When I first started installing bbPress for a client, here are some issues that I faced. I’m giving you the solutions so you don’t have to go thru the entire process of searching for an answer.

1. What is the link to the theme directory?
   In Wordpress if you need to link to the theme directory you just use the tag:
   bloginfo(template_directory)

   For the moment there is no such option in bbPress. The basic documentation does not provide this very essential piece of information. After much research this is what I found:

   <?php bb_option('uri'); ?>my-templates/your-template-directory-name

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bbPress is what you can call a sister script of Wordpress. It is a lightweight forum script which is just as flexible and adaptable as Wordpress. There are lots of plugins available that add to its functionality with new ones being added every day.

The downside to this script is that there is no official documentation available. And that can have you going around in circles for quite a while especially if you are new to bbPress.

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Once you have visitors to your blog, the point is to keep them reading and keep them coming back. For that you need to keep your content in front of them. Give them easy access to posts they might be interested in.

This means you need to show listings of your most recent posts, popular posts, posts with comments on them and so on and so forth.

And as always Wordpress plugins help.

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I joined Twitter a while but never bothered much with it. That is until I found this very simple to use Wordpress plugin.

This pulgin not only displays my last X twitters but also lets me add Twitters from inside the WP admin. Now that is a God send for people like me — what a time saver!

This can be called as a function or added as a widget. And that is the way all plugins should work. Give both options! You never know what might be needed.

Now I can tweet to my heart’s content and it is quite a lot of fun to do so, too.

For those of you who are still as yet unaware of Twitter, it is reminiscent of its name. Think of it as constant status updates of your life. It is the answer to one simple question: What Are You Doing? You can twitter away, let your friends and family follow your escapades or make new friends and see what they are up to.

Check out the My Twitter Plugin.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER

The problem with being a web designer is that when you get tired of your blog design and want to change it, you can. And I seriously need to stop doing that considering I just re-designed less than a month back.

I just wasn’t too happy with that design, though. It was just too different from my business site DotsnDashes. This one isn’t exactly a replica either but it has similarities and uses some of the basic design features from that website.

I’m thinking I’ll stick to this design for a bit.

So what do you think?

A while back my cousin asked me to read Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.

She asked me to make sure not to read any reviews nor see the trailer for the upcoming movie or it will just spoil the book for me. She had loved the book and was totally obsessed with it. Her words were: I am having a mid life crisis - being so obsessed with this book. I had no idea what she meant.

So I finally went ahead and read the book.

The beginning was alright and it got interesting by the second, third chapter. Halfway through the book, I thought it was good enuff to keep me engrossed and to keep reading but I still had no idea why my cousin was so crazy about it.

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Wordpress, by default adds a no-follow tag to links in comments.

What that means in very simple terms is that a Search Engine Bot should not follow that link. Your commentator receives no link benefit from this and gets no page rank credit from Google. The reason why this is a default action in Wordpress is to combat comment spam, to stop people from leaving meaningless comments just to get a link back to their websites.

However, all this does is inconvenience the real posters who are genuinely contributing to the discussion. The no-follow tag has not served its pupose and has not stopped spam flooding your comments. Best option is to just use the Akismet plugin (comes with Wordpress) for that and be done with it.

So let’s come back to the people who are contributing effectively to a discussion on your blog. Why are they being punished? They are giving something, they should get something back. It is a fair exchange. And it is a win-win situation as you can be at the receiving end as well by posting comments on blogs that do-follow links.

So from today onwards, this blog is officially a DO FOLLOW blog.

You can use a very simple, set it and forget it plugin called Semiologic Do-Follow

You can add your do-follow blog to this list.

There is a list of more plugins as well as directories you can add your do-follow blog to. Check it out.

In that case let me present to you the The Non-Designer’s Design Book

This has to be one of the most recommended design book of all times.

Why?

It is a very simple read. It is great for beginners and acts as a good reference for designers who have been at it a bit.

It offers design guidelines with great examples on how to properly utilize them. While, at the same time there are examples of designs that do not follow the guidelines and still look great!

Bottom line: Design guidelines are just that - guidelines. They are not rules that have to be followed at all costs. The book does however, warn you against common design mistakes that amateur designer’s usually make.

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If you have tried using the NextGen Gallery Plugin (and mind you it is one of the best image gallery plugins out there for Wordpress) then chances are you might have run into the php memory limit problem.

What this means is that unless you increase the memory limit, you might have problems with automatic thumbnail creation.

There are a few options here:

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While I was busy designing his blog, my friend Rob beat me to this announcement (as soon as I had given him the update on WP). Now I can either re-do the whole thing again or point you to his post so you can read about all the great new features. Oh and he has a video up as well.

See Rob’s Post

And I just upgraded two of my websites to WP 2.5.1

Although some of the features (word count, post revisions, turbo blog) in 2.6 are tempting me to upgrade, I think I will wait a bit and make sure the plugin authors update their plugins to ensure compatibility with 2.6. I’m betting by the time that happens and I get on the 2.6 bandwagon, it will be time for 2.7 … not that I’m complaining