Tag Archives: WordPress Themes

How to find a good WordPress plugin

Last thursday was the first WordPress Meetup in Apeldoorn organized by Karim Osman and Max.nl. I held a short presentation about how you choose good plugins and/or themes. Regularly I get questions about good or bad plugins and how you find them. So in the talk I talked about the things you should look for, when choosing a plugin or theme.

Here are 9 points you could look at when you’re searching for a good plugin or theme in the WordPress.org respository.

  1. Author
  2. Description / Changelog
  3. Latest Update
  4. Rating
  5. Compatibility
  6. Number of downloads
  7. Reviews on forums, blogs or other websites
  8. The authors reactions on the WordPress.org support forums
  9. Ask the community!

I would like to thank everybody who attended the WordPress meetup and a specially Karim and Max.nl! On Apeldoorn Direct is a great recap of the meetup.

4 Reasons You Should Never Use WordPress.com (And 4 Reasons You Should)

4 Reasons You Should Never Use WordPress.com (And 4 Reasons You Should)

4 reasons you should never use WordPress.com

  1. You can’t alter page structure
  2. Limited themes & plugins
  3. It costs to add style
  4. The content & copyright issue

4 reasons you should use WordPress.com

  1. Back-ups
  2. Availability
  3. Security
  4. The value bundle

PS. did you read why I switched from a self-hosted WordPress.org blog to WordPress.com?

How I came to this design

I love WordPress so I’m using it for this blog and used it for many other sites I have build. At the moment i’m not using a custom build theme for this blog. Why? Sometimes i’m a bit lazy and i’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my own webdesigns. But i’m planning to make a custom WordPress theme for my blog. For now i’m using Manifest, made by Jim Barraud Deliciously Simple by ThemeCobra. And i exactly like this theme! It’s simple, minimal, and elegant. I can’t really describe why i like it. That’s, i guess, the hard thing about design. You like or not.

I just don’t really like those themes with a busy layout and design and a back-end with to much options. Maybe I will explain in another blogpost why i don’t really like WordPress Frameworks such as Thesis or Genesis.

As you can see, i did modify a lite bit in the theme. The biggest change is the typography. I’m using Droid Sans and Droid Serif from the Google Fonts Directory. They are really easy to implement on your own website or blog and a big advantage is that they are always looking the same in different browsers. At the moment there are more then 80 different fonts. You should really take a look. Another font directory is Typekit. Wen I make some new modifications, i will tell you about it.