If you use the WordPress rich text editor to write your posts, there are a few shortcuts that you may not be familiar with. Here is a useful list of shortcuts that you can use to make writing and formating posts a little easier:

Bold: Alt+SHIFT+B
Italics: Alt+SHIFT+I
Link: Alt+SHIFT+A
Blockquote: Alt+SHIFT+Q
Code: Alt+SHIFT+C
Read More: Alt+SHIFT+T
Unordered List (ul): Alt+SHIFT+U
Ordered List (ol): Alt+SHIFT+O
List Item (li): Alt+SHIFT+L

This can often save you the time it takes to switch back and forth between the visual tab and the code tabs. Enjoy!

In case you are new to the blogosphere, you might not have noticed that things tend to happen in trends. One trend that has become very popular over the last few months is the themes with date buttons.

If you are wondering what I am talking about, you can actually see the date button on this theme. The picture to the left is one taken from October 16th. Adding an icon to your WordPress theme will go a long way towards improving the look of your theme, while still allowing you to provide your readers with a date to your posts.

If you are interested in adding something like this to your theme, Small Potato has a great write up explaining how to add a WordPress date button. The only step that requires a little bit of thought is getting an icon to use for the background of the date. Everything else is pretty straight forward and well explained!

Blogging has become popular over the past five years for two main reasons.   Bloggers like the ability to have their voice heard without having to go through editors or censorship, while readers enjoy blogs because they are quicker to break news  and they allow direct interaction with the author.  

Whenever I create a new blog, the first thing I add is an About page to give more information about the author, and the second thing I add is a way to contact the author.   This is where the WP-Contact Form plugin by Douglas Karr really shines!  

This form provides you with the security you need to protect your e-mail address and personal information from spammers while at the same time providing you a bunch of useful functionality.   Once you’ve activated your plugin, you can add a bunch of functionality from the Options panel in your WordPress dashboard including:

• Add a drop-down menu to give users options
• Give users the option to carbon copy themselves
• Add a challenge question that users need to answer

If you are a WordPress user and don’t have a contact form, or you just aren’t happy with the one you are using, I recommend giving this one a shot.   If this doesn’t sound like the one for you, here are a few other popular contact form plugins that you make like better:

• Contact Form ][
• PXS Mail Form
• Enhanced Contact Form

I’ve noticed a lot of themes that don’t come with numbers on the blog’s comments.  This might not be such a bad thing if you don’t get very many comments, but if your blog does get comments it is probably a good idea to show off how many comments you get by numbering them.

Here are the steps you can take to easily add numbers to your WordPress theme’s comments section.

1. First thing you will want to do is create a backup your comments.php file.
2. Locate the comments.php file.
3. Locate the code that starts the comment loop. It will look something like this:
   <?php if ( $comments ) : ?>
4. Place this code immediately above the code in Step 3:
   <?php $i = 0; ?>
5. Now locate the code that looks like this:
   <?php foreach ($comments as $comment) : ?>
6. Placed this code immediately below the code in Step 5:
   <?php $i++; ?>
7. Now use this code where you want to display your comment numbers:
   <span class="count">
<?php echo $i; ?>
</span>
8. Click Save.
9. Now go to your stylesheet (style.css) and place this code anywhere on the stylesheet (probably best placed in the comments section):
   .count {
float:right;
padding: 10px;
font-size:18px;
color:#000000;
}

You can adjust the stylesheet to fit your comment numbers into the placement and appearance that you want them to have.

Lately, I’ve been having a lot of fun surfing the Internet on my Nintendo Wii and I’ve noticed a lot of websites don’t render correctly using Nintendo’s Opera browser. I’ve also talked to a lot of people that like to use their PSP or Nintendo DS to browse the internet. They also tend to have some problems when trying to visit many blogs or websites.

If you have a WordPress blog, David Harper has made a wonderful WordPress plugin you can use to ensure that your blog will not have problems rendering properly with one of the above gaming systems. The plugin is called Gamer’s Pack, and thats exactly what it is.

Once downloaded, you will be given 3 themes to install in your themes folder and 3 plugins to activate in your plugins folder. The themes obviously do not need to be activated, but they do need to be available in the themes folder if the plugin recognizes someone is viewing your site using one of the above systems, so it can render the site using the appropriate theme.

For most people that set up a new blog or are looking for a new WordPress theme, one goal these people have in common is usually to make money online. One easy way to achieve this is to actually look a WordPress theme you can use that is already optimized for Google AdSense advertisements. What this means is that the theme focuses on integrating Google AdSense advertisements around your content.

With that in mind, I decided to throw together a post that is designed to showcase a bunch of Google AdSense optimized WordPress themes that are currently available for anyone to download. Included you will find a screenshot of each theme, as well as a link to the author’s page and a link to download the theme.

2-Column Google AdSense Optimized Themes

Slick Blue Theme (Advertising Ready, SEO Friendly)

Source | Download | Demo

Black and White Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Free Revolution theme

Source | Download | Demo

AdsPress Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Blix Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Note: Newer version available, but is not free.

Silver Sense Theme

Source | Download | (No Demo Found)

Connections Theme

Source | Download | Demo

MW Theme

Source / Demo | Download

Merah Putih Theme

Source | Download | Demo

3-Column Google AdSense Optimized Themes

Tigopedia Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Ads Minded Theme

Source | Download | Demo

ProSense Theme

Source | Download (Orange, Blue, and Gray) | Demo

ProBlogger Clean Theme

Source | Download | (No Demo Found)

Mezzo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP Colors Theme

Source | Download (Author request you visit page to download) | Demo (Select this theme in sidebar)

Note: Available in 4 colors and 2 sizes (fluid width and fixed width)

BlueSense Theme

Source | Download | (No Demo Found)

Know of a theme that you feel belongs on this list? Feel free to comment with a link below and I’ll check it out!