The license adopted is one that covers Thesis for its WordPress components as well as Pearson’s own work into the product. So, you cannot redistribute Thesis as it currently is. You can only redistribute the parts that are WordPress code and API.

It boils down to the fact that Pearson can deliver a product that he can only offer, rather than adopting GPL for the whole theme and possibly losing business.

For me, I think this is a fair compromise. I am very sure it was a hard one to deal with and while I am certain there are a few developers grumbling that they cannot work with the entire code, at least they can work a little more with what is there. It is not an easy decision when changing software licenses because it can effect a lot of people.

However this protects Pearson’s work and also honors WordPress. Kudos to Chris Pearson!

I will say that for those who have been supporters of GPL software, this comes as great news! It is great that Matt Mullenweg stepped up to the plate to take on this issue.

What are your thoughts?

Related posts:

1. Thesis And WordPress Clash Over GPL
2. Thesis Theme Review

The code is really simple. This code calls the current user. If you want to only let people like contributors or other roles see the message, you have to adjust the level_0 to any of the levels corresponding with the roles. (Example: administrator is 10)


< ?php global $user_ID; if( $user_ID ) : ?>
< ?php if( current_user_can('level_0') ) : ?>

Welcome < ?php global $current_user; get_currentuserinfo(); echo ($current_user->user_login); ?>
< ?php else : ?>
< ?php endif; ?>
< ?php endif; ?>


You can edit the little welcome message to whatever you like.

Related posts:

1. How To Display Two Columns For Categories In WordPress
2. Display First Full Entry And Then Following Entries As Excerpts

For those who just need a little coding help, but do not want to go all out and pay a lot of money to a freelancing site, this works great. Response time is great too. I actually asked a question recently and within minutes I had a response. I even had been personally helped by Oleg Butuzov (@butuzov) to work out a code I have been wanting to work with involving adding Adsense. All of the available tutorials had not been working correctly, so I turned to WPQuestions. Thanks Oleg for your help!

Here were a few questions that have been solved in the past:

• Latest Activity in a category
• Javascript enqueue – Avoid javascript conflicts
• How do I bulk import about 1,000 images?

WPQuestions was started by Lawrence Krubner and Darren Hoyt.

Please note that if you do use the service to please set an adequate price. Some of the more difficult answers do take time. I have seen a few answers not give the amount that should have been given for an answer.

One of the great aspects is that if there are several people that answer a questions and they all add to the solution, then the person asking can split up the prize money and award it to all of the people who answered. However, please note, that even if you answered a question correctly after another person, does not necessarily mean you will be awarded the money. It really kind of works like freelance boards where you are competing.

So, if you are a person who loves coding, WordPress, and can answer those brain picking questions, perhaps you might be suited to become an expert too?

Related posts:

1. Wealth of WordPress Knowledge – The Support Forums
2. WordPress 3.0: Snuffing Out Some Worries

Thesis does not enhance SEO in any way. In fact, here is what Matt Mullenweg retweeted from @studionashvegas on Twitter.

The whole shebang started before the above Twitter re-tweet between Matt Mullenweg and Chris Pearson, and it spurred on a lot of conversation.

WordPress allows people to alter its code, fork off the code, develop plugins, develop themes, redistribute it, and more. That is how open source is so great. WordPress allows for people who are web designers and developers to take something and improve upon it. However, they (WordPress / Automattic) have been steadfast in not supporting WordPress related software that does not also allow much in the favor of open source and GPL.

Thesis allows people to download the product for an enormous fee. In fact it is nearly $30 more for a single licensing fee than some of the top premium and more pleasing themes out there in the WordPress theme market. The majority of people that use Thesis really are not that different from each other aesthetically in design. This is not some megalomaniac type statement. Look around, it is so obvious. It really is a shame when the product needs more flexibility rather than revamping tidbits of code and offering developers an expensive price that offers VERY little other than multiple installs.

Why bother when the WordPress default TwentyTen theme has so much more potential to be customized and even looks better than Thesis.

For designers and developers who have been in the field of freelancing or offering free themes, Thesis is not something to embrace as a nice product. It is like the annoying premium plugins that end up being a pain to customize. You have to learn their product because they decided to not go with WordPress and tinker with making a ridiculous amount of coding to make hooks that really are not even necessary. They still end up doing the same thing as putting functions and filters in your theme and your theme’s functions.php file.

There are people using Thesis that still have to use gobs of plugins. Do yourself a favor and shop wisely for a WordPress theme if you are going to buy premium themes. Many of them not only offer as many options as Thesis, but go above and beyond in design.

It is a product that works and a lot of people have embraced it, but really, how many hard core WordPress designer and developers would loyally use it, let alone recommend it? Not many that I have seen, especially with the amount of freelance work I get just fixing code on work by other web designers, including a few Thesis related projects. And by the way, I do not see many of those type of projects listed on the freelance boards.

