It seems like every day I’m discovering new WordPress plugins that I have a need or desire for.   Today was no exception!   If you are someone that has made a number of downloads available to the public on your WordPress blog (WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, eBooks, etc.), you will probably also find this plugin very useful.

The plugin I am referencing is the WordPress Download Manager plugin, which was designed to help you give you statistics and manage your downloads.  Once activated, this plugin gives you a download manager in your WordPress dashboard that supports the following extensions:  .zip, .pdf, .mp3, .rar.  You can upload multiple downloads, create download categories, and even make your own custom download URL’s.

This plugin also calculates your downloads for you and displays your download statistics on the front page of your dashboard.

For those of you that love upgrading your WordPress install, you’ll be happy to know that WordPress 2.6 is now available for download!   Here is a quick video provided by the WordPress team (3.5 minutes):

New features include:

• Google Gears integration
• Press This! bookmarklet
• Wiki-like Edit Tracking
• Theme Previews
• Plugin Bulk Management
• Post Word Count
• Plugin Update Notification Bubble
• 194 Bug Fixes, Security Updates, and more!

If your concerned about upgrading to the newest branch of WordPress, don’t be:

2.6 is pretty much identical to 2.5 from a plugin and theme compatibility point of view, so upgrades from 2.5 should be pretty painless. The 2.5 branch will no longer be maintain so everyone is encouraged to upgrade.

Now, I’m off to start upgrading my WordPress blogs!

Though WordPress has been around for quite awhile now, I would guess that a majority of WordPress users are fairly new to the platform (using it less than 2 years).   It wasn’t until about 2006 that WordPress really became widely recognized within the blogosphere.  If you are new to WordPress, have you ever found yourself wondering when or how WordPress got started? 

Yesterday our friend Keith, who is a writer for Weblog Tools Collection, recently wrote about the evolution of WordPress in his post B2/Cafelog to WordPress 1.0.   He chronicles the early years of WordPress (May 2003 through January 2004) and talks about the features that were introduced, many of which we now take for granted. 

I think posts like this are fun, but they also help us to appreciate things as they are now and to see how far both WordPress and blogging has come.   I switched my first blog to WordPress when WordPress 2.0 was originally released.  Within 2-3 days I was hooked and haven’t look back since!   Now I even use WordPress to develop most of