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.

Do you ever have trouble finding a theme that you like for your website? People tend to like all sorts of different features and looks with their themes, which is what makes WordPress so incredible. There are theme authors out there looking to accommodate your requests.

Moses of WPThemesPlugin.com is looking for your WordPress theme input. According to Moses:

So, what do you actually look for in a theme? is it purely based on the design & colors, or is it based on functionality or are you looking for a balance of both?

I need your help, in my mind i envision on creating my next theme to look similar to this site but than again i had a friend of mind that said a design like that would look “too busy” and too many parts/columns.

So please help me out, give me some hint or even point me to some URL of sites that attracts you, let me know your prefrences such as:

- 2,3 or 4 columns?

- Dark or Light colors?

- Header or no Header?

- CMS options or just normal blog layout?

- Ads ready?

- Big or small footer?

Now is your chance to provide some input and help see that theme you always wanted to get created.

The first month of 2008 is now complete and this blog is celebrating the completion of its fourth month of existence. This blog has continued to exceed my expectations. It’s getting a good amount of traffic, and the subscriber count is quickly approaching 600 subscribers.  There has also been some great conversations in the comments, as well, which is probably my favorite part.

In case you’re new to Hack WordPress, I like to wrap up each month with a quick post covering the most popular posts for that month. Here is some of January’s most popular posts:

• Premium WordPress Themes Gallery
• How To: Adding an Author Page to Your WordPress Theme
• How To: Blocking Your WordPress Categories and Archives From Google
• Premium Theme: PolaroidPress
• Support WordPress by Displaying Gravatars On Your Blog

Thanks to everyone for supporting Hack WordPress through reading, comments, and inbound links. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank this months sponsors!

• PremiumPress - Magnus is a freelance web designer with a couple premium WordPress themes for sale.
• Adii - Adii is the WordPress rockstar responsible for the Premium News theme series.

If you have WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, or other WordPress related products and services that you’d like to promote, we still have one advertising spot available. Please check out our advertising page, then contact us.

Also, if you enjoy writing about WordPress, we now have a couple writing positions available. Check out this page for more details!

As Hack WordPress continues to grow and expand, I’ve been digging through the archives and found a lot of great information (I know I’m a little biased). While I want readers to dig through the archives, it seems at some point that the natural progression is to create a WordPress eBook for readers to get a bunch of information in one convenient location.

So my question is this…..Would you be interested in a WordPress eBook? Let me know which of the following applies to you:

1. I would be interested in purchasing a WordPress eBook at an affordable price. (Price would be $10.00 or less)
2. I would be interested in downloading a WordPress eBook only if it was free.
3. I would not be interested in downloading the WordPress eBook.

Ever wonder where Matt Mullenweg came up with the idea for what we now know as WordPress? I bet most people have wondered at some point, because at the time, the idea of starting up a business where the product would be free and everyone had access to the code was a recipe for disaster.  At the time, the concept of open source software wasn’t exactly mainstream and there wasn’t a good way to monetize it.

I was happy to discover that back in 2003, you can actually find a blog post by Matt on his blog titled The Blogging Software Dilemma, where he writes about the idea of the perfect blogging software. Here is a bit of his post:

What to do? Well, Textpattern looks like everything I could ever want, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to be licensed under something politically I could agree with. Fortunately, b2/cafelog is GPL, which means that I could use the existing codebase to create a fork, integrating all the cool stuff that Michel would be working on right now if only he was around. The work would never be lost, as if I fell of the face of the planet a year from now, whatever code I made would be free to the world, and if someone else wanted to pick it up they could. I’ve decided that this the course of action I’d like to go in, now all I need is a name. What should it do? Well, it would be nice to have the flexibility of MovableType, the parsing of TextPattern, the hackability of b2, and the ease of setup of Blogger. Someday, right?

Click over to read the rest.   You can certainly see the wheels turning as Matt began to put together when would eventually become WordPress, and almost a year later Matt updated the post stating that this idea eventually became WordPress.  Thanks Matt for seeing this idea through and to the rest of the WordPress team that has made it happen.  Your hard work has made all of our online lives better!

[via We Love WP]

Today while going through the site to read and respond to comments, I was thrilled to notice that Hack WordPress has reached its first milestone, 500 subscribers!

It has been just under 4 months since this domain was registered and the site was launched. It has been a ton of work, but in that time I’m pretty proud of the work we’ve done and look forward to working towards the next milestone, 1000 subscribers. I’m also hoping to release our first WordPress theme this weekend so keep an eye out for that.

If you have knowledge of WordPress and would like to contribute to the growth of this site, as well as gain some exposure for yourself and your website, we currently have some opportunities available to write for us as a guest author or weekly contributor. Contact us with questions.

Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting, and making this site so great to write for!