Desktop Wallpaper Calendar: December 2010

Desktop wallpapers can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. However, if you use a specific wallpaper for a longer period of time, it becomes harder to draw inspiration out of it. That’s why we have decided to supply you with smashing wallpapers for over 12 months. To make them a little more distinctive than the usual crowd, we’ve decided to embed calendars for the upcoming month. So if you happen to be searching for a specific day of the month, isn’t it better to show off a nice wallpaper with a nice calendar instead of launching some default time application?

This post features 40 free desktop wallpapers, created by designers across the globe for December 2010. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free.

Please notice:

• all images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper;
• you can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our desktop wallpaper calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

So what wallpapers have we received for December 2010?

December 2010 Wallpaper

“For December 2010, illustration of myself Wishing” Designed by Benoit Chartron from France.

• preview
• with calendar: 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1600

Christmas Stuff

“Some of the things that come to my mind when thinking of christmas..” Designed by Jaro Mlkvy from Slovakia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Starleaves

Designed by Fabio Toscani from Italy.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Spider web

Designed by Mohd. Aaqib from India.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Wicklow Winter

“Winter at the Sugar Loaf Mountain in County Wicklow Ireland.” Designed by Neil Bradshaw from Ireland.

• preview
• with calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1336×768, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600
• without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1336×768, 1440×900, 1600×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440, 2560×1600

Fun in the Snow

“A girl and her friend, The Snowman, being silly in the first snow I love December. Happy Holidays, everyone!” Designed by Anca Varsandan from Romania.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Peace

“Let’s give our children the greatest gift off all — PEACE! Happy Holidays to everyone.” Designed by Kim Carney from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1600
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1600

Christmas Past

“Christmas old style.” Designed by Carmelo Ortuso from Australia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Frosted Glass

“An illustration of someone who wiped a frosted window and is looking down on a town and lake below.” Designed by Shawn Rinkenbaugh from United States.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Cosy Retro

“Something warm and cosy for a cold December.” Designed by Ron Gilad from Israel.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1440×1152, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1440×1152, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Burnout 2010

“The Year of the matches is quite over!” Designed by Hansjoerg Schneider from Switzerland.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440

Fresh & White

“Have a break, get out of your Design studio and go breathing. What if we raced or a had snowball fight?” Designed by Maureen Chaffurin from France.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1440×900
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1440×900

Sad Waters

“Based on the song Sad Waters, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Ophelia’s myth. Photography by the author, made in Cantabria the first morning of 2010.” Designed by David Fernandez Rementeria from Spain.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440

New Santa … New Gifts

“A year’s collection of happiness, wrapped inside a small gift.” Designed by Narendar . N from India.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Holly Light

“Warm lights sourrounding our Chritmas Festivities are like a warm touch, a hug from our beloved.” Designed by Ester Liquori from Italy.

• preview
• with calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050
• without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050

Christmas Icons

Designed by Davide Vicariotto from Italy.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Cosy Socks

"One of my favourite months of the year is December. The whole month feels festive and I love the reds and green’s we have everywhere. So to celebrate the beginning of December, here are a pair of cosy red christmasy socks! I have spent all of November creating the design based on the photograph and making it in red for the theme of Christmas. Have a great December everyone! " Designed by Sasha Bell from England, UK.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600
• without calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600

Snowy December

Designed by Rosanna Bell from England, UK.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1600
• without calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1600

Happy New Year

"December is time for Christmas rush, presents and greetings letters! We wish you and your friends all the best and Father Frost (russian Santa Claus) will take care of the rest." Designed by cheloveche.ru from Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Fallen Icon Mozart

“This month of December is flooded with commercial apsects of the Christmas Holiday(Thanks Coca Cola) I want to pay homage to a fallen young icon Mozart.” Designed by Jeremiah Selengia from Tanzania.

