Check out these 46 excellent WordPress lightbox themes!

Lightbox is a powerful but simple script that overlays images on top of the current page.  It has become the standard for portfolio and gallery pages.  Protecting your WordPress site from “viewer fatigue” means preventing unnecessary clicks and back button usage.  Lightbox allows you to do this by preventing the user from leaving the page to get a closer look at your media.

Lightbox is free and works in all modern browsers*.  Because the script is lightweight and universal, it has been seamlessly integrated into tons of WordPress themes.  These WordPress lightbox themes are the top of the line, and allow you to show off your media efficiently.

*No version of Internet Explorer is considered “modern”.

Advantages of Tumblr

• Social networking aspects – Tumlbr makes connecting via social media sites very easy
• simplicity – Tumblr is very much an open and blog platform aimed at those that don’t want to know the guts of what is going on behind the scenes.
• Easy management from your phone – The iPhone Tumblr app is much better than the wordpress one.
• Can have you own domain – Tumblr still hosts it though….you can’t actually take your content else where like you can with a self hosted wordpress install.

Advantages of WordPress

• The ability to be self-hosted – This is big. It costs, but means you actually have complete control of your content.
• Large community with lots of addons & customization – The amount of free and premium WordPress themes and plugins is amazing. There is so much functionality in this regard.
• Great for SEO – Because WordPress gives you more control over your platform, you can seriously optimize every aspect of your blog, from URL structure, meta tags, pinging, and internal links, right down to theme structure.

Reasons to use Tumblr

• The thought of setting up and paying for hosting doesn’t appeal to you.
• You want to be blogging right now, and you don’t want to worry about the technical side of things, you just want to get your thoughts out there, so others can connect.

Reasons to use WordPress

Obviously we are big fans of WordPress here at Pingable, we are a wordpress blog, and we blog about wordpress related content. However, that doesn’t mean we won’t recommend another platform if we thinks it’s better.  Wordpress is going to be the better platform for most blogging professional, and business bloggers. It gives you more control, and you own your content. Tumblr however, is probably a better platform for those looking for simplicity. It’s a great platform for beginners, and those of us less technology minded.

Minimalist WordPress themes are everywhere.  But high quality minimalist themes are surprisingly hard to find.  I have often said that creating an elegant, minimalist theme is just as tricky as creating a flashy, complex themes.  Lucky for you, Pingable is really good at pulling together some super high-quality themes.  We also threw in some html templates for good measure.  Enjoy!

Core Minimalist Photography Portfolio

WordPress is a simple tool used by millions of webmasters.  Did you know Google has a whole department dedicated to political adword accounts?  We didn’t either until recently.

There are many political candidates using WordPress to manage their online presence.  As the United States Presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Howard Dean showed, the web is one of, if not the most important tool for political organizing.

Here are our picks for WordPress themes best suited for political applications.  The criteria we used to evaluate themes were:

• Layout – political WordPress themes need to grab visitors’ attention quickly and convert visitors to action-takers.
• Design – political WordPress themes send a message about an individual candidate.  They are not just a design, but a brand that must be sold.
• Function – themes should have lots of room for widgets and sidebar content.
• Integration – good political WordPress themes should integrate smoothly with social networking sites, social bookmarking, streaming media, Twitter and similar organizing tools.
• Customizable – no political candidate should use an out-of-the-box theme without customizing it to fit their campaign, their constituency and their message.

Update: Here are some new WordPress Political Themes for 2011.  Enjoy!

Politico

Politico is a straight WordPress theme that you can customize to add features common on political websites such as donation widgets and signup forms.

Victory Framework

The Victory Framework is essentially a theme, with tons of built-in features.  It is an out-of-the-box website for political campaigns that only needs basic information to go live.  Of course, any candidate would need to make it their own before launching officially.  But it includes all the basic functions of a political website.

Win With WordPress

This is also a highly-evolved WordPress Political Theme.  It has built in features underneath a political design.  It also boasts contact management features which is a plus for any campaign.  Rather than signing people up for email lists, you can turn them into advocates and constituents.

WooiTuts @ ThemeForest

Who’s Who @ Elegant Themes

MyStream @ WooThemes

Compositio @ Design Disease – FREE!

Probama Theme @ Category4

If you have ever come across BloggingTips.com, you’ll have noticed they have an incredible design.  It is use-friendly, professional and there’s just something about it that makes you want to subscribe to their content.  That feeling is due in part to the high quality content found on that site.  It is also due in part because of the design.  I contacted Birdtone to see what makes them tick and how they conceive designs.  This is an unpaid review of Birdtone Designs, the shop responsible for this cutting edge design.

Using Bloggtips as an example of their design strategies, you can see the content is priority one.  There are no flashy, distracting features.  If you notice two things on the page, they are either the content or the conversion tools (subscribe form and social media links).  That’s it.

They specialize in blogging designs with a focus on user experience and content.  Their designs are simple and so very easy to use, even a two year old could find what they need.  That’s a compliment.

They do two things really well.  Simplicity and a nifty “ripped paper” effect.  When each are used in the proper form, they create exceptional packages.  I don’t want to speak out of turn, but the cost of their designs are less than you might think.  Although it sounds otherwise, this was an unpaid review of Birdtone.  Here are a few designs from their portfolio.

