The Weekly WordPress News, Tutorials & Resources Roundup No.75

The news is back! After a short hiatus where I have been considering the usefulness of these posts to our readers and whether they might be harming the site in the search engines I decided to bring the news back. My reasoning was that google might see my weekly news posts as thin content so I decided to tweak the format a little – I have started adding a short summary of each link that I choose. I believe these weekly news posts do bring value to the site but just posting a list of links is not much good to visitors who might find them via search engines so I have been toying with the idea of no-indexing the news category – I would be interested to hear anyone’s views on this ?

Have a good weekend everyon, here is the news …

This is our weekly WordPress news roundup post, you can view previous news roundups on this tag. Join our 7500 followers on Twitter for more frequent WordPress news throughout the week, Facebook page or even on Pinterest.

WordPress News and Articles

• Does Your Blog Repel Your Viewers? These 3 Tips May Be An Eye Opener – 3 simple tips to improve your blog for readers.
• Practical Tips for Learning and Experimenting with WordPress – Covers the key technologies used in WordPress.
• WordPress Conferences Are On The Rise, Why You Should Attend – The benefits of attending WP-specific conferences and a list of what to attend.
• Interview With Siobhan McKeown On The Future Of The WordPress Codex – What is the future of the Codex?
• Theme Shop Directory (2014) – Devin Price put together a really comprehensive list of the premium WordPress theme shops, sorted by Alexa ranking.
• Underscores WordPress Starter Theme Adds Support for Sass – Use the advanced options when generating a starter theme at Underscores and you can now use SASS with it.
• Trademarks in the WordPress ecosystem: An interview with Carl Hancock – Carl Hancock from Gravity forms talks to Chris Lema about protecting your brand with trademarks.
• Audit WP to become part of WP Site Care with acquihire of Rob Neu – Read about this latest WP acquisition at Poststat.us

Tutorials and How-Tos

• Responsive Design Essentials For WordPress – A basic guide to making your theme responsive.
• Exploring WordPress Custom Fields and Why They’re Important – An intro to using custom fields.
• Understanding and Working with Content Types in WordPress – An explanation of the basic content types within WordPress.
• A Launch Check List for Professional WordPress Websites – Pretty good list of things to look out for before putting your new site live.
• Adding More Fields to the WordPress Media Uploader  – Tom McFarlin posted some code to add extra fields to use the media uploader in your theme or plugin.
• Schema.org Simplified: An Introduction to Schema Markup – Using schema markup is a great way to get your content to stand out in the search results.

Resources & Freebies

• The WPlift Roundup of the Best Free WordPress Themes August 2014 – My monthly roundup of the best free theme releases.
• How To: Add a Like Button to WordPress for Free with LikeBtn Plugin – A review of a very comprehensive plugin to add like functionality to WordPress.
• How To: Create an Auction Website with WordPress & the WP Auction Software Plugin – Take a look at this plugin if you need to create an auction site with WordPress.
• Best Mobile Apps and Tools for Blogging with WordPress on the Road – Some handy tools for blogging away from your desk.
• A Hand-Picked Collection of Free & Paid WordPress Business Plugins to Enhance Your Site – An indepth list of plugins to use on business websites.
• Theme Checklist Helps Prepare Developers To Submit A Theme To The WordPress Theme Directory – A plugin to help you prepare your theme for the WordPress directory.