wp_head() an action hook which is located in your theme’s header.php is a prime example of how action hooks work. wp_head is located in your theme’s header.php. Let’s take a peak at the source:

/**
 * Fire the wp_head action
 *
 * @since 1.2.0
 * @uses do_action() Calls 'wp_head' hook.
 */
function wp_head() {
	do_action('wp_head');
}

As you’ll notice, there’s nothing actually in wp_head that prints out any scripts or meta tags. wp_head simply calls a do_action function with the first parameter being wp_head. And that’s where the magic lies: do_action();

In order to create an action hook, you simply need to create a placeholder function that calls do_action(); with the first parameter being the name of the desired hook. Typically, you’d want the name to be exactly what the function name is, but it can be anything you’d like; as long as the name isn’t already in use.

Now here’s how the magic works: Once you call the do_action('wp_head'); with the first parameter being the name of the desired hook, WordPress registers this call into the system. With the hook now registered into the system, we can now call the add_action(); function allowing us to hook into wp_head.

Viewing the source of default-filters.php where WordPress hooks into the wp_head action hook reveals this:

add_action('wp_head', 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 1);
add_action('wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3);
add_action('wp_head', 'rsd_link');
add_action('wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link');
add_action('wp_head', 'index_rel_link');
add_action('wp_head', 'parent_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
add_action('wp_head', 'start_post_rel_link', 10, 0);
add_action('wp_head', 'adjacent_posts_rel_link', 10, 0);
add_action('wp_head', 'locale_stylesheet');
add_action('wp_head', 'noindex', 1);
add_action('wp_head', 'wp_print_styles', 8);
add_action('wp_head', 'wp_print_head_scripts', 9);
add_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator');

More than a dozen functions get hooked into wp_head by default. You’ll notice that the first parameter is wp_head, with the second parameter being a PHP function. What add_action does, is register those PHP functions to the wp_head action hook. So whenever a do_action('wp_head'); is called, WordPress checks to see if any PHP functions are registered to wp_head, and if so, execute them. And that’s how the WordPress actions API works.

Now why go through all that trouble when WordPress could have easily included all these functions into the actual theme itself? Well for one, the actions API makes your theme future proof. If you noticed right above the wp_head function, there was a comment stating that it was there since WordPress 1.2.0. That’s a pretty long time, and I can assure you that all those PHP functions registered to the wp_head hook weren’t there back in those days. Using the actions API, WordPress was able to use one placeholder function and hook in functionality later down the line when needed, like feed_links_extra, which was introduced in WordPress 2.8.

Using the actions API, you can also remove PHP functions registered to a particular hook using remove_action();

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' );

The first parameter indicates which hook we’re targeting, and the second is the actual PHP function we’d like to remove. This function is useful if your using a theme framework and would like to remove some of their default behavior.

So to recap, the actions API allows you to create placeholder functions in your template files, allowing other functions to hook into that particular spot just by registering them using the add_action call. To read more on this topic, here are a few links that also explains the matter:

• WordPress Codex Plugin API
• An introduction to Action hooks
• Using Action Hooks in WordPress Child Themes
• Understanding Action Hooks In Wordpress

The actions API is exactly how plugins are able to add features and functionality to WordPress as those little do_action() calls are made all throughout the WordPress core. Nowadays, themes are starting to get more advanced, so they started making use of the actions API to allow more flexibility and future proof. In the next article, I’ll demonstrate some creative uses for action hooks that you can use in your themes.

While WordPress is the world’s most popular self-hosted blogging solution, it’s also an open source CMS (Content Management Solution). WordPress is known for it’s blogging capabilities, but being a CMS as well it can do nearly anything that can be done within a web site. Like a Forum, photo gallery, web directory, classifieds site, jobs board, news site, and more! The advantage of doing these kinds of things within WordPress are that you can use it for either blogging or other features in as well!