• preview
• with calendar: 800×480, 1280×720, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 800×480, 1280×720, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Snowy Love

Designed by Brad Cerasani from Canada.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Waiting for Christmas

“I wish you a merry Christmas!!” Designed by yellowbook from South Korea.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Winter Atmosphere

"I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood." Designed by Jaro Mlkvy from Slovakia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Snow White

"The falling snow, wrapped up warm in colourful wintery gloves. Have a wonderful winter everyone!" Designed by Olivia Bell from England, UK.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600
• without calendar: 1024×640, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1600

Inspiring Well

“Celebrating the new coming year.” Designed by Peter Yee from Malaysia.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050

Flower Bokeh

Designed by Nathalie Ouederni from the Netherlands.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

The Greatest Gift of All

“Today Christmas is all about buying presents, but actually the most important thing is to have someone to share the Christmas time with. That’s what this wallpaper is all about. The two birds – Milo and Pipita – are a wallpaper series and usually they argue about things men and women argue about. ” Designed by Nicole Bauer from Germany.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Angel

“All writers and reader of the fabulous Smashing Magazine feliz navidad y propero a–o nuevo!” Designed by Fresh&Eazy, Steffen Schmitt from Spain.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Christmas Eve

“Wishing you a merry christmas” Designed by Ray Templates from India.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Khaos

“Photography + Light Painting, a simple way to make design.” Designed by Jose Tenorio from Costa Rica.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1600×1200, 1920×1200

Frozen

“White and blue – like a December with a lot of snow and a blue, sunny sky. Hopefully!” Designed by Lotum from Germany.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

December Dream

Designed by Christine Bradway from United States.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Winter Wonderland

"The design was inspired by the Christmas story with charming characters that bring joy and magic in this festive occasion." Designed by Jo‹o Lima Jr. from Brazil.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 2560×1440

Waiting for a Winter

Designed by Adam Piotrowski from Poland.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Learn to Recycle

"We should care more about our planet." Designed by Adam Laki from Hungary.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Casual Catwalk

Designed by Nathalie Ouederni from the Netherlands.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

West Christmas

"In west, Santa Claus uses a .44" Designed by Blackjack.

• preview
• with calendar: 1152×864, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 1152×864, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Snowy Ladybug

Designed by Tooshtoosh from Israel.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Happy Festivus

“Seinfeld in 1997 proposed a holiday, Festivus, for the rest of us. This desktop wallpaper reminds us of the non consumeristic nature of Festivus, sit back enjoy a drink and join Kramer, Frank Costanza, Jerry and Elaine in the airing of Grievances and challenge one another to feats of strength after dinner.” Designed by Jenny Heath from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Smashing Snowman

“He’s a smashing snowman, isn’t he?” Designed by Megan Burleson from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Join in next month!

Please notice that we respect the ideas and motivation behind artists’ work which is why we’ve given artists full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience through their works. And this is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

Thanks to all designers for participation. Join in next month!

What’s your favorite?

What’s your favourite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comments! And have a smashing December, folks!

(ik) (vf) (sl)

© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: december, Wallpapers

WordPress 3.0.2

WordPress 3.0.2 is available and is a mandatory security update for all previous WordPress versions. Haiku has become traditional:

Fixed on day zero
One-click update makes you safe
This used to be hard

This maintenance release fixes a moderate security issue that could allow a malicious Author-level user to gain further access to the site, addresses a handful of bugs, and provides some additional security enhancements. Big thanks to Vladimir Kolesnikov for detailed and responsible disclosure of the security issue!

Download 3.0.2 or update automatically from the Dashboard > Updates menu in your site’s admin area. You should update immediately even if you do not have untrusted users.

WordPress 3.1 Beta 1

It’s that time in the release cycle again, when all the features are basically done, and we’re just squashing bugs. To the brave of heart and giving of soul: Won’t you help us test the new version of WordPress? As always, this is software still in development and we don’t recommend that you run it on your normal live site — set up a test site just to play with the new version. If you break it (find a bug), report it, and if you’re a developer, try to help us fix it. (Especially you U.S. types who are taking a long weekend for Thanksgiving! )

If all goes well, we hope to release WordPress 3.1 to the world at large by the end of the year, though that is (as always) subject to change/dependent on how the beta period goes. The more help we get with testing and fixing bugs, the sooner we will be able to release the final version.