WordPress comes feature-rich and smooth right out of the box, but have you ever wondered how to customize WordPress?  As in, really making it your own?  Want a blog? Done.  Want a static website? Done.  But are are lots of other ways you can use WordPress to meet your web needs.  Here is a list of helpful tools and tips for how to customize WordPress.

If you’re interested in how to customize WordPress, consider reading our past article on making your blog stand out, as well as this one about WordPress tutorials.

How to customize WordPress

If you’re skilled, you can create a theme from scratch.  This is by far the hardest way, even premium theme creators often use some of their previous themes as frameworks.  To start creating a custom WordPress theme, check out some of these resources.

• Official WordPress Codex Tutorials
• The WordPress Loop Documentation
• WordPress Template Tags

Artisteer

Artisteer is a finicky option.  It will not create a premium quality theme in terms of design.  But it will be valid XHTML and clean CSS.  The good news is you can use Artisteer to create lots of different kinds of themes.  I use it to create a framework for custom themes, then go back and customize them further.  Check out Artisteer here, or read this full review we wrote back .

Hybrid custom theme

Search for a theme with a strong foundation, valid XHTML and clean CSS.  It should have many of the features you want but not all.  You can then take that theme and completely hack it up to meet your needs.  Think about adding new widget positions, changing the column structure or adding a new menu.

When choosing a foundation theme, go premium.  You’ll be glad you did.  They’re just better made, cleaner, with a solid code foundation.  Here are three of the best providers:

• WooThemes
• ThemeForest
• Elegant Themes

How to Customize WordPress’ Look and Feel

Custom Default Gravatars

The Gravatar is an often underlooked (not a real word) feature of WordPress.  The Gravater was incidentally created by Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress.  WordPress comes with a default Gravatar when commenters do not have one.  This is a nice, simple way to give your website a customized feel.

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars

Custom Comment Styling

Comments are the second easy way to add a custom feel to your design.  Nesting comments is a great way to encourage discussion on your blog.  Quality comments and good discussion are great ways to explode traffic.

• http://www.wprecipes.com/how-to-style-author-comments-in-wordpress-27

Creating an effective “about” page

Your “about” page is the first step when a reader really likes what they see.  When you make the effort to write superb content, a reader will find it and seek more info about your site.  Next stop… conversion!  If they like what they read on your about page, they will sign up for updates and you’ve nailed it.

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/01/best-practices-for-effective-design-of-about-us-pages/

Revamping your footer space

Footer spaces are now being used to show lots of information or tools.  It’s no longer just a silly copyright section.  The link below has some great examples of usable footers.  Customizing this section of your site really gives that extra customized feel.

• http://www.reencoded.com/2009/07/07/20-great-wordpress-footer-designs-for-inspiration/

Customize your WordPress 404 page

Hopefully users aren’t encountering your 404 page often because your links are all current.  However, it does happen, sometimes out of your control because outside sites will link to your site incorrectly.  Customizing your 404 page says to your readers: “we went the extra mile to offer you a unique experience.”

• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/404

Customizing the login page

If your site employs the user function of WordPress, creating a customized login page can be a nice touch.  Somehow branding the login to match your site but also be creative is a great touch.

• http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bm-custom-login/
• http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/custom-wordpress-login-screen/
• http://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-of-best-wordpress-custom-login-page-designs/

Revolutionary thinking (put content before ads)

The instinct to make a few bucks for all the time you’ve spent on the content is sometimes overwhelming.  But if you listen to one piece of advice on this page, prioritize content over revenue.  You will reap the benefits.

Think of this as a design choice as well as a chronological choice.  When starting a new website, forego the advertising until you feel it is absolutely necessary and you have the traffic to make it worth it.  You choose which is better: little traffic with many ads to make a few dollars or few ads, making lots of money with lots of traffic.

• http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2010/06/09/blogging-pitfalls-advertising-overload/

Custom content archives

Users need to be able to access your content.  If they come back to find some older content, the search form may not work.  Also, complete archives will help search engines know about all of your content.  You spend time writing it, should people be able to find it?

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Creating_an_Archive_Index

Custom Admin theme

The admin theme will only be for your benefit or that of your writers and editors.  However, it can be nice to change things up, and some custom themes can add a whole new experience for the admin.  It can also save you time if you spend a lot of time in the dashboard.

• http://sixrevisions.com/wordpress/how-to-customize-the-wordpress-admin-area/

Additional Resources

Check out these other resources and articles on customizing WordPress.

• http://www.problogdesign.com/wordpress/10-ways-to-customize-and-personalize-your-wordpress-blog/
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/13/10-custom-fields-hacks-for-wordpress/

If you have your own tip for how to customize WordPress please share it below.

Most people have probably heard of Yahoo Answers right? It’s a free service provided by yahoo that allows people ask questions and have other users attempt at answering them. The original poster then selects the best answer, and the user who made the suggestion gets credit. Users who answer lots of questions build up authority on the site.