Imagine being able to create a web directory, but use WP RSS, comments, pingback, plugin, and theme features? Consider the ability to add a blog within a subsection of a web site without having to install a separate instance of WordPress there (because WP runs your entire site!).

There are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of things you can do with WordPress that aren’t blogging, but here are the top 10 ones I could think of to get the gears turning inside your head!

1. Create a Static Web Site

I’m amazed sometimes when people don’t understand why I would want to create a static web site using WordPress. There are 3 reasons this is the best solution I can think of:

1. Sheer speed of Setup
2. Plugins and Themes
3. Future Growth

I can setup an entire WordPress web site including database and initial setup options in about 10 minutes. I can customize it very quickly with a theme. I can add a very detailed contact form in about 5 minutes with a simple plugin. With another plugin I can generate an XML sitemap to register with the 3 major search engines. To do the same with static HTML (even Dreamweaver) would take soooo much longer, and would require extra scripts for a contact form and XML sitemap.

In addition if I created a 10 page static web site for a client using WordPress, I could create a login account for them and they could update their own web site (or add pages) in the future without needing my assistance. You certainly can’t do that with a static web site!

If you create a static web site in the future using WordPress - here’s what you need to know:

As soon as you setup the site, change permalink structure by going to settings -> permalink in your dashboard. Change the default date based permalink to /%postname%/ like this:

Next, since you’re building a static site you need to assign a static home page. In settings -> reading in your dashboard assign a static page to display for the home page. If you’re going to use the blogging function as well, you can assign it to a sub-page of your blog here as well:

Last, turn off comments. You can turn these back on for any invidual pages (or posts if you use the blogging feature later). Go to settings -> Discussion to turn comments off by default:

2. Build a Directory

Web Directories are old school Internet! A Directory is just a listing of sites, categorized in some way. There are blog directories, business directories, web design directories - just about any niche you can think of is available. To this day people still like directories because unlike a search engine (with millions of results), a good directory usually has great sites categorized by exactly the topic you’re looking for. From a web site owner point of view, directories are usually viewed as a great way to build links, traffic, and authority for your site.

Most web directories are built on some custom PHP script developed specifically for that purpose. Many directories I’ve seen had a script running the main web site, and then WordPress installed in a sub-folder running a blog. You don’t need to do that, because you can actually easlily build your own directory right in WordPress.

You could of course just build a static site, and then create your own pages building a directory by hand. But that would be a lot of work! Why not use a free plugin to automate the process a bit.

Build a Link Directory:

With Sean Blueston’s WP Link Directory Plugin you can build little directory of links with features like categories, search, reciprocal link detection, and the ability to allow paid premium links for a fee via paypal.

Category pages contain pagerank info, link, and description:

If you’re looking for something a bit more complex (that you could scale a bit), you need to check out Open Directory Links. You could definitely build your own open directory in WordPress with this:

It’s got great style and layout and even RSS feeds available at the category levels. It even has pagerank, refer to a friend, and add bookmark for each link:

Maybe you have more of a business site and a “business directory” for your niche would add great value for your client. The difference between a business and link directory is that a business directory has name, link, and description attributes, but also the ability to support phone number and physical address as well:

An advanced type of business directory might be one where you have an event that people have to register for, and you want to feature all the companies they work for online. In that case the Social Events and Registration Directory Plugin is exactly what you’re looking for. People can register for an event, get a confirmation email, and it can even support social networking links, RSS feed links, and custom fields.

3. Start a Classifieds Site

Maybe you’d like to start a classifieds site for your group, organization, commnity, or business. The coder of the open directory links plugin also makes a WP Classifieds WordPress Plugin!

It’s fully featured with post dates and view counts, and a fully featured submit form. Users can add contact information an image, and they have an wysiwig editor for ads! Users don’t have to create an account at all to submit ads, spam is controlled by captcha, and all category pages gave RSS links available for visitors.