Legality:

I go back to my point I said earlier about Thesis still using WordPress to execute its functions and even though there is a huge argument over GPL, I am not in total agreeance with Why the GPL does not apply to premium WordPress themes. The Thesis product is a derivative much like most WordPress themes, according to Mark Jaquith. It is like if I make my own theme, write a bunch of unique hooks, but those hooks actually operate off of the WordPress core. It is a roundabout way of operating a site. The core is not hacked or altered in any manner.

To learn more about GPL, here are a few resources:

• About GPL and WordPress
• GNU Project

What are your thoughts?

Related posts:

1. Thesis Theme Review
2. Thesis Adopts A Split GPL
3. 7 Tips To Being A Better WordPress Web Designer For Your Client

While a lot of people do know, others do not know that Askimet will block IP addresses that have been reported to be used by spammers. This is a problem, especially if those addresses are dynamic IP, most commonly found with broadband users. So, if you happen to get the “lucky” IP, you might have your comment eaten by the spam elves at Askimet.

Your WordPress installation allows you to blacklist a lot of things from keywords to websites, and even IP addresses. I would say to eliminate less of a chance of being spam or accidentally blocking your regular comment buddies (example: if they were to change providers in the future), do not include IP addresses to blacklist.

If your comments are being caught as spam, you could use the Askimet contact form, but as to how they will respond, I cannot guarantee that you will get a positive response.

For myself, I have not had a problem with my comments. However, I see people complaining daily about their comments being eaten. It could be Askimet. It might even be the server itself going through a brief glitch. However, there are enough people that are pointing this out and losing confidence in Askimet.

While I am not bashing on Askimet (because I am going to keep using it for my own websites), I have to put the question out there if some algorithms and settings needs to be looked at before spammers get worse in the years to come. Perhaps leaving the IP banning should be up to the individual site owner? Most web hosts do allow site owners to implement IP banning… some make it easier. For example, web hosts that offer clients cPanel have a special section in the administrator panel for IP banning.

What are your thoughts?

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1. Benefits of Using WP-SpamFree WordPress Plugin
2. Disable Comments For Older Posts
3. Benefits of Using Comment Luv

In order to successfully make a similar two-tiered example like that of above, you will need to insert some html, and WordPress php functions to your layout’s template, and the CSS to help with that sheet. However, this tutorial is written for you as a step-by-step process to make it easier to understand.

Step 1. You will want to keep things simple and define our tiered navigation with its own list ID named ‘tiered-nav.’ Since this is the beginning, add the php function to call the parent page.

<ul id="tiered-nav">
<?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&depth=1'); ?>
</ul>

Step 2. After this, you want to add the php if function statement to connect the parent page and children pages, so it will connect to the correct section. For example (using the picture example included with this tutorial) if you have About, Freebies, and Contact for parent pages, you do not want to click on Contact and its child page is Site History (which is suppose to be in the About section.)

<?php if($post->post_parent)
$children = wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->post_parent."&echo=0"); else
$children = wp_list_pages("title_li=&child_of=".$post->ID."&echo=0");
if ($children) { ?>

Step 3. You want to make sure to add the second list that will call your child pages. To keep organized, especially when using CSS later, this list unordered list ID is named ‘sub-tiered-nav’.

<ul id="sub-tiered-nav">
<?php echo $children; ?>
</ul>

Step 4. Not done yet! You have some php functions to close. The if php statement needs to be closed and the whole function that was used in creating the two-tiered navigation needs to be closed.

<?php } else { ?>
<?php } ?>

Step 5. To get this code looking like a two-tiered navigation, you will have to specify in your CSS what to do in order to make this happen. Right now, you have two unordered lists.

/* Two Tiered Navigation */

* {
	margin:0px;
	padding:0px;
	}

/* Top Tier */

#tiered-nav {
	background:#C1DBE9;
	border-bottom:1px solid #FFFFFF;
	height:32px;
	}

#tiered-nav li {
	margin-right:25px;
	}

#tiered-nav li, #sub-tiered-nav li {
	float:left;
	list-style:none;
	}

#tiered-nav a, #tiered-nav a:visited {
	color:#FFFFFF;
	text-decoration:none;
	font-weight:bold;
	}

#tiered-nav a:hover, #tiered-nav a:active,
li.current_page_parent a,
li.current_page_parent a:visited,
#tiered-nav li.current_page_item a,
#tiered-nav li.current_page_item a:visited
        {
	background:#073447;
	}

/* Second Tier */
#sub-tiered-nav {
	background:#E3EFF7;
	border-top:2px solid #BBD8E7;
	border-bottom:2px solid #E3EFF7;
	height:28px;
	}

#sub-tiered-nav {
	border-right:1px solid #073447;
	padding:0px 7px;
	}	

#sub-tiered-nav a, #sub-tiered-nav a:visited {
	color:#073447;
	text-decoration:none;
	font-weight:bold;
	}

#sub-tiered-nav a:hover, #subnav a:active,
#sub-tiered-nav li.current_page_item a,
#sub-tiered-nav li.current_page_item a:visited {
	text-decoration:underline;
	}

Of course, you can use your own colors to pull off this effect and insert images for backgrounds.