If you want to be a beta tester, you should check out the Codex article on how to report bugs. Some of the new features to check out include:

• Post Formats (#14746)
• Theme Search (#14936)
• Internal Linking (#11420)
• Admin Bar (#14772)
• Ajaxified Admin (#14579)
• Updated Tiny MCE (#12574)
• Multi-taxonomy Queries (#12891)
• Custom Post Type Index Pages (#13818)
• Admin CSS Cleanup (#14770)
• User Admin (#14696)
• Network Admin (#14435)
• Password Reset Redux (#5919)

There are also some known issues: things that aren’t *quite* finished, but that weren’t worth holding up the beta release. They will be fixed before 3.1 is released for general use. Note that as things get fixed, the beta release will update nightly. What you should know:

• Fatal error: Call to a member function is_page() on a non-object in /wp-includes/query.php. is_page() may be any conditional tag. This issue occurs when a theme or plugin is doing something wrong. Some code is checking the value of a conditional tag before we actually set up the Query, which means they don’t work yet. In 3.0, they silently failed and always returned false. In 3.1 Beta 1, this is throwing a fatal error. This will be handled in the final release, so use this opportunity to fix your plugins. (#14729)
• All known issues slated for fixing before launch are listed in Trac. Please check this list to see if a bug is already on the list before reporting it.

Remember, if you find something you think is a bug, report it! You can bring it up in the alpha/beta forum, you can email it to the wp-testers list, or if you’ve confirmed that other people are experiencing the same bug, you can report it on the WordPress Core Trac. (I recommend starting in the forum or on the mailing list.)

Theme and plugin authors, if you haven’t been following the 3.1, please start now so that you can update your themes and plugins to be compatible with the newest version of WordPress.

Note to developers: WordPress is built by the contributions of hundreds of developers. If you’d like to see this release come out on time, I encourage you to pitch in. Even if you don’t have time to do testing on the beta version, you could help us by contributing a fix for one of the many bugs we already know about.

To those of you in the U.S., have a lovely long holiday weekend, and if you’re looking for something to occupy your post-turkey hours, we hope you’ll take the beta for a spin!

Download WordPress 3.1 Beta 1

WordPress for iPhone/iPad v2.6 Released

Attention Apple-gadget-owning WordPress users! Have you been using the WordPress iOS app for iPhone and iPad? Or maybe you tried it a while back and thought it wasn’t for you? Either way, the new release — v2.6 — will knock your socks off. Why? A bunch of reasons:

• Video. Record, upload, attach, and play videos within the app. Yay for being able to catch your friends’ and co-workers’ most embarrassing shenanigans creative moments with iPhone video and publish them immediately for all the world to see on your WordPress site.
• A total rewrite of the way local drafts are handled, to prevent the unintentional loss of your pending posts.
• Autosave/post revisions. Bam! One of the “oh, thank goodness” features of the web app makes it into the iOS version.
• Easier setup. Faster and easier process for adding your sites to the app.
• Media Library. We’re gradually getting closer to the media management you’re used to in the web app.

There are also numerous bugfixes and performance enhancements in this release, so if you haven’t been using the app lately, you should consider giving it another try. I’m personally pretty excited to start using the iPhone version more often now that there are all these fixes and new features. Especially the video upload. You know, for those creative moments that make life fun.

You can read the full 2.6 release post on the WordPress for iOS blog, and can download v2.6 from iTunes/the app store. Happy mobile blogging!

* * *

Not an iPhone user? We’ve still got your on-the-go back! Check out the WordPress apps for Android, Blackberry, and Nokia (beta). They’re all 100% GPL, of course, and we’re always looking for contributors to the development projects, so check the blogs if you have mobile dev skills and want to get involved.

WordPress 3.0.1

After nearly 11 million downloads of WordPress 3.0 in just 42 days, we’re releasing WordPress 3.0.1. The requisite haiku:

Three dot oh dot one
Bug fixes to make you smile
Update your WordPress

This maintenance release addresses about 50 minor issues. The testing many of you contributed prior to the release of 3.0 helped make it one of the best and most stable releases we’ve had.

Download 3.0.1 or update automatically from the Dashboard > Updates menu in your site’s admin area.