You can also add classified to a WordPress site with Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin. It has nice layout, but support the ability to charge for listings.

Browsing ads is a breeze with the very flexible layout which shows image, location, date posted, and views. It’s very easy to change categories with the dropdown at the top of each page and the ability to change how many ads are listed per page:

4. Create an Article Repository

Maybe you’ve seen all those great article repositories online and thought it would be a great idea for a site of your own! It’s a great way to get free content and traffic, and there are lots of scripts and programs out there that make setting one up a breeze! With these plugins you can create your own article directory right in WordPress, and use all the normal WP features and functions available!

Using the Article Directory Plugin you can easily setup an aricle repository in your WordPress powered site. It allows you to accept articles submissions, and you can even get targeted content from the article dragon network (you have total control to accept or reject articles). You can quickly build an article repository with this plugin.

5. Make an Image Gallery

Are you a photographer? Are you the “tech guy” of your family tree? Are you in charge of the web site for a local group or organization? Having a baby or wedding? I can’t believe the amount of times I got an email with a link to somebody’s Yahoo account for pictures to a corporate event or small business picnic. I can’t count the number of photographers paying big amounts for online photo managers when there are free tools that would allow them to manage photos within their own web site. There are incredible free plugins available for WordPress for showcasing and displaying images.

NextGen Gallery is the end-all be-all of plugins for photo management in WordPress.

Some of it’s abilites are random pics in the sidebar:

It has the ability to manage hundreds and thousands of pictures in sortable and categorizable galleries. You can upload an entire zip file with pictures for inclusion, and it boasts a fully integrated flash slideshow.

You have complete control of home many galleries are displayed per page, you can have an index page listing all galleries, and you control how the galleries are shown, from the size of the images to the attributes beneath them (title, description, link, etc.).

Another plugin worth mentioning is the Page Flip Image Gallery. If all you need to do for yourself or your client is display some sample work, show a portfolio, or just a simple image gallery - this is awesome! It features full screen mode, and you can even use either JPG files or SWF flash files for gallery display! It has batch upload, upload from URL, and zip file upload.

If you just need something basic and simple, then the Lazyest Gallery Plugin might be just the right one for you! It offers automatic thumbnail and slide creation, and you can add comments on images and folders. It has widgets for random pic and folder list, and you can add captions to all folders and images:

If you’re really lazy, maybe all you want to do is just include your already existing photo galleries. If that’s the case you might want to check out the plethora of Picasa Plugins or Flickr Plugins for WordPress.

6. Build a Review Site

Another great idea is to build a “Review Site” in WordPress. Let’s face it, the bulk of the blogs online are talking about something and giving an opinion (review). There are many sites that review products and services, and there are countless ways of displaying them. I had said that all 10 of my ideas in this article would be alternatives to blogging, but reviews can be done in pages, but also in running blog fashion with individual posts. It just depends on how you decide to setup your site and which plugins you decide to utilize.

One way to do this is with the Review Box plugin. By using a simple shortcode, you can add a “review box” to any page or post in which you can summarize up pros, cons, and then set a percentage rating:

There are also tons of premium themes and plugins for sale so you can create a “review site” in WordPress, but if you want to do it on the cheap, in my opinion the best plugin for that is GD Star Rating.

If you want users to be able to rate or review pages or posts, one of the best plugins for that is WP Post Ratings by Lester Chan. It allows live ratings by users, and shows vote counts, and average rating:

7. Start a Discussion Forum

A discussion forum is probably one of the greatest sources of content you could ever ask for! It’s the epitomy of give and take online, usually people asking for help, and experts answering questions to give their expertise (and signature links) greater exposure.

There are countless hacks and plugins for integrating a “stand-alone” forum or bulletin boards into WordPress, but most people I’ve talked to don’t know that you can can actually create an entire forum inside WordPress itself!

