We talked last week about Brian Gardner’s latest addition to his popular Revolution series of premium WordPress themes, this one called Revolution Pro Media.

In the time since then, it looks like Brian has been hard at work planning his March Madness Revolution affiliate contest.  Here are the rules:

• The contest will begin on March 1st, and run until 12:00 midnight March 31st
• The people who generate the 3 highest amount of affiliate sales (in US dollars) throughout the course of the month will be awarded 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes
• To enter the contest, you must be a Revolution affiliate - you can sign up here to become one
• You must post on your blog and linkback with the details of this contest
• Self-purchases made with your own affiliate code will NOT count
• You can use any of the affiliate banner images from the Revolution site

Unsure if it is worth all the effort?  Well, keep in mind that you can earn some extra income with the affiliate program if someone purchases it through your blog.   In addition to this, Brian is throwing in some extra prizes:

1st prize - 4 night Bahama Cruise & $500 spending cash
Sailing out of Miami, Florida, Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas will stop in Nassau, Bahamas; CocoCay, Bahamas; Key West, Florida. I will personally book the cruise with you and an official Royal Caribbean certified vacation planner to ensure that you get the best service. This is a cruise for two, and available dates to take this cruise are Oct 06, Oct 13, Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 03, Nov 10, Nov 17, Dec 01, Dec 08 - all dates in the year 2008.

2nd prize - Samsung 19? Flat-Panel HDTV, Revolution All-Inclusive Package or $500 cash
The Samsung HDTV, featuring a built in high definition TV tuner and a Game mode, which enhances dark areas and sharpens the picture for a lush, realistic experience from your favorite console. The Revolution All-Inclusive Package will give you lifetime access to all of the current Revolution themes, as well as any future themes. Or you can take the $500 cash prize, which will be sent to your Paypal account.

3rd prize - $250 cash or gift certificate to your favorite online retailer
Receive a $250 gift certificate to your favorite online retailer - Apple, Best Buy, Target, The Gap, Old Navy, Sports Authority, Amazon.com or any place of your choice. Or you can take the $250 cash prize, will be sent to your Paypal account.

Have you ever noticed how some pages on blogs behave different than on other pages? One of the most under-utilised features of WordPress is the wide variety of conditional tags available in WordPress. Through the use of conditional tags, you can instruct certain plugins, pictures, or code to only appear on designated pages.

Recently I ran across a post by the Undersigned explaining Conditional Tags in WordPress, which appears was written in 2006 but is still valid with current versions of WordPress.

Here is a list of the conditional tags available:

• is_home()
• is_single()
• is_page()
• is_category()
• is_author()
• is_date()
• is_year()
• is_month()
• is_day()
• is_time()
• is_archive()
• is_search()
• is_paged()
• is_404()

One of my favorite places to use conditional tags is in the post meta area. For example, on most pages I want the comments button to display, but I don’t need it to appear on the single page because the comments are displayed on that page. At the same time, I like having an edit button on the single page, but I don’t need it on any other pages.

Here is the code I use for the above example on one of my sites:

<?php if (is_single()){ ?> <?php edit_post_link(__(”*Edit*”), ”); ?> <?php } else { ?> | <?php comments_popup_link(’0 comments’, ‘1 comment’, ‘% comments’); ?> <?php } ?>

The bold code is the conditional tags I’ve set up.  You can see from the above code that I am telling WordPress to only display an Edit button on single pages, and on all other pages display the comments link.

What other good uses have you found for conditional tags?

About a month ago, I sent a call out to the WordPress community requesting that more themes be released that by default include slots for 125×125 banners. They are all the rage, yet it seems that few designers took the time to optimize their themes for these banners. Common sense says that if there is very little supply but a lot of demand, the people that fill the demand will find success.

In looking at the recent trends with newly released themes over this past month, it seems that bloggers have really responded and there is now a wide variety of WordPress themes available for download. I decided there are finally enough of them now that I can throw together a gallery of WordPress themes that allow for 125×125 banners. Enjoy!

2-Column Themes

Slick Blue Theme

Source | Download | Demo

PassionDuo Theme (3 Colors)

Green: Demo | Download, Red: Demo | Download, Blue: Demo | Download

WP Freemium Theme

Source | Download

Dark Zen Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Maggo Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Green Tech Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Blue Sensation Theme

Source | Download | Demo

3-Column Themes

iPhOne Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Padangan Theme

Source | Download | Demo

SimpleWP Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Black and White Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP-Polaroid Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Firebug Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Simple Red Theme

Source | Download (Requires free registration) | Demo

True Blue Theme

Source | Download (Requires free registration) | Demo

Blue Block Theme

Source | Download | Demo

WP Premiere Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Magazine-Style Themes

Structure Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Forte Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Mag on Wood Theme

Source | Download | Demo

Studio WordPress Theme (Available in Blue, Green, & Red)

Source | Download | Demo

Know of a good quality one we missed? Contact us or let us know in the comments below!

