Congrats to Shawn Grimes for winning a brand-spanking-new print edition of Digging into WordPress v3.3 — Cheers!

Alex Denning interviews Nathan Rice, Alex Moss, and yours truly about WordPress & SEO. If you’re new to WordPress, SEO, and/or the whole online content game, this is a great article that explains what it is, why it’s important, and how to benefit for fun and profit.

..went oh so smooth here at DigWP.com. We just completed the WP 3.3 (Sonny) update and everything is working (and looking) great. The revamped Admin interface looks incredible! Kudos to the entire WordPress team for their hard work and for making WordPress #1. Download and learn more.

Alex Denning of WPShout has put together a comprehensive, independent review of the best hosts for WordPress-powered sites. An excellent resource for those looking for awesome WordPress hosting.

Hey I’m sure everyone’s heard by now, but I wanted to post about Smashing Magazine’s new exclusive WordPress section! We’re aiming for quality, in-depth articles, tutorials, and reviews on all things WordPress, and we’ve got some great stuff already in the works. Drop by and check it out! :)

Nice little infographic showing the usage of WordPress among the worlds top 100,000 sites. Amazing to see that people out there are still running WordPress as old as version 1.5!

It’s TRUE!!! :) We’ve partnered with Designer Themes, where you can get a free DiW PDF/eBook with purchase of any of their awesome Pro themes (all GPL!). Editor’s note: 404 link removed.

Based on the BLANK theme, the HTML5 Reset theme is a “style-free theme designed to help get your custom WordPress project off the ground.” Features tons of goodness such as semantic HTML5 markup, starter WP styles, widget-ready sidebar, and includes jQuery, Modernizr and Analytics all built into the mix.

Jacob Dubail turned my AnythingSlider jQuery plugin (now maintained by a number of folks) into a WordPress plugin. It’s pretty neat. You create slides like you create posts, insert them with shortcodes, group them with categories, and control behavior and layout with simple backend user interface (rather than code).

Congratulations to Kristin Currier for winning a free printed copy of Digging into WordPress. The giveaway question this time was “what’s the most interesting thing you’ve done with WordPress?” Kristin replies:

I haven’t done a damned interesting thing
with WordPress at all.

So honest! You can read about what other interesting and unusual things people are (and aren’t) doing with WordPress in the comments of the announcement post. Again, congrats to Kristin for winning – your new book is on the way! :)

Just a few news items and resources worth sharing:

• Awesome new WP theme by CyberChimps.com called iFeature is now available as a free download from the WP Theme Directory. iFeature is packed with features and really looks sharp. Check out the demo!
• Grid of Posts! Michael Clark adapted Chris’ randomized grid of posts for his site’s Recent Posts page. As Mike says, “it’s very Flipboard-esque.”
• Last but not least, Digging into WordPress is now listed on the WordPress Book Page!¹ Special thanks to @photomatt, @nacin, @otto42, & @CoenJacobs for making it happen :)

¹ For some reason, the WP books page has been taken down, so 404 link removed: https://wordpress.org/about/books/

You have two choices when adding custom functionality to your WordPress site: your theme’s functions.php file, or a plugin. Ryan Imel reminds us that theme-specific functionality belongs in your functions.php file (like registering a sidebar) whereas site-specific functionality belongs in a plugin (like registering custom taxonomies), as well as teaches us how.

404 Link Removed

Great to see DigWP.com included in this incredible list of the Best WordPress Blogs over at ThemeShock, where you can find awesome freebies, resources, tips & tricks. They’re also giving away a free retro/vintage WordPress theme that looks pretty interesting. Check it out! Update: 404 link removed.

Version 2 of the HTML5 Reset by Tim Murtaugh and Michael Pick is out. This time it features a WordPress theme, which is based of Digging Into WordPress’ own BLANK theme. I think we’ll retire BLANK and point to this more up-to-date theme.