One of the first things most people notice when they visit Blog Perfume is the great blog design they have. I know it is something that got my attention. That is why when I noticed yesterday that they have released a premium WordPress theme, it immediately got my attention.

This theme is called Blubs, and it stays true to the Blog Perfume brand with a unique look to go with the unique name. Here are the features that they list with the theme:

• Clean and Elegant Design
• 2 columns flexible layout
• Navigation Dropdown Menu
• Widgets ready on sidebar
• Serach bar at the top
• Ready for125px and 250px ads integration
• Separated comments/trackbacks
• Built-in gravatars in comment section
• Print.css stylesheet
• Author Profiles & Archives
• Clean & valid codes - XHTML 1.0 Strict + CSS 2.1
• Cross browser compatible - tested on IE/Win, Opera, Firefox, Safari/Win.

A lot of this stuff has become standard with todays premium themes, but I really like the idea of a separate print.css stylesheet and archive/author profiles. You won’t find that on most of these themes. Separated trackbacks and comments is also another great feature.

So how does Blubs look? Here are a couple screenshots (though you really need to view the demo to fully appreciate it):

Homepage

Homepage Footer

Archives Page

Comments Section

So, looks great, but how much for Blubs? It is listed at a very competitive price of $49.95 for a single-use license. You can also get the multiple-use license for $99.00.

Check out the Blubs premium WordPress theme.

If you’ve been holding out on upgrading to WordPress 2.5 (or at least WordPress 2.3.3), Technorati is now adding some extra incentive. According to their official blog:

Blogs that have been compromised by this security vulnerability are typified by having links to spam destinations inserted onto the blog page. These link insertions may be invisible to casual observations; the links are often obscured by style attributes that render them invisible. These links are still seen by crawlers such as Technorati’s, Google’s and Yahoo’s. You can find these links by viewing the source of the blog pages or, when using Firefox, looking under “Tools” -> “Page Info” -> “Links”. Blogs hosted on wordpress.com are not affected by this issue; only blogs hosted on their own installations of WordPress from wordpress.org require concern.

Because of this ongoing problem, we’re discontinuing processing crawls of blogs that exhibit common symptoms of being compromised. We strongly recommend upgrading your WordPress installation. Even if you haven’t been afflicted by a compromise, by the time you are aware that you have been a number of negative consequences may have already occurred (for instance, flagged spam by Technorati, Google or Yahoo!) — this has been reported by many WordPress users.

It looks like all those people that aren’t upgrading their WordPress blogs (or have a dormant blog) are being targeted by spammers, which is causing Technorati some problems. As a result, it appears that these blogs will no longer be indexed by Technorati.

Is this really extra incentive? In my personal opinion, the relevance of Technorati disappeared long ago, but I’ve noticed that my blogs do occasionally get traffic from there. It certainly can’t hurt to have them indexing my posts.

It has been awhile since I’ve done one of these, so here is a quick post highlighting some interesting posts from around the blogosphere that are related to WordPress.

• CagIntranet explains how to create a category loop to display those posts in your sidebar. Chris Pearson has also written a great post about the ideal way to use your blogs categories.
• Weblog Tools Collection has done a final WordCamp Dallas 2008 wrap up. The post includes notes and pictures from the event (including pictures of the WTC authors!)
• ProBlogDesign has posted 60 RSS icons that you can use for your blog. This post includes some incredible RSS icons that anyone can use.
• Noupe has posted a powerful list of WordPress plugins. This is a large collection of WordPress plugins anyone can use and should help you find just about anything you need.
• Theme Lab provides a great tutorial guiding you on how to put your available domains to good use. I have about 200 domains I’m not currently using and I’ve been trying to figure out if I should sell them or start using them. If done tastefully and legally, this could be a great use for these domains.
• WordPress Max has written a post explaining how to use your WordPress blogroll feature for site navigation in your sidebar. This is a creative and interesting idea allowing you to create links from your dashboard to feature content.
• Performancing explains how to use WordPress custom fields to auto-embed YouTube videos.

I know this is soooo 2007, but this post is just a quick note to let you know that I finally got around to creating a Hack WordPress group on Facebook.   If you are a Facebook user and you’d like to join, you can join the group here.

Also, if you are interested in adding me as a Facebook friend, you can add me as a friend here.  Now, back to writing WordPress posts!