Simple:Press Forum allows you to create an entire (and fully featured) threaded discussion forum within WordPress itself. It has as many (if not more) features than most standalone forums I’ve used. It has search, user registration, rss feeds, pagination, breadcrumbs, full stats, fine grained user control. I’ve used this plugin several times, and I haven’t setup a standalone forum script since.

Another plugin available to create a fully-fledged forum in WordPress is WordPress Forum. It’s last update is Sept 2008, but it does appear to work with WordPress versions 2.02 or higher.

8. Aggregation

I hope I don’t catch a lot of flak for this one, because WordPress aggregation is probably the single most abused feature available. It’s true, there are so many autoblogging plugins available it’s not funny - plugins that sploggers and spammers use to create sites with automatic content hoping to get indexed in search engines and make money for free on autopilot.

Aggregation can be used for good, and I don’t see that many web sites using it that way anymore. RSS feeds are available for readers to subscribe to your content. They are also available to keep track of the most recent updates, and you can aggregate the titles, links, and short excerpts of these updates on your web site for your readers (or even just for you). In addition, there are RSS feed available for things besides blogs you may not have even thought about, AND there are some plugins that provide aggregation without RSS at all - maybe they use an API!

Let me give you some examples….

Are you a twitter-holic? You could use a plugin like Tweet Blender to aggregate tweets from multiple users and / or specific hashtags:

Next I’ll show you some great uses of RSS feeds (first) and then directly after I’ll show you how to “aggregate” these feeds into WordPress using a plugin…

Nearly every category on Craigslist has an RSS feed you can use. Maybe you belong to an organization, group, or even a band that could benefit from including such a feed on your web site. A real estate site could list the latest Craigslist rental listings, a musician site could list the latest gear for sale, etc.

You could do the same thing with eBay. Maybe your client has a business that lists things on eBay. Do an advanced search and the bottom of that page has an RSS feed you can use. Maybe you have a sewing club, you could use an RSS feed from product searches you wanted to track, like fabric sewing machines, patterns, etc.

On ANY eBay search page after the auctions:

scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the RSS link:

You can search on nearly topic using google blog search, and every search there has an RSS feed as well. For example, my could could benefit from a page with an aggregation of the lastest blog postings about WordPress!

Now that I’ve given you some RSS ideas, let’s take find out how to aggregate them into WordPress in a usable fashion. I’ve used a few RSS feed aggregator plugins over the years, but the only that seems to still exist (and be updated frequently) is Feed WordPress.

By using Feed WordPress you can “aggregate” RSS feeds and publish them as WordPress posts. You can see where this can be highly abused by unscrupulous bloggers who want to steal content from other places so they can profit at the original author’s expense. There’s also no reason why you can’t use this for good, and aggregate simple titles and excerpts of posts that might be useful to your visitors. In that regard it’s no different than what a search engine or news compilation site does anyway. If you’re worried about duplicate content, you can go as far as to add an entry into your robots.txt file for noindex, nofollow, and you could even manually remove it from your XML sitemap.

Post can be configured any way you like, giving linkback attribution (or not), and web sites can even be listed as authors (contributors) in your blogroll. You choose what tags and categories are assigned to them, and where the permalinks point. For the most part, the posts you aggregate just look like regular blog posts.

Maybe you want something a little bit simpler than turning RSS feeds into actual blog posts, and you just want to take that Craigslist RSS feed, or eBay RSS feed and list the contents onto a paged page. WordPress already has the ability to parse RSS using the included magpie library.

By using this simple bit of code in any WordPress theme page:

<?php include_once(ABSPATH . WPINC . '/rss.php');
wp_rss('http://example.com/rss/feed/goes/here', 20); ?>

…you can parse any Worpress feed into a list of simple linked titles. This is an incredibly simple way to add value to your blog, and you could add as many different feeds (or numbers of posts) per page as you want. Just keep in mind that this is live (nothing is cached) the more feeds, or more posts per feed you add, the slower the page might be to generate.