It’s a cool concept and works really well. It also works really well at pulling in search engine traffic as there are many millions of search queries every day from people looking for information on questions they are trying to answer…”How to fix a squeaky door”, “how do I get rid of ants?”, “What is the Best WordPress Host?” etc…you get the idea.

How do I make Your Own WordPress Yahoo Answers site?

So if you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a fan of WordPress, and your now thinking: “How can I make my own Yahoo Answers WordPress site”.

One of our favorite WordPress theme sources has just released an amazing all in one solution to creating a delicious WordPress answer site.

The system has 7 different color schemes, a comment voting system, member ratings, user signup and submission + a whole lot more. It really is an all in one solution for creating our own stylish yahoo answers site. To get the package you need to be an Elegant themes member. This membership costs $39.95, and they now have over 50 amazing and useful professional themes. You will find plenty of other great themes that will be useful for your other projects.

So if you are looking for an idea for a new site, I think the idea of a WordPress Yahoo Answers site is a real winner. If you optimize it well for search engines with some solid backlinks, the site will run itself and your users will continue to create fresh content for you. Jump over to Elegant themes and check it out.

Commanding 2% of the websites globally, WordPress produces a lot to write about.  Subtract the junk, ad-bait and plagiarism and you’re left with only a few quality articles each day.  I sorted through the latest WordPress articles and identified the quality, helpful posts.  I hope you enjoy.

18 WordPress Plugins for RSS Management and Tweaks

What’s Coming in WordPress 3.1

A New Home for the WordPress Trademark

Tips for Your WordPress Comment Page

All Killer WordPress Websites are Built Around These Concepts

I have been spending a lot of time recently looking into WordPress and jQuery.  jQuery is a Javascript library built to create some amazing user experiences.  I found some amazing information in my searches so I decided to share them with the Pingable community.  (pssst. Stay tuned for a cool jQuery/WordPress related announcement from Pingable)

Simply put, jQuery is a Javascript library that allows web designers to create some neat effects.  For some cool examples of what jQuery can do, check out this site.

Mostly, jQuery is used to overlay elements in a manner that had never previously been possible.  When you see a nice Lightbox effect when viewing an image, it is most likely a jQuery effect.

However, jQuery and WordPress don’t always play nicely together.  Although you can load the jQuery library with one simple line of code in the header.php file:

<?php wp_enqueue_script("jquery"); ?>

Make sure this tag goes before the wp_head tag.  You can load the jQuery library using the wp_enqeue tag.  Read the Codex documentation on this before moving forward.  Also read digwp’s opinion on the matter.

it can sometimes conflict with other plugins or themes.

Without further delay, here are some excellent resources, tutorials and plugins for incorporating jQuery into WordPress.

WordPress jQuery Plugins

1. jQuery Lightbox
2. WP Wall
3. jQuery Comment Preview
4. Simple Modal Contact Form
5. Shockingly Big IE6 Warning
6. WordPress Tabs using jQuery
7. Reply to comment feature
8. Featured post slideshow
9. jQuery Form Validation
10. Overlayed Login Form
11. Tweet Blender



12. OpenID Commenting
13. Infinite Scrolling (no pagination)
14. Image Drop Shadows
15. Advanced Search (live AJAX results)
16. Highlight Search Terms
17. News Ticker of Posts
18. Social Bookmarks with jQuery
19. jQuery Shoutbox
20. Smooth Tooltips
21. Create slick data tables
22. Small, overlay messages
23. Polaroid Picture Overlay
24. Content Slider
25. jQuery Rotating Image Widget

Resources and Tutorials

1. jQuery Crash Course
2. jQuery in 15 minutes
3. Getting Started with jQuery
4. Including WordPress and jQuery (the right way)
5. Using Google (jQuery) libraries
6. Turning a jQuery plugin into a WordPress plugin

Stay tuned for a cool jQuery related WordPress announcement from Pingable!

WordPress version 3 is out and there are some pretty cool features that should make this an instant upgrade for most people. Lets take a look at some of the key features and reasons to upgrade.

WordPress and WordPress MU have merged

MU is the CMS used for managing a multisite WordPress installation. They have merge this into the main WordPress core, so that all the features of both applications are now available.

Custom Menus

The Appearance tab of your admin dash now has an option called Menus. This is a new feature that allows you to build custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets.

Improved Custom Post Types

This is very exciting stuff for those of us that use WordPress as more of a CMS, than a blog. There are already plugins out taking advantage of these new developments (Example), and it looks very promising.

Other stuff

• New Admin dash, it’s much light in colour now.
• New default theme “Twenty Ten” takes full advantage of the current features of WordPress.
• Support for shortlinks
• Better support with contextual  help tabs on each admin page.
• Expanded help information (not just a link to support forums)
• Set admin username and password during installation (not new for Fantastico users)
• Bulk theme update feature
• Hierarchical category support
• Alert for privacy settings (preventing accidental search engine blocking)
• Additional file attachment options
• Option to limit number of posts shown
• Bulk upgrade plugins
• Over 1,200 bug fixes

These are just some of the many many features now included in WordPress 3.0.  Check out the full feature list here.

For full details on the new release jump over to WordPress.org.