There is so much going on with the Wordpress niche that its not even funny. New and impressive designs come out every day. Businesses based around the Wordpress platform are popping up everywhere. With so many new things happening in the Wordpress community it can be hard to keep track of them.

Im a big fan of wordpress so I keep pretty close tabs of whats going on. Below is a collection of some of the cooler themes, websites, and tricks I have seen come out over the last few months.

Im always on the look out for cool new wordpress stuff, so if you know about anything, please share!

Wordpress Tutorials

Author Comment Styling In WordPress
A simple way to learn how to style author comments in Wordpress so that they standout from the rest of the comments in the post.

Building a Better Blogroll: Dynamic Fun with SimplePie and jQuery
This tutorial teaches you how to make a better blogroll. Learn to incorporate tabs into your blogroll as well as rss.

Designing for WordPress: Complete Series & Downloads
One of the best step by step guides to designing for wordpress. Includes videos and downloads. If you want to learn the best way to build wordpress themes, this is a good place to start learning.

How To Create WordPress Themes From Scratch Part 1
Want to learn how to code a wordpress theme, but need something a little more basic than the above link? This might be just what you are looking for. Its also nice to check out this site while you follow the method on CSS Tricks.

1001 WordPression Loops
A nice collection of pre-made wordpress loops and how to use them.

Anatomy of a Magazine Style Premium WordPress Theme - Part 1 “The Loop”
No quite sure how the wordpress loop works yet? Try checking out this article and you should have better idea of how to use the above 1001 wordpress loops.

How to make a random post button
This simple tutorial by WP Guy teaches you how to add a random post function into your sidebar.

Collapsing WordPress Widget-Ready Areas & Sidebars
This post covers how to create more versitile widget areas. These types of widget areas will help keep your markup valid when they are being used and when they aren’t.

Mastering Your WordPress Theme Hacks and Techniques
This great post by Noupe covers all kinds of small little tips, tricks, and hacks for getting yoru wordpress theme to do what you want it to do.

Wordpress Themes

If you don’t follow the rise of the premium wordpress theme market, you might not be aware of all the really great themes that are coming out. These great themes that are hitting the market aren’t all premium. There are still some really good free themes that are coming out as well. If anything, these premium themes have raised the bar for free themes.

Here are a couple of cool new free and premium wordpress themes.

Pass It On - website - $85

No Good News - website - $85

Sketchd - website - $49

Infinity - website - free

WP Coda - website - Free

JobPress - website - $99

Portfolio Wordpress - website - free

Wordpress Theme Clubs

Along with all of the premium wordpress themes coming out, many wordpress designers are exploring the idea of a theme club. This business model is still new, but is showing signs of being “the next big thing.”

Wordpress Developers Club - $500 a year
Membership in the Wordpress Developers Club provides exclusive access to our entire collection of premium Wordpress themes. Membership in the Wordpress Developers Club will provide developers and designers with complete access to all existing premium themes as well as upcoming designs.
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Elegant Themes - $20 a month
Offers a variety of wordpress themes for the casual user. These themes don’t come with developer rights. Great for the blogger with a lot of sights, but not for developers.
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Woo Themes Club - $250 6 months
Instead of having to make your mind up about buying one of our premium themes, you can become a WooThemes Club Member and get access to all of our current & future themes; thus making the decision of which of our great themes you’d like to use, so much easier!
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Wordpress Blogs

Themetation

WP Guy

Hack Wordpress

Darren Hoyt