistent appearance across all browsers, and the API for developers is now final. You can check our bug tracker for the complete list of changes.

Plugin and theme authors, please test your plugins and themes now, so that if there is a compatibility issue, we can figure it out before the final release. On our development blog, we’ve published a number of posts that explain important things you need to know as you prepare for WordPress 3.3.

If you haven’t tested WordPress 3.3 yet, now is the time — please though, not on your live site unless you’re adventurous. Once you install RC2, you can visit About WordPress page (hover over the WordPress logo in the top left) to see an overview of what’s to come in WordPress 3.3 (and what to test, of course).

If you think you’ve found a bug, you can post to the Alpha/Beta area in the support forums. Or, if you’re comfortable writing a reproducible bug report, file one on WordPress Trac. Known issues that crop up will be listed here.

Download: WordPress v3.3 Release Candidate 2

After several days work we are pleased to push out our new website design here at IceThemes which should be more pleasant on the eye along with being easier to navigate and find the content you are looking for. We have been working hard on the new design for a few weeks now in between other projects and developing our upcoming VisualNews theme, over the coming weeks we will be tweaking the new design and adding new features as and when required.

We hope you like the new design and please leave any feedback in the comments as we always love to hear others opinions.

Release Candidate stage means we think we’re done and are about ready to launch this version, but are doing one last check before we officially call it. So take a look, and as always, please check your themes and plugins for compatibility if you’re a developer.

Download: WordPress v3.3 Release Candidate 1

In January of this year we decided to stop selling our PliggDzine Template to customers to focus solely on creating wordpress themes which is the platform I originally designed for. Over the last few weeks however we have received various tweets and emails asking if PliggDZine or PliggTube would ever be made available again in the future. Today we are happy to announce that we will be supporting the PliggDZine template again and have upgraded the template to be compatible with v1.2.0 of the Pligg system and have now also released it for FREE. There are no plans however to reintroduce the PliggTube template to market at the current time.

Step 0 – PliggDZine Template Setup Guide

Step 1 – Uploading the files

you should have two folders inside you zip file /templates and /modules upload these to the root folder of your pligg install. If it asks to overwrite do so as that will be the upload module changes we have made.

Step 2 – Configure the template and control panel module

Login to your pligg admin panel and goto modules, you should see a module titled Pligg Template Configuration enable this module as it’s the templates control panel. If you do not enable this module you site will look white and blue along with showing no images from the colour scheme.

Step 3 – Activate the template

Goto your pligg administration page / Admin Tools/ Configure / Template and change wistie to pliggdzine.

Step 3 – Configure Your template Options

When you now view your administration page you will see a tab at the top that says “Template Options”, this is where you can configure your templates settings and colour scheme from.

Colour scheme

Select your colour scheme.

Advertising Banner

Image url and http url of sidebar 300×250 advert banner

WebSnapr Developer ID For Thumbshots

For backup thumbnails from websnapr.com to work we need a Developer ID Key so goto http://www.websnapr.com/ and register an account (It’s Free up to 10’000 screenshots). When you have register you will be given a developer API key.

The developer key will be a string of letters and numbers. copy it and paste it to the input field within the PliggDZine template options page.

Save the options and you basic setup is complete.

Step 2 – Configuring The Video Embed Module For PliggDZine

This tutorial will show you how to setup the video embed module with pliggDZine, we have made some cool addtions to the embed module that make it a simple process.

We are assuming that you uploaded all the module that came in the package with PliggDZine to your webserver already when installing PliggDZine.

Note: Make sure your webserver has either CURL or allow_url_fopen activated.

Step 4 – CHMOD the Video Embed Cache Folder To 777

With you webserver control panel or with an FTP client goto you pligg install and browse to the folder modules/video_embed/cache usuing CHMOD change the folder permissions to 777. It’s important you do this step.

Step 5 – Enable the Video Embed module

Enable the Video Embed module from you pligg administration / Modules page.

That should be all there is to it submit a few videos and check them out. We also added the ability for you to easily change the video resolution from your admin panel but on install it should be set to the correct size for pliggDZine so you should never have to use this feature.

Step 6

- Configuring the Upload Module For Pligg
This tutorial will show you how to setup the Upload module in pligg to add images to articles when submitting content.

This tutorial needs a few settings input for the upload module so pleas follow the guide carefully.

Step 7

- Activate The Upload Module

Goto your admin page and Modules, activate the upload module. Once activated return to your main admin page.

Step 8 – Configure the Upload module settings

On your pligg admin panel under the section modules at the bottom you should now see al ink to the Upload Module click this to access the settings page.

(Step 8.1) Add new thumbnail size

First off we need to add a new thumbnail size as the default 200×200 is too large.

find the add to thumbnail size and add 138px as the width and 98px as the height. scroll to the bottom of the page and save
now go back to the top of the page and you should see your new thumbnail size added. Now check your setting against these listed.

• Thumbnail Quality (1-100): 80
• Where to embed thumbnails: Select Nowhere
• Which thumbnail size to display: Original Image
• Upload Method: Allow Both File And Url – You can change this if you wnat or leave as is.
• Thumbnails should link to: Story Page
• Allowed File Types: jpg jpeg png gif
• Where to embed file attachment links: Nowhere

Settings Screenshot

If the setting above differ from them one’s displayed in your module change your settings to match the one above. All other setting in the module can be ignored.