Note: If you downloaded 3.0.1 in the first 20 minutes of release (before 2200 UTC), you’ll want to reinstall it, which you can do right from your Updates screen. Our bad.

PHP 4 and MySQL 4 End of Life Announcement

Our approach with WordPress has always been to make it run on common server configurations. We want users to have flexibility when choosing a host for their precious content. Because of this strategy, WordPress runs pretty much anywhere. Web hosting platforms, however, change over time, and we occasionally are able to reevaluate some of the requirements for running WordPress. Now is one of those times. You probably guessed it from the title — we’re finally ready to announce the end of support for PHP 4 and MySQL 4!

First up, the announcement that developers really care about. WordPress 3.1, due in late 2010, will be the last version of WordPress to support PHP 4.

For WordPress 3.2, due in the first half of 2011, we will be raising the minimum required PHP version to 5.2. Why 5.2? Because that’s what the vast majority of WordPress users are using, and it offers substantial improvements over earlier PHP 5 releases. It is also the minimum PHP version that the Drupal and Joomla projects will be supporting in their next versions, both due out this year.

The numbers are now, finally, strongly in favor of this move. Only around 11 percent of WordPress installs are running on a PHP version below 5.2. Many of them are on hosts who support PHP 5.2 — users merely need to change a setting in their hosting control panel to activate it. We believe that percentage will only go down over the rest of the year as hosting providers realize that to support the newest versions of WordPress (or Drupal, or Joomla), they’re going to have to pull the trigger.

In less exciting news, we are also going to be dropping support for MySQL 4 after WordPress 3.1. Fewer than 6 percent of WordPress users are running MySQL 4. The new required MySQL version for WordPress 3.2 will be 5.0.15.

WordPress users will not be able to upgrade to WordPress 3.2 if their hosting environment does not meet these requirements (the built-in updater will prevent it). In order to determine which versions your host provides, we’ve created the Health Check plugin. You can download it manually, or use this handy plugin installation tool I whipped up. Right now, Health Check will only tell you if you’re ready for WordPress 3.2. In a future release it will provide all sorts of useful information about your server and your WordPress install, so hang on to it!

In summary: WordPress 3.1, due in late 2010, will be the last version of WordPress to support PHP 4 and MySQL 4. WordPress 3.2, due in the first half of 2011, will require PHP 5.2 or higher, and MySQL 5.0.15 or higher. Install the Health Check plugin to see if you’re ready!

100 Million Plugin Downloads and Counting

WordPress 3.0 Thelonious passed 3 million downloads yesterday, and today the plugin directory followed suit with a milestone of its own: 100 million downloads.

The WordPress community’s growth over the years has been tremendous, and we want to reinvest in it. So we’re taking the next two months to concentrate on improving WordPress.org. A major part of that will be improving the infrastructure of the plugins directory. More than 10,000 plugins are in the directory, every one of them GPL compatible and free as in both beer and speech. Here’s what we have in mind:

We want to provide developers the tools they need to build the best possible plugins. We’re going to provide better integration with the forums so you can support your users. We’ll make more statistics available to you so you can analyze your user base, and over time we hope to make it easier for you to manage, build, and release localized plugins.

We want to improve how the core software works with your plugin and the plugin directory. We’re going to focus on ensuring seamless upgrades by making the best possible determinations about compatibility, and offer continual improvements to the plugin installer. And we also want to give you a better developer tool set like SVN notifications and improvements to the bug tracker.

We’re also going to experiment with other great ideas to help the community help plugin authors. We want it to be easy for you to offer comments to plugin authors and the community, including user reviews and better feedback. We may experiment with an adoption process for abandoned plugins as a way to revitalize hidden gems in the directory. I’m not sure there is a better way to show how extendable WordPress is and how awesome this community is at the same time.

As Matt said in the 3.0 release announcement, our goal isn’t to make everything perfect all at once. But we think incremental improvements can provide us with a great base for 3.1 and beyond, and for the tens of millions of users, and hundreds of millions of plugin downloads to come.

