Jetpack can be installed just like any other WordPress plugin. Once installed, you need to access the settings page and connect to WordPress.com, so that you can enable all the features. By default, all the features are already activated, but if there’s a feature that you do not want or need, you can deactivate it by clicking the “Learn More” button and then the “Deactivate” button.

For the past month or so, I’ve been trying all these features out, so I’ll go over each one of them.

WordPress.com Stats

This is a service that provides basic statistics about your visitors. The statistics are intended to be simple and for users who are not interested in every single detail about their visitors. It displays information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave.

In my opinion, it would be better if it provided the number of unique visitors too and not just the number of views. I also don’t like how it displays a smiley on your site. It can easily be removed with CSS, but I think that they should have added a checkbox to remove it in the settings. One positive feature is that the stats can be retrieved and can be used to display information on your site such as most popular posts.

Twitter Widget

This is a widget that displays your latest tweets. It is configurable with a good set of options: title, Twitter username, maximum number of tweets to show, hide replies, include retweets, and text to display between tweet and timestamp. I like all the included options, but there’s one more that I wish it had, which is the option to display tweets from a Twitter list. However, this widget has a bigger issue, which is that it fails to perform its basic job. Instead of displaying tweets, it often displays the following error message: “Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.”

Gravatar Hovercards

Hovercards enhance plain Gravatar images by displaying more user information such as name, bio, pictures, contact, and other services. This is interesting because users just need to create one single profile and it will get displayed in all sites that have Gravatar Hovercards enabled.

WP.me Shortlinks

This service shortens the URL of posts and pages for easier sharing. It uses the wp.me domain name which is short, safe, and reliable. It is very easy to use. All you need to do is visit the post or page of your choice and click the “Get Shortlink” button. For this post, it generated the following URL: http://wp.me/p1ri5a-d6.

Sharedaddy

This makes it easy to add share buttons to your site with its drag and drop UI. By default, the following services are available: Email, Print, Digg, Facebook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. Other services can also be manually added. I really like the friendly UI, the available options, and the clean look of the output.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a typesetting system that’s really good at formatting mathematical formulas and equations. There’s no UI, so you write them in LaTeX code, which could take a bit getting used to. However the output looks great.

After the Deadline

This is a proofreading tool that can check your spelling, grammar, and style. It supports multiple languages (English, French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish) and provides multiple options. For English, you can enable proofreading for the following grammar and style rules: bias language, clichés, complex phrases, diacritical marks, double negatives, hidden verbs, jargon, passive voice, phrases to avoid, and redundant phrases. We all make mistakes, so having a proofreader is always nice.

Shortcode Embeds

This creates a set of shortcodes that allow you to easily and safely embed media from other places in your site. They do what they are supposed to do, so there’s not much to talk about.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Please leave suggestions on how I could have made it better.

Now, going onto this week’s news. I only have one and it’s another interview. Aaron Brazell from Technosailor.com interviewed Brian Clark from Copyblogger because Brian recently left DIYThemes. If you don’t know of Brian Clark, DIYThemes, and/or Chris Pearson, this might not be that interesting to you. However, if you do, in my opinion, it’s a good read.

Chris Pearsonified announced this week through a tweet that Thesis now sports a split GPL license. For those that don’t know, this means that the PHP is GPLv2, and the CSS, JS, and images are proprietary. This announcement definitely got the whole community by surprise, but I’m sure that everyone is glad that this happened.

HTML5-ified Twenty Ten

Randy Jensen released a HTML5-ified version of Twenty Ten, the current default WordPress theme. Twenty Ten is already HTML5 ready, but Randy Jensen took the theme and made it as HTML5-ified as possible.

Side Blog Theme by Press75

Jason Schuller from Press75 released Side Blog, a free WordPress theme packed with custom options and widgets just like all his other themes.

The GPL debate is back once again. If I’m not mistaken, it started on Twitter. Then, Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com invited the two guys at the center of the debate, Chris Pearson and Matt Mullenweg, to a live interview where they discussed about the Thesis vs. GPL issue. I won’t share my thoughts, but Mark Jaquith, Ryan Boren, Jane Wells, John Saddington, and many more have posted their thoughts about this issue on their blogs.

