I liked the look and functionality of this theme and it wasn’t too over-the-top news-ish, but still has some of the cool slider features and sidebar & footer widget areas. Normally the InReview theme would be used for product reviews and ratings – there’s a full rating system for editors to rate product features and for visitors to provide their own ratings. It’s a great theme and maybe I’ll find a use for it on another site… Be sure to check out Elegant Themes for a ton of other great themes w/ one low price to use any/all of them!

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the new theme! As I mentioned in my previous post, I have some new post ideas in the works and should be able to get some new content published in the very near future.

So, let me know what you think of the new look for drivelocity.com!

I also got a netbook for Christmas. The next thing for me to do is to try and tether it with the Blackberry. Then, I should have everything I need to blog from just about anywhere. I’m sure my wife will just love that! LOL

Here is an example:

Before:

After:

Here is how you do it:

1. Backup yoursite.com/wp-admin/images/logo-login.gif
2. Create your logo image with transparent background or match background color (#f9f9f9)
3. Save as logo-login.gif and overwrite existing file
4. Backup yoursite.com/wp-login.php
5. Change (‘login_headerurl’, ‘http://wordpress.org/’); to (‘login_headerurl’, ‘http://yoursite.com/’);
6. Save wp-login.php and overwrite existing file

That’s all it takes. If you’d rather use a plugin, there are some available to help you customize your login page.

• WordPress Custom Admin Branding – This changes the log in screen, as well as the logo in the header and footer of your admin panel.
• Branded WordPress Log In Screen – This is a plugin that brands only the log in screen.

UPDATE:

When you upgrade WordPress, you will need to do this again. Upgrading to the latest version, 2.8.4 in this case, overwrote the files with the originals.

• Automatic Links – Automatically adds HTML anchor tags to plain text links and email addresses embedded in the content of posts and pages.
• Category Icons – Assign icons to your categories to appear next to post titles on the index, single post, archive and search pages.
• WP-Polls – A great AJAX polling system to place polls as widgets or into posts. You can have multiple polls throughout your site.
• WP Authors – Want to have a list of authors on your sidebar alongside your categories? This plugin allows you to place a widget that lists and links to authors on your blog.
• WP No Category Base – Would you rather have “yoursite.com/categoryname” or “yoursite.com/category/categoryname” ? This plugin allows the former for a shorter URL.
• WordPress Popular Posts – Retrieves the most active entries of your blog and displays them with your own formatting (optional). Use it as a widget or place it in your templates.

Also check out my Ten Favorite WordPress Plugins and my post about using WordPress as a CMS.

I’m not sure how MU admins do it, unless they have a staff to sit and moderate every account 24/7. Oh well, I don’t have to worry about that anymore.

The only real issue I’ve come across is with the Tabbed Widgets Plugin. The one site I use it on currently only displays one of the four tabs that I have set to display. So, it looks like I may need to disable it until it’s upgraded to work correctly with WordPress 2.8. Others are experiencing similar problems – the author is aware of the problem and says that a new version is in the works.

So, what does WordPress 2.8 offer?

• Fixed 790 bugs
• Browse the entire theme directory and install a theme with one click
• Make edits or tweaks to themes or plugins from your dashboard
• Completely redesigned the widgets interface (edit widgets on the fly, have multiple copies of the same widget, drag and drop widgets between sidebars, and save inactive widgets so you don’t lose all their settings)
• New Screen Options on every page (you could set up your dashboard to have four columns of widgets instead of the two it has by default. On other pages you can change how many items show per page)

Read the full list of over 180 new features, changes, upgrades, and improvements on the Codex.

Update: I’ve gone ahead and updated a smaller blog to WordPress 2.8 with no problems. The look & feel of the admin section is pretty much the same as 2.7, but there are some added features. The widgets section is much improved! I am currently make sure all of my plugins are updated on all of my sites. Once I’m done with that, I’ll make backups of everything. Once I’m done with that I’ll upgrade them one at a time…

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/drivelocity/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/tweet-this.php on line 30

I’ll update if I find a fix for it. Perhaps it’s a known issue and will be fixed in an update… If it’s a conflict with another plugin, it will remain deactivated, as others have greater priority.

I came across the Tabbed Widgets plugin, which allows you to add a widget to your sidebar and set that widget to have tabs or accordion style links that expand to show other widgets. For example, on the other blog, I had the Recent Posts and Tag Cloud widgets enabled on the sidebar, but also wanted Recent Comments and to reduce the space that they were taking up. Tabbed Widgets allowed me to put those three widgets into one, like you see at the top of the right sidebar on this site.

Here are a few examples:

• Viper’s Video Quicktags – Another update today, which prompted this post. It seems like there are a few updates a week, sometimes daily. The latest update is to fix a bug inroduced in the version it’s replacing.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – This one went a little while without updates, then all of a sudden one came along, but it caused errors. Thankfully, an update was released the same day, but then another the next, and another the next…
• CommentLuv – While not updated quite as often, I’m sticking with an older version. I tried to upgrade on two separate occasions and it screwed up my blog and I had to delete and activate the one I originally downloaded.