Please sneak on over to Darren Hoyt to thank him for the original code for this tutorial.

Related posts:

1. Custom Thesis Theme #1: Blue Simplicity
2. Brand Your WordPress Login Without A Plugin
3. How To Make A Tag Cloud Page In WordPress

However, you have to ask yourself – do you want comments or not? What type of content are you putting up and how much of it?

If you like to put up mass quantities of items, for example, pixel images where you have a lot of images, you may want to use a page. Or you could release a few at a time in posts.

This is really something you have to decide on how you want to organize your site. If you make a page, you will have to announce the page somehow.

Navigation is a big part to most sites. It is often the source of a visitor’s problem if your site is confusing to go from one area to the next, and back again with ease.

I usually put posts for what I am going to talk about and pages for things I may only update every 2 to 3 months. How have you organized your site by using pages and posts in WordPress?

Related posts:

1. WPAddict is Accepting Guest Posts
2. Disable Comments For Older Posts
3. Making A Two-Tiered Navigation in WordPress

So, WPAddict is accepting guest posts. As of June 2010, WPAddict is really doing well in both traffic and rank (WPAddict.net is 264K in Alexa and a Google Page Rank 3) . The site is not even a year old yet! I really have not done a lot of promoting. Most of it has been you the reader that has given the site a chance.

Because the site focuses solely on WordPress, there are so many things to write about. Obviously, I need help. So, I am opening the site to guest writers. If you see at the top of the site in the main menu, there is Guest Write Here. That pages outlines what is acceptable material and how to sign up to be a guest writer.

Although it would be awesome to have regular writers, it is not necessary. Guest blogging is great for those who want a back link to their website.

Even if you are not much for guest writing, are here for some tips or tricks, please show your support by following WPAddict on Twitter and the Facebook fan page for WPAddict.

Related posts:

1. WPAddict.net Is Accepting Guest Posts!

Even with just the free version, it is a pretty good jquery slider. You can specify the size, what type of posts (example: recent, featured, or popular posts), and the navigation type.

To implement the plugin into your site, you can either include a PHP generated code snippet into your theme or create a different slideshow for individual posts (example: blog entries with multiple photos.)

If you use this plugin for your content slider, you will have to put the image in your post, and no, not just as a thumbnail, but within the post (grabs the first pic available.) I really would like to see this plugin take advantage of including that option in the future at least for the freebie version. It would make things a lot easier. However, even if there are no images, the text for the post will take up the whole area at least.

Have you tried this plugin?

Related posts:

1. WordPress Plugin Review: Sidebar Tabs
2. WordPress Plugin Review: Revision Diet
3. WordPress Plugin Review: Digg Digg

However, if you like to change up your site’s theme sometimes, you probably want to change the log in page too. A lot of people have been really hooked into branding their WordPress log in page, especially since guest blogging has become popular.

Here is the code I put together for WPAddict. This is all merely adding CSS and an action to your theme’s functions.php file.

Adding the action for your custom login:


add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login_logo');


Replace the WordPress logo:


function my_custom_login_logo() {
echo '<style type="text/css">
h1 a { background-image:url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom-login-logo.png) !important;height:160px;width:322px;margin-bottom:5px;margin-top:-70px; }


Remove the border at the top of the login page:


body { border-top-style:none; }


Adding your own background to the login page:


html {background:#fff url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/bgr_html2.png) repeat-x;}


Removing the Back to blog link:


#backtoblog { display:none; }
</style>';
}


Full code:


function my_custom_login_logo() {
echo '<style type="text/css">
h1 a { background-image:url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/custom-login-logo.png) !important;height:160px;width:322px;margin-bottom:5px;margin-top:-70px; }
body { border-top-style:none; }
html {background:#fff url('.get_bloginfo('template_directory').'/images/bgr_html2.png) repeat-x;}
#backtoblog { display:none; }
</style>';
}

add_action('login_head', 'my_custom_login_logo');


You can customize more of the page too, so just view the source of your login page and you can put other CSS attributes into the code above.

Related posts:

1. Custom Thesis Theme #1: Blue Simplicity
2. How to Change The Default Avatar
3. Making A Two-Tiered Navigation in WordPress