Fixed rate shipping module available at GetShopped

Available at GetShopped.org now, the fixed rate shipping module allows local and small businesses to charge with fixed shipping rates. Special and custom shipping options are available, including adding separate locations. As explained at GetShopped:

…for example if your business is located in Manhattan you may offer free shipping in Manhattan, but charge a little fee for the delivery in the rest of New York. Or if your business is in Italy you may want to charge extra for delivery to islands like Sicily and Sardinia.

You can download this plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Keep in mind, you will need the WP e-Commerce plugin as well.

If you are a small or local business selling products online, you need to check this one out!

I propose a Theme Design Review Team

Anyone who has ever submitted a theme to the WordPress.org Theme Directory has, in one way or another, run up against the theme review guidelines. I have. While it can be a pain in the butt sometimes (Why must my theme use widgets again? Hulk smash!), it’s understandable why they are there. Standards need to be maintained, or else craziness will ensue. (See also: cats, dogs, living together.)

It’s important to keep the quality of the code up, and to meet expectations when it comes to how a theme behaves on the backend. Sure, okay, I can buy into that.

But why don’t we have a set of guidelines and a review team for theme design?

First hand experience

A month or two back we launched something called Theme Finder. It’s really cryptic, what it does: it helps you find themes. We’re still improving it, but one thing that we do weekly is add new themes. Typically 50-100 each week. And our favorite thing to do is add free themes to it. After all, who doesn’t love free WordPress themes?

Like anyone else, we save hard things for last. Sue us, we’re human. And there are a few directories of themes that we put off at first, because the size was a bit daunting. One of those directories was the WordPress.org Theme Directory, which is currently sporting about 1,295 themes. That’s more themes than we have in Theme Finder right now. That’s a lot of themes.

But we’re not a group to shirk hard work (at least not forever) so recently we rolled up our sleeves, cracked open the .org directory, and…

We were completely, totally underwhelmed.

After compiling all sorts of awesome themes of all shapes and sizes, all colors and prices, we’d like to think we have a pretty good eye for solid theme design. And the themes in the directory, we learned, are mostly awful.

A special kind of awful

I’m sure the code of the themes in the directory are all top notch, or at least up to code. But I wouldn’t know, because you couldn’t make me click download on 90% of those theme pages. I won’t do it. The designs, the concepts behind the themes, are just awful.

It’s not just the design, but the originality that’s the issue. So many themes are clearly just tweaks of Kubrick, Twenty Ten, Sandbox, or another widely available (and perfectly fine) theme. Beginning theme developers should still use these themes to practice, but perhaps they should keep the downloads to only their own blogs, instead of WordPress.org.

There are a few really well done themes in there. But these are the exception, not the rule.

But maybe they should be the rule.

Maybe we need a Theme Design Review Team: a crew of highly qualified theme designers (perhaps volunteers from commercial WordPress theme shops?) to screen and approve theme submissions for quality and originality.

Just think about what that could look like.

I'm not saying this is what we need. But if we do, then I get to be the sexy one. Yes, Simon.

If it’s important that WordPress.org users can download and use themes without trouble, it should be important that the themes they are getting will give the best experience to those user’s sites as well.

A brave new world

Instituting this sort of review team and process would no doubt result in the removal of the majority of themes on the WordPress.org directory. But that’s okay.

Which would you rather have: 1,200+ themes that you couldn’t be paid to use, or 100 highly original, cornerstone themes?

iThemes gets patriotic with Americana blog theme

Matt Danner from iThemes has released their newest Builder child theme, Americana. You can demo Americana here. Some websites are already using it.

Here are some of the features of this new theme:

• Full width modules – Don’t get stuck in the box. Break out with this awesome full width style.
• The Power of Builder with Unique Style – Our Builder theme offers you simple layout control, infinite widget areas, and more settings than you can shake a stick at (if you’re into that). With Americana, you can take advantage of all of this power, but with an awesome design that you can customize to meet your needs, or the needs of your clients.
• Alternate Module Styles – This is our first Builder child theme to offer you Alternate Module Styles. Basically, this allows you to easily have multiple styles of the same module. Rather than me babbling on trying to explain it, check out the video below that demonstrates Alternate Module Styles in action.

Americana is available for download if you are an existing Builder or All Access Pass customer on iThemes. Buy iThemes Builder for $127.

You can follow Matt on Twitter.