Classique is a dark, 2-column, coffee-themed WordPress theme by Alex San Diego. No demo is available, but it’s fluid width, widget ready, and even contains PSD files to customize.

Download Classique

As of WordPress 2.2, there are 35 allowed file types configured in the default install. While there’s no admin-based tool for editing this list (nor any plugins that I’m aware of), it’s not at all difficult to add your own…

The idea is to add a custom function inside your theme’s functions.php to be used as a filter. In that function you can then add specific file extensions and their corresponding mime types. On the other hand, to remove a file type that’s allowed by default, use the function unset().

Sounds simple and painless! Of course, keep in mind that limitations are put in place to keep WordPress secure, so tread carefully. Also, for reference, there’s a list of the accepted filetypes at the WordPress.com Support section, but that may vary on a self-hosted install.

WordPress gets a bit more bloated with each new release and it can be overwhelming when you’re first diving in.

The existence of this cheatsheet indicates there’s something glaringly lacking from the WordPress back-end, and that’s a sitemap of its own. The developers should take note of this and add it to a future release.

Since it’s already feature freeze on WordPress 3.0 as of March 1, then the next one after that.

Download WordPress Cheatsheet

Thousands of blogs are waiting for you to read. Many excellent bloggers are posting great content every day. It is easy to subscribe to far too many blogs, skim the posts and leave nothing of value behind. It is doubtful, no it is ridiculous that you would subscribe to hundreds of paper magazines. Consider, if you had to pay for all your blog subscriptions. Would you do that? Far better to read a few, become involved and comment with purpose and quality..

The post also mentions some of the cardinal rules of commenting: add substance, don’t spam, take a deep breath before resorting to flaming. Bottom line: commenting isn’t quite as refined an art as crafting posts, but with more discussions on them that could change.

Favorites Menu Manager allows you unfettered customization of that dropdown menu. You can easily add your own links, remove existing ones, and put them in the order you desire. Customizations are stored on a per-user basis, so each user can have their own collection of frequently used links.

You can also customize the Favorites Menu with code depending on which page is loaded in the admin panel, but doing so using a plugin is of course more convenient.

Download Favorites Menu Manager

• Text Widgets
• Template Files
• Comments
• Excerpts
• User Descriptions
• Category, Tag, and Taxonomy Descriptions

I think the most crucial piece of code to remember here is the one for theme files. Just add the line do_shortcode('[foo]'); and that will obey shortcode syntax. Super convenient! Also check out this list of custom shortcodes. For WordPress.com users, there are a bunch of media shortcodes already built in.

See also: how to use widgets anywhere.

Here’s the syntax:

<?php the_widget($widget, $instance, $args); ?>

This post by Shailan explains how to find the widget class name and arguments to use in the code. Refer to the Codex for the names of the default widgets. Want to create your own widget? Valums shows you how.

ThemeShaper will become a public-facing blog for the Theme Team now assembling at Automattic. A place where we can help provide the best possible experience for everyone involved in WordPress theming; from the noobiest of beginners to the most powerful of WordPress wizards.

The state of WordPress theme development has made leaps and bounds in the past few years, so it’s great to see an even bolder step taken with Ian and the Theme Team.

Another prominent contributor to the WordPress community got picked up. Viper007Bond, known for his plugins like Viper’s Video Quicktags and YOURLS, also announced that he’s joining Automattic full-time. He didn’t, however, mention any special plans on the plugin development front, but it makes sense for that to come along later on.

WordPress is open source and the php code is free for all to use. And use I have giving credit where it is due whenever possible. Here is my gift back to the WordPress community. All of the links on the page are free resources. Spread the knowledge.

All the links can be found on a single page and even includes non WP-specific categories like SEO and social networking. You can also share a resource that isn’t on the list. A must bookmark!

PubSubHubbub or PuSH is a new protocol that makes publishing go real-time: instead of readers like Google Reader or Netvibes checking a website RSS or Atom feed every so often for new content, PubSubHubbub “pushes” the new content into the stream as soon as it is published. That feature has been enabled on all WordPress.com blogs.

WordPress.org users can also enjoy PubSubHubbub with the PuSHPress plugin available in the Plugins Directory. This turns your WP blog into a hub of its own that can send updates directly, without going through another hub.