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Community links: Open source motivations edition

What’s more fun to do over the weekend then catch up on WordPress community links? Set up the Christmas tree? Clean out the gutters? Shovel the driveway?

Alright, if you have to. Chores are chores. But when you’re done, reward yourself with a hot coffee and a good dose of WordPress reading. We have a truckload of links for you, so settle in.

The full list of links is after the jump.

In blog posts this week:

• Alex King, a well known WordPress plugin developer and entrepreneur, posted his thoughts on what motivations exist for WordPress plugin developers today. Chris Olbekson followed up with his own thoughts, as did Joost de Valk. Jeff Chandler started up a commentary at WBTC as well.
• WooThemes posted a preview of the upcoming launch of WPBundle. They also shared a few thoughts on the increase in support time that’s required of them with so many themes released.
• Dev4Press redesigned their site.
• James Dalman at WP Design Coach is now accepting themes for review on his new blog.
• Jeff Chandler wrote up how anyone can contribute to the WordPress.org theme review process. He also started a discussion around the legacy that plugins leave behind when they are deactivated.
• ThemesForge has decided to post 24 theme tips throughout December. I love the attitude and initiative behind the posts so far.
• WP Plugins has an interview with plugin developer Jonathan O’Shea.
• Matt Mullenweg was on The Big Web Show with Jeffrey Zeldman.
• Dre on the Sucuri blog wrote up yet another WordPress security post. These posts are always good reminders to secure your WordPress site. While we’re on the topic, WPZine has a collection of WordPress security plugins this week too.
• Brandon Cox wrote a really interesting post on how one particular WordPress theme ad depicted developers.
• 9seeds’ plugin WP Event Ticketing seems to have a few issues with the popular WordPress theme Thesis. They’ve posted a fix that should take care of the problem, though.

There were a few WordPress resources posted fresh this week too:

• DBS>Interactive created and released the Template Tag Reference Guide this week.
• Sarah Gooding at WPMU.org listed myself and WPCandy in their list of 50 people to follow for WordPress news on Twitter. Thanks Sarah! They also put up a collection of plugins to use with Foursquare.
• Paul Andrew posted a collection of plugins for integrating Flickr into a WordPress blog.
• Jean-Baptiste Jung posted a solid roundup of WordPress code snippets.
• iThemes has released the video tutorials in their Builder Basics series for free online.

Finally, in WordPress tutorials this week:

• WPEngineer has been laying into the tutorials this week, with a custom login page tutorial and a walkthrough of the upcoming post formats feature.
• WPBeginner has a new tutorial up showing how to add the official LinkedIn share button to your WordPress blog. They also have a nice roundup of plugins for managing images with WordPress.
• Vladimir Prelovac posted about how to disable post revisions and delete them from your database.
• Scribu showed how to insert a banner between posts, without editing the theme files.
• Chris Coyier put together a tutorial showing how to make the WYSIWYG editor really WYSIWYG.
• Sumeet Chawla at Nettuts+ put together a tutorial showing how to create an FAQ page with custom post types.

Wow, that may be a record for number of WordPress related links in a roundup post (for us). Who gets the plaque?

That’s it for links this week. If you run across something link worthy, don’t hesitate to let us know about it. If it’s worth a story we’ll jump on it, and if it’s best suited for a community news post it will show up in this space next week.

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!

Orman Clark releases new WordPress theme on ThemeForest

Orman Clark, a UK based web designer, has created a WordPress theme called Repro. He usually makes free themes over at PremiumPixels.com, but Repro is a premium WordPress theme released over at ThemeForest. Some of Repro’s features include, but not limited to:

Repro is suitable for content producers at all levels, personal bloggers, newspapers, online magazines, community blogs… you get the idea 

Repro looks great out of the box but also acts as the perfect black canvas for those looking to customise and develop their own content-focused site.

Valid XHTML Strict 1.0 Tableless Design

Unlimited Colour Schemes (colour picker)

Full Localisation Support (contains .po/.mo files)

10 Widget Areas

8 Custom Widgets

Extensive Theme Options (unbranded!)

You can follow Orman on Twitter or be a fan of PremiumPixels.

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Soon Branded Video Content Will Just Be Called Video Content

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