9. Membership site

There are bunches of reasons you might want to have a closed “members only” web site. Maybe you need something only your family can access, or a private site for your business or club. Maybe you want to sell access to content, and you need part (or all) of your site walled off from public view.

Memberwing is a WordPress plugin that allows you to setup a membership site. Like many plugins there’s a free and a “pro” version. While the paid versions have all kinds of bells and whistles, the free version does exactly what most people would need, by using special tags it separates “teasers” from premium (paid) content. In this example you can see how content is hidden and users have options to either login or “become a member”.

If you like to keep things a bit simpler than that, you could use the WP Private plugin to restrict access to certain content to registered users. This plugin only hides the content, it doesn’t managage any payment options - so it would be better for a business to use for internal employees, private family content, etc.

Honorable mention goes to the Private RSS Plugin, that would go well with a private membership site.

10. eCommerce Site (online store)

There are plugins that allow you to simple sell single items using PayPal, that’s exactly why the ArtPal Plugin was developed (to sell art). You create a post with a few custom fields and voila! you’re selling art! You could of course use this plugin to sell just about anything using paypal, it doesn’t have to be art.

Maybe your blog accepts donations, or you have a very simple service that you charge for. For that I suggest the Easy Paypal Payment or Donation Accept Plugin:

If you want a solution even simpler than that - I offer you the Paypal Shortcodes Plugin. It doesn’t even have an admin interface - once enabled it allows you to add paypal buttons automatically in posts by using simple WP shortcodes:

You could use Fat Free Cart if you want a bone simple actual shopping cart - but you still want to sell on your blog and accept payments through paypal or google checkout. This plugin is very similar to ArtPal.

There are several plugins that go well beyond the “basics” of selling something through paypal. The eShop Plugin is packed with features such as several payment options, automatic email on successful purchase, multiple options for products, stats, and various shipping options. It seems quite mature, and there are many example stores to view.

By far the most popular though seems to be the eCommerce Plugin for WordPress. It boasts social networking hooks, payment options like paypal, google checkout, Authorize.net and more. It has one page checkout, and lots of documentation and community support. I have to admit, the example sites that use the eCommerce plugin look nearly identical to any of the big box retailers online storefronts:

Conclusion

Well, your’re probably exhausted now - but I’ve definitely lived up to my word and showed you more ways to use WordPress (that aren’t blogging) than you can shake a stick at! I hope this gives you some great ideas for both your own blogs and web sites, as well as your clients!

About the Author

JTPratt writes about being a WordPress Consultant, and has recently launched his newest site - WordPress Directory.

Also, check out some other resources on WordPress 2.8 -

• Seven Reasons Why Wordpress 2.8 Is Better Than Ever
• WordPress 2.8 Beta Hands On Review
• Custom taxonomies in WordPress 2.8
• Authentication in WordPress 2.8

Automattic now owns WP.com - it doesn’t really have any great significance yet, but Automattic announced this week that they now have the ownership of WP.com and are brainstorming ideas of what they could do with it. News release

Smashing Magazine Community WordPress Theme Voting - Smashing Magazine is holding an awesome contest with PSD2WordPress to create a WordPress theme, in which the community gets to decide what kind of theme the team at SM will create. Voting is open now for another day, I think, so make sure to let them know what kind of theme you want to see! [Link]

WooThemes releases free Meta-Morphosis theme - WooThemes has a reputation for great themes with lots of features. Most of those themes are licensed, but luckily there’s a few on their site with great features that don’t cost a cent. Their latest, Meta-Morphosis, is one of those. Features include a widget slider, JavaScript font replacement, and an awesome backend packed with blog options including 8 different color schemes. Theme Info

Collections

13 Great WordPress Speed Tips & Tricks for MAX Performance - learn some handy tricks on how to speed up your WordPress blog, such as database optimization, caching plugins, compression, and more. [Link]

