• Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
• Better performance for those who have many categories
• Media Uploader fixes
• An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
• Widget Administration fixes
• Various usability improvements
• Layout fixes for IE

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The Live Wire Series was released last month by Premium News and it consists of three different themes: Live Wire 2.0, Live Wire Edition, and Live Wire Style. Adii worked with Mark Forrester on these themes and according to Adii, Mark was the lead creative “director” for this project.

Adii and Mark packed these themes with a lot of features and they also spent a considerable time testing and troubleshooting it prior to release. The features included are:

• Automatic Image Resizer (requires PHP GD Library to work)
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
• Author Profiles & Archives
• Featured news section
• Video Panel (for use with Flash videos)
• Navigation Dropdown Menu’s
• Sidebar Tabbed Box
• 2 different homepage layouts (featured section)
• Widgetized sidebars
• Integrated Banner Ad Management (easily switch this on / off)
• Integrated Flickr & Feedburner

If you want to know more about the features included, Adii wrote a few details about some of the features in his blog.

For easy customization and management, the themes have a full page of options, which are separated in three sections: General Settings, Front Page Layout, and Banner Ad Management.

On the left, it’s a screenshot that I took of all the options for you to take a look at (Click on it and zoom to make it readable). As you can see, all the options are well explained, making the options page very easy to use.

Under General Settings, you may have seen that you have the option to select a stylesheet, which is something that I still haven’t mentioned. Every theme includes 4 different color schemes! Screenshots of all the different color schemes can be found at Premium News.

Licenses

Single Licenses ($99.95) - This package is for the person who intends on using this theme on a single website. Included in this package, is the full theme with all of its features and modules. The credit link is not required to stay in tact.

• Live Wire 2.0 - Single License - Buy Now!
• Live Wire Edition - Single License - Buy Now!
• Live Wire Style - Single License - Buy Now!

Live Wire Package - Single License ($149.95) - Buy Now! - This package contains all three of the above themes and allows you to use the Live Wire Theme on 2 websites (domains) concurrently. The credit link is not required to stay in tact.

Live Wire Package - Developer’s License ($249.95) - Buy Now! - This package contains all three of the above themes and allows you to use the Live Wire Theme on unlimited websites (domains) concurrently. The credit link is not required to stay in tact.

Preview

• Live Wire 2.0
• Live Wire Edition
• Live Wire Style

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I’m entered into a competition by Alpha Blog Designs and the prize is a custom WordPress theme, which I’m going to give out to one of my readers if I win!

Why am I posting about this if I still haven’t won? Because I need your help! I definitely need the support of my readers in order for me to win this competition.

All you have to do to help me out is go to the post and vote for me!

If I do win, the custom WordPress theme will go to one my readers that have voted for me. So, if you vote for me, leave a quick comment to this post, so I know.

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The set contains 8 icons that can be used for private and commercial projects for free. According to the license agreement, the designer asks for an operable link to http://www.fasticon.com, with the link text: “Icons by: FastIcon.com”.

The Icons are available for both Mac and Windows. The PNG files can be downloaded as well, which come in various resolutions (16×16px, 24×24px, 32×32px, 48×48px, 128×128px, 256×256px and 512×512px).

Thank you, Dirceu, for designing such a fresh icon set and making it available to everyone for free. The download links can be found on either Smashing Magazine or FastIcon.

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Rainbow Feather is a fluid one-column wordpress theme. As the name suggests the colours in this theme are rainbow-ish. From blue, baby blue, to yellow, orange, white, blue gradient and pink, barbie pink to evil pink. Cool features include: Fancy web2.0 like headings (wet graphics), custom badges “read on” and “continue reading”, matching color scheme/palette, Login area that shows logged in users (well it shows you and gives you options).

Live Preview | Theme URL

Transmission by Theme Lab

Transmission is a widget-ready two-column WordPress theme that comes with 8 different styles to choose from, including an all-in-one version that lets the readers select their preferred style. The theme is compatible with the flickRSS plugin, which displays Flickr photos on the homepage.

With the use of custom fields, an image can be easily added to the latest post and this theme also has an options page where the number of posts that are displayed in the homepage can be controlled.

Live Preview | Theme URL

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If you want to know more about the sale or want to ask him a few questions, don’t forget that tonight at 9PM EST, Small Potato will be interviewed for a full hour on WordPress Weekly.

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• Small Potato announced that he’s selling WPDesigner because of lack of time and multiple personal reasons.
• Dean J Robinson released Fluency, a plugin for WordPress 2.5+ that changes the look of the WordPress admin interface.
• Probama, a WordPress theme for Barack Obama supporters, has been released by Category 4.
• Mimbo Pro Magazine Theme, which was developed by Darren Hoyt and Ben Gillbanks, has been released.
• Adii has announced that three new themes that are part of a new series called Live Wire will be released soon. He has also announced that he won’t be working on the Kineda Look-Alike Premium News WordPress Theme anymore and has released the theme unfinished.
• Market is a WordPress theme that has been released last month by Astereo and Blog Perfume is giving away 2 standard licenses for this theme. Details on how to participate can be found in the post.
• Alpha Blog Designs is running a competition for a free custom blog design.
• WordPress 2.5 still hasn’t been released yet, but a Release Candidate 1 has been released.
• Small Potato from WPDesigner has agreed to be interviewed for a full hour on WordPress Weekly this Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 9 pm EST.

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WPTG Rank #1: WPDesigner

WPTG Rank #2: Weblog Tools Collection

WPTG Rank #3: Photo Matt

Best Google Pagerank: Photo Matt

Best Alexa Rank: Weblog Tools Collection

Best Technorati Rank: Photo Matt and Ryan Boren

New Blogs added to the Top 40:

• JaypeeOnline
• WPMU Tutorials

A few blogs have been removed because they weren’t “Blogs About WordPress” or because they just listed WordPress themes and/or plugins in their posts or because of inactivity. (Theme Arena)

Do you know a blog that should be listed in the Top 40? If you do, please send an email to wpthemesgallery [at] gmail [dot] com, so that I can add it to the list.

Do You Digg the Top 40?

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed!

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So, why am I featuring this site here? Well, if you visited the site, you probably couldn’t tell, but FreeShipping.org is powered by WordPress!

It’s definitely interesting seeing WordPress being used as a CMS, but I wanted to know more about the choices made by the designer. So, I asked Luke Knowles, the owner and designer of FreeShipping.org, a few questions and he replied with the following:

I used Wordpress as my CMS because it allowed me to do everything I needed to do. Since I was very familiar with WordPress having used it on a few other websites I was able to get the website up quickly. From having the idea to launching site was 7 days. With the right plugins and Custom Fields you can do some pretty amazing things with WordPress.

Since FreeShipping.org is an affiliate shopping website, the most important thing about the design was that the site convert at a high rate. A website that looks good, but makes very little money would not be good. I studied some of the highest converting shopping sites like, ebags.com and shoebuy.com, to see what they were doing. I stumbled onto a few things that I think have made the site convert higher than it would have otherwise.

I put what I thought were the most interesting sentences from his answers in bold.

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The free coupons expire at the end of 2008.

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