DevPress

I’ve first heard about DevPress in a retweet from Tung Do (@tungdo), better known in the WordPress community as Small Potato. DevPress is a collaboration between Justin Tadlock, Ptah Dunbar, Tung Do, and Patrick Daly in which they will be providing professional WordPress themes and plugins. These are all known names in the community, except for Patrick Daly. However, I’m sure that he’s awesome as well since he was invited to the team by Justin. I’m definitely curious and excited to see what they’ve come up with. I think its launch will be in 2 weeks, so we won’t have to wait that long to see what they’ve been working on.

SimpleThe.me

By now, you should already know about ThemeGarden.com, which will return soon as a dedicated WordPress Theme Marketplace. Well, its founder, Jason Schuller, has just announced this week another project that he’s working on, SimpleThe.me. Just like DevPress, not much is known about it.

Wellblog is a theme that was designed for food and recipe bloggers. The theme is highly customizable and comes with 3 built-in skins (Black, Gray, Yellow). Each skin has a good color contrast that makes your posts and images stand out. The Wellblog theme also comes with Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube integration to keep your blog personal and updated. It is obviously cross-browser compatible and has a theme administration panel with ad banner management.

Regular fixes and updates will be provided to ensure compatibility with the latest version of WordPress and to make the theme even more awesome by adding new features.

Wellblog Theme by Colorlabs Project

Demo

Wellblog Theme is available at Colorlabs Project (Affiliate Link) in two different licenses:

• Single License ($50 USD)
• Developer Pack ($200 USD)

Get 30% off by using the coupon code 94F4D.

Purchase packages include a free after-sales support and upgrade.

Also for those that don’t know and are looking for WordPress inspiration, check my css gallery.

I learned a lot from his blog and one particular series of posts that helped me a lot was called “So you want to create WordPress themes huh?” However, since this series was written more than 2 years ago, Ian Stewart from ThemeShaper.com felt the need to create a new series teaching how to create a WordPress theme. So, if you always wanted to create your own WordPress theme and didn’t know how to, go check this series out!

One last topic that I want to talk about in this post is the redesign of this blog. As you can see, I’ve designed a child theme using the Thematic theme framework created by Ian who I’ve mentioned earlier. I actually wanted to create my own theme again at first, but after I played around with Thematic for a few weeks, I just decided to design a child theme and I’m happy with the result. Hopefully with the redesign, it’ll be a new start and I’ll be updating the blog regularly.

By the way, feedback on the redesign is appreciated. It could be constructive criticism, tips, or whatever you want to talk about it. I think they will all make me a better designer, so they are all welcome.

• Way faster to use because of changes in the way WordPress does style and scripting;
• One click theme install;
• CodePress editor;
• Redesigned widgets interface;
• New Screen Options on every page.

For more information about version 2.8, read Matt’s blog post or take a look on the Codex.

It’s been almost a year that I haven’t had updated the list, but I finally did today! Since it’s been so long, several new blogs have been added, but I’m pretty sure that I didn’t add all of them. So, if you know of any other blogs that can be added, feel free to leave a comment or contact me. Also, feel free to leave suggestions that will help improve the list.

WPTG Rank #1: Upstart Blogger

WPTG Rank #2: planetOzh

WPTG Rank #3: Nathan Rice

Best Google Pagerank: Photo Matt

Best Alexa Rank: WpRecipes

Best Technorati Rank: Daily Blog Tips

New Blogs added to the Top 40:

• Curtis Henson
• WordPress Max
• WereWP
• WPZOOM
• WPCult
• WpRecipes
• WP FUN
• WPengineer
• WP Dude
• WordPress Rocks

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.

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?

I apologize for the lack of updates, downtime, and mess. I’ve made a few changes to the blog:

• The web hosting has been changed to (mt) Media Temple;
• WordPress has been updated to version 2.7;
• And the theme has been changed to Busy Bee by WooThemes.

I also have an announcement. ‘Top Blogs About WordPress’ will be back this month. So, feel free to suggest new blogs to the list. (:

Oh, and the blog is now using IntenseDebate for the comments.