15 “PSDtuts like” WordPress Themes - if you’ve ever taken a look at ThemeForest, you’ll notice that a lot of themes are heavily influenced by PSDTUTS and its sister sites. Here’s a neat list of 15 themes that share similar design characteristics. [Link]

Tutorials

Tweet shortened URL of current page to Twitter - Derek Punsalan of 5THIRTYONE explains how to shorten your own blog’s URLs using .htaccess to leave more room for text in Twitter. [Link]

How to exclude specific tag from query_posts - as I’ve noticed from working on numerous themes at WPCoder, having “featured” posts is really a popular feature these days. The easiest way to do this is probably to tag posts with “featured” instead of having a dedicated category, so here’s how to exclude those posts from the rest of the loops on your site. [Link]

How to Integrate Twitter to WordPress Blog Comments - everyone likes a link back to their Twitter profile, right? (mine is @danphilibin) In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to let your blog commentators share a link to their Twitter profile if they enter that in the website URL field when commentating. Awesome! [Link]

Add a Widgetized Footer to Your WordPress Theme - who says widgets are just for sidebars? I’ve seen them used in plenty of other places, including footers, which is exactly what you’ll learn to do in this tutorial. [Link]

To allow for flexibility, WordPress adds a number of CSS classes on elements across the site to make it easier to customize. Probably the most important set of these classes is for post images. A good WordPress theme has classes for left, center, and right alignment as well as styling for captions. It’s really easy to add these styles to your theme.

Standard Alignment

.alignleft { float:left; }
.alignright { float:right; }
.aligncenter { display:block; margin:0px auto; }

That’s it! Now why do we need these classes, you ask? This trio of classes is WordPress’s default way of aligning images in a post. When a user uploads a new image through the post editor, they can choose to align it to the left, center, right, or just have no alignment (uses the class .alignnone). In order to transfer that display option to the theme, you need to have those classes ready to go on the front-end of the site.

The left, center, and right alignment classes aren’t just used on images, though. You can use them throughout your site to position other elements like divs, links, etc.

Image Captions

If the user decides to add a caption to the image, a div with a class of .wp-caption is wrapped around the image and its caption text, which is stored in a standard paragraph tag (<p>). Below is an example of how to style the caption box, which will have a light grey background and border and a small amount of padding.

.wp-caption { border:1px solid #ccc; background:#eee; padding:5px; }

If you want to style the caption text, that paragraph tag has a class of .wp-caption-text:

.wp-caption .wp-caption-text { text-align:center; margin-top:5px; }

As for post images, that’s about it! Next, let’s take a look at some of the other standard classes you’ll find throughout a WordPress site.

Menus

In order to create a good navigation menu, it’s important to know your menu classes. Fortunately, WordPress provides plenty of classes within its dynamic menus to allow for an adequate amount of customization.

As you can see in the diagram above, every list item that WordPress generates has at least one class. This menu was generated with the standard wp_list_pages() function. If you aren’t familiar with the code structure of the menu above, the entire thing is an unordered list, each upper level link and subpage link is a <li> list item, and the subpage menus are contained in unordered lists as well.

It’s actually quite easy to understand. The active page will always have the .current_page_item class. If you’re currently on a subpage, the parent menu item gets the .current_page_parent class. Every other list item just has the standard .page_item class. In the second part of this tutorial, which we’ll publish next week, I’ll demonstrate a CSS technique that will help you create a menu similar to the one above using those classes.

Others

Images and menus are probably the two sets of classes you’ll use the most, but there are a few others that you should take note of as well.

Categories - the setup of category lists is quite similar to pages. Each category list item has a class of .cat-item, the active category has .current-cat-item, and when viewing a subcategory, the parent has a class of .current-cat-parent. Notice the hyphens instead of the underscores. I can’t tell you why it’s like that but maybe we’ll see a uniformity in classes in the near future.