This guest post was written by Jeffro of Jeffro2pt0. Jeffro is a WordPress enthusiast who writes a lot about WordPress and maintains a WordPress Weekly podcast. If you have WordPress knowledge and are interested in writing a guest post for Hack WordPress, please contact us.

Ever wanted that ability to show your bio information within your WordPress profile at the bottom of every post? For single user blogs, this might not be practical. But for multi-authored blogs, adding the bio info of each author at the bottom of their respective posts is a good way to give props to the author as well as providing information to the readers as to who that person is without having to refer to an about me page. The good news is that, you don’t need to install a plugin to have this functionality.

Inside of a user profile is this nifty little box where you can place information about yourself. As you can see, I have already placed some info into the box for reference later on in the tutorial. We are going to take the information in this box and display it at the bottom of every post that is under my name.

The template tag we are going to focus on is <?php the_author_description(); ?> This tag doesn’t accept any parameters, so don’t bother trying to do anything funky with this tag. Now, head to your templates Style sheet and add this to it:

.postauthor { }

This will give us the opportunity to style the postauthor bit when it’s published in the post. Now that we have the template tag in order, we will need to place it within the loop.

I’m not going to delve into the specifics of the loop, but in general, it deals with the information related to posts. Browse to your themes index.php file and look for something like this:

< ?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>

That is what it looks like in my theme, it may look different in yours, but this is the function that displays the content of the post. Underneath of this content function is where you would want to place the following code:

< div class="postauthor ">< ?php the_author_description(); ? >< /div>

Please keep in mind that if the code does not work, it is most likely due to the spaces which I had to add in order for the code to properly appear within this post. Simply remove the spaces, and the code should be just fine.

Now that you have the author description function in place, this is what it might look like on your blog:

If you ask me, this looks bland and boring. We need to fix that by editing the div class called Postauthor within the CSS file and give that Div class a nice look. You can style it to match your blog design, but for the sake of this tutorial, I’ll display the CSS code which makes it appear like the TAG div container shown below the Post Author.

.postauthor {
color: #222222;
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 14px;
font-weight: normal;
background: #EAEAEA;
border-top: 2px solid #000000;
border-bottom: 1px solid #000000;
width: 640px;
padding: 3px;
margin-bottom:5px;
}

This CSS style code turns that small black text into something like this:

I know we’ve been focusing a lot on premium WordPress themes this week, but that is because they have been getting released in a flurry lately. Based on the rate that these themes are being released, it appears that these authors are finding a lot of success selling them.   This means, in my mind, that premium themes are here to stay, so I will be placing some focus on them when they are released.

The newest premium themes that I’ve run across are the Flash News/Magazine Theme and the Premium News theme: Gazette Edition, both of which are now available for purchase at Premium News Themes.

In staying true to the previous themes put out by Adii and crew, these themes have a similar look and follow the same trend as previously released versions.  Here are the new looks:

Flash News/Magazine Theme 

Premium News theme: Gazette Edition

Both themes are available for $99.95, or $249.95 for a developer’s license.  To read more about these themes or to purchase a copy, check out Premium News Themes.

Looking for a premium WordPress theme to give your small business or blog a professional look and feel? There are a ton of great premium WordPress themes out there these days, but most seem to cater to a small community of businesses and bloggers that are looking for a affordable content management system. What about regular WordPress bloggers?

If you own a small business, but aren’t looking to report the news or create an online magazine, I recommend you check out the recently released Industrial Business WordPress theme. It was designed for with professional business websites in mind such as technology, construction, consulting, accounting and even medical firms, however it great for just about any type of small business website/blog.

For only $49.95 (or $99.95 for multiple-use), you get this professional looking small business theme that has a great front-page display to give information about your business. It is also a fully functional WordPress blog, so you get the best of both worlds without worrying about setting up a subdomain or directory.

Here is a screenshot of the blue version of the theme:

In addition to the choice of 6 different color schemes (you get all 6 with your purchase), you will also get the following features:

• Drop-down menus
• Front page feature section (Tabber)
• Bread-crumb interior navigation
• Archive Page Template
• Two sidebars
• Website look and feel 

Want more information? I recommend you check out the iThemes website.