Submit your settings and go submit a story and try the image submission

To compare our demo image upload module settings with ours on the demo site look at our screenshot below.

The main inspiration behind our Pligg Template Framework and our main goal was to bring premium quality templates to pligg owners, our new template framework is the first major step towards achieving that goal.

So what is the framework and what features does it allow us to provide with our pligg templates?.

A framework is basically a bare-bones structure of a template that includes all the needed core code and css for your template to function. A framework also allows us to keep a set standard for all our templates along with making updates and changes much easier, basically if pligg release a new core version that requires template changes we can have our templates updated and released with the new changes in under an hour. This ultimately means that anyone who is using one of our templates can upgrade their pligg site faster which is crucial especially if it’s a security upgrade.

Now onto the features which in our opinion is the most exciting part of the new framework for users.

Template Options Page

One of the features our new framework allows for is a Template Options page much like the theme options pages found in wordpress themes. Coming from a wordpress background this is a feature we really wanted to have as soon as possible as it makes changing template features even for a novice very easy.

What we didn’t want was users having to digg into pligg’s template files as is the normal procedure to change certain features like colour schemes, twitter usernames, advertising banners etc. Each template will come wih it’s own specific options that are built in, some template will have more than others but it should allows us to do some really exciting stuff in the future.

With the templates options page “which is reachable from your pligg administration panel” you can now change all of these setting easily from right within your pligg administration section.

Below is a little more information on how colour schemes work with our framework which we think is a fantastic addition for users and developers alike.

StyleSelection

All our new templates will come in a range of colour schemes, with our framework the templates colour schemes are completely separate from the core framework files. Inside your templates main folder there is a new folder called styles where all the colour scheme template files are held.

For users to change your colour scheme you simply goto the new template options page and select which colour you would like from a dropdown menu.

For developers our framework automatically detects what css files are present within the templates styles folder and outputs them into your template options page for easy selection to change the colour scheme of your site.

The fact our framework checks the folder for css stylesheets makes creating new colour schemes for your template the easiest it’s ever been. You simply create your new colour scheme and upload it to the styles folder. The framework will then automatically add’s your new colour scheme for selection within your pligg template options page. cool huh?

In the future we will be updating the framework to allow us even more versatility features wise and also allow our template users more flexibility and ease of use.

Screenshot

As you can see from above our new framework is an exciting development within the Pligg Community and hopefully will bring those features that many pligg templates have been lacking in the past. Our new upcoming template titled PliggDZine will be the first template to be built upon the new framework.

VisualNews is ideally suited to anyone who wants to start a modern professional looking news website. With a Latest News, Top Rated, Most Read & Most Viewed sections visitors can easily find the best content on your site

Some VisualNews Features

• Configurable FaceBook Like and Google+ Button In Header
• Use of Google Custom Search Integrated
• Integrated Widget Advertising Positions (You could use WordPress Adrotate Plugin)
• Latest, Top Rated, Most Read and Most Discussed Sections
• Feedburner Email Subscription Integration
• Widgetized Footer Section
• Custom Latest, Most Discussed, Most Read Sidebar & Recent Comments Widgets
• Facebook Like, Twitter, Google Plus and AddThis Share Button Integration on Article Pages
• GD Star Rating Plugin Integration (Thumb Rating Only)
• WordPress SEO by Yoast Plugin Integration
• WP Post Views Plugin Integration
• Simple Theme Options Panel
• Four Colour Schemes, Blue, Red, Orange & Green

All of the VisualNews article images are created by the wordpress internal image function so no resizing is necessary when uploading images to articles you post, this also means no custom fields are used for any of the sites images making posting articles a much quicker task.

We though in todays fast paced news environment that sometimes you may only want to summarise or share you opinion on a news story sourced from another site, VisualNews allows you to add if you wish the URL of the news source when creating a post / article. The full post url will automatically be shortened to only display the source sites main domain name, this links however to the sources original article page. Although the intention of this feature if for referencing external news sources it could also be used for any type of link affiliate, download etc.

With the use of some plugins the theme can also display a Most Read section (calculated by total number of post views) and a Top Rated section (calculated by total number of votes). It displays Latest and Most Discussed without the use of plugins.

Advertising is provided via dynamic widget sections within the theme, we recommend the use of the Adrotate plugin for wordpress as you can really control your advertising and create advertising groups that rotate adverts. Once you have created you advert groups in the correct size you can insert them easily into the theme via Adrotate widgets. To achieve the best effect with your adverts groups should ideally have more than one advert banner so they rotate several, this works great especially for the Grid Layout 728×90 advert positions.

Custom widgets included within the theme are the Latest Articles Widget, Most Read Articles Widget, Most Discussed Articles Widget & Recent Comments Widget.

Available Advert Sizes and Positions

• Header 728×90 Banner
• Grid Layout 728×90 Banner
• Grid Layout 234×90 Banner
• Single Post 486×60 Banner

.