Widgets - the classes involved with a widget can be customized but the typical setup is that the widget is enclosed in <div class="widget">.

Conclusion

So those are the basics of WordPress CSS classes. Next Thursday, we’ll take a look at a few more sets of classes and then learn a few techniques that rely heavily on CSS to create the desired end result. If you’re just getting started with WordPress development, hopefully you’ve learned some helpful information from this article. See you next week!

WPZOOM is celebrating their first birthday! To celebrate the occasion, they’re giving away a copy of their own Yamidoo Magazine theme and are discounting the theme by 50% for the next week. Congratulations to Pavel Ciorici, WPZOOM owner, for putting together a great weblog. He certainly has something to be proud of! [Link]

News

WordPress HelpCenter Launched - Alex King announces a new site by Crowd Favorite - WordPress HelpCenter. They provide all kinds of WordPress-related services such as support, theme installation and upgrades, customization, and more. Pretty cool! [Link]

P2 Released - P2, the long-awaited upgrade to the Prologue theme, was released this week. P2 is a unique blog theme in that it’s made for short Twitter-like updates instead of full blog posts. [Link]

Tutorials

NETTUTS+ Complete PSD to WordPress Tutorial - NETTUTS+ has released a massive 14-episode, 3+ hour tutorial on how to convert a PSD into a WordPress theme. The only requirement is that you have a NETTUTS+ account, butu at $9 a year and loads of awesome content that comes with it, it’s most definitely a steal. [Link]

How To Make Any WordPress Theme A Blank Framework - “…any WordPress theme can be a theme framework” says Ian Stewart. And that’s exactly what this tutorial explains how to do. [Link]

10 Exceptional WordPress Hacks - Looking to learn a few more WordPress tricks? Smashing Magazine’s latest article has ten helpful tips to make your themes and sites even better. [Link]

How to widgetize your page menu in WordPress - take even more control over your pages by widgetizing your page menu, which will allow you to add things like custom drop down menus and other widgets to your dynamic page menus. [Link]

Collections

41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes - who says great themes have to be paid for? HongKiat has a list of 41 cool, unique themes that might be a great choice for your own blog. [Link]

35 WordPress Theme Releases for April 2009 - WPZOOM rounds up 35 of the best themes released this past month. [Link]

The most rare and unique WordPress themes - if unique is your thing, then this collection is for you. Inspired Magazine presents ten free and premium themes with atypical layouts and features. [Link]

Discussions

On using WordPress Theme Frameworks - Ptah Dunbar offers his thoughts on how theme frameworks should work - parent themes provide the functionality, child themes build on top of it. Agreed. [Link]

Redesigns

There were three notable redesigns this week in the WordPress community. Must be that time of year!

WordCamp Central redesigned with a cleaner layout, better organization, and an awesome Google Map of past and upcoming WordCamps!

ThemeShaper got an overhaul last week to showcase some of the things that Thematic, the popular framework that resides on ThemeShaper, can do. Introduction Article

Theme Hybrid, the home of Justin Tadlock’s Hybrid framework and some awesome (free!) child themes, has a new look that, among other things, does a better job at promoting the downloadable themes on the site. Introduction Article

Intro

The HelpCenter is not aimed at replacing forums, email, comment forms, or other means of support. Instead, you’ll be able to pick up the phone Mon-Fri between the hours of 9am-7pm Pacific time and give them a call to answer any WordPress questions you might have instead of waiting around on a forum for someone to reply. In fact, any phone call under 3 minutes is free.

The Prices

The pricing scheme for the types of support queries most commonly asked is as follows:

• The pricing scheme for the types of support queries most commonly asked is as follows:
• Phone Call under 3 minutes is Free
• Phone Call 3-25 minutes Includes making changes to resolve most problems. $19.99
• WordPress Installation $19.99
• WordPress Upgrade $14.99
• Basic Plugin or Theme InstallationIncludes most plugins and themes. $9.99
• Advanced Plugin or Theme InstallationExample: WP Super Cache, etc. - when additional configuration, permissions changes, etc. are required. $19.99
• Theme TweaksChange colors, fonts, change a header image, etc. $19.99
• WordPress BackupYour database and all files (including themes and plugins). $19.99

Plugin or Theme Customization: Priced Per Request

Judging by the pricing scheme, it looks like most phone calls will cost about $20.00. While reviewing the pricing scheme, I had to chuckle regarding the $19.99 charge to be told how to upgrade WordPress. If you’re using WordPress 2.7, you now have the ability to upgrade the software with the click of a button, granted your webhost has to play nice with WordPress for it to work, but it should work in most cases. Of course, not everyone is running 2.7 so I can easily see how they could receive a few phone calls wanting to know how to upgrade.

Testing The Waters

I decided to give the help center a call around 2PM EDT to see what the experience was like. First thing I noticed is that you can clearly understand the female recording which reads off a number of options and describes what the HelpCenter can do. She lets me know that I can schedule a call back by sending an email to the WordPress help center. She also tells me that in order to receive help, I need to agree to the HelpCenter TOS located on their website which by the way, is one of the simplest terms of service pages I have ever seen. I figured what the heck and pressed 1. I then had the chance to listen to some funky hold music for a few minutes. After listening to the music, I was patched in to one of the support reps. Unfortunately for me, he was not at his desk and I had to leave him a message. Not exactly what I was expecting.

So, hoping I would be patched through to someone else, I hung up and redialed. This time, Chris was at his desk. I described to Chris how I did not want my blog to be crawled by the search engines while still being viewable by human beings. Chris told me to login to my WordPress administration panel, click on the Settings link on the left hand side and then click on Privacy. He then explains the difference between the two options and that I needed to select the second one which would do precisely what I needed. Chris also told me that if my site had already been crawled by search engines, it would take 2-3 weeks for that to be flushed out.

All in all, the call lasted under three minutes and Chris did not attempt to fill my head with rambling in order to keep me on the line for a longer period of time which I’m thankful for.

Does This Make Any Sense?

While I like the idea behind the WordPress HelpCenter, I wonder why we need one in the first place. Has the WordPress.org support forums which are supposed to be the go to place for support become such a pain for end users that it would be much simpler to just pick up the phone and give these guys a call?

In the WPTavern forum, we are in the process of discussing the HelpCenter topic and a few people have brought up some good points. For instance, WordPress is used internationally. Unless the HelpCenter employs people who know every language, this may be a bottle neck in their service. Also, the center is closed on the weekends and is not open 24/7. What happens if your database crashes or your WordPress upgrade fails at 3am in the morning? Better not pick up the phone and give these guys a call, their sleeping. Thankfully, email, forums and other support means are available when the HelpCenter is not.

The help center operates on Pacific time. Considering the international nature of the software, it may have been better to pick an internationally recognized timezone. But this is not a big gripe in my book as there are plenty of time zone applications out there to help people figure it out. Also, while the site displays the dollar sign next to the amount for certain calls, it may not be obvious to some folks that the type of currency they accept is the USD or U.S. Dollar.

Last but not least, if you’re going to dial into the HelpCenter internationally, you better use SkypeOut or you’ll be paying some hefty charges.

Poised For Success?

So will the HelpCenter knock other forms of support out of the water? I don’t think so given their inherent limitations. However, I do think Alex King is on the right track creating a service where people can simply pick up the phone, answer a commonly asked question, and provide immediate satisfaction. What I think will be interesting is how the HelpCenter plans on handling support of third party themes/plugins. There are so many in existence that it would be very hard to know everything about them to provide the level of support typically found via the plugin/theme author.

At the end of the day, the HelpCenter is just another avenue of support if you choose to go down that route. With Alex King being involved, I’m willing to bet the site will maintain its high quality of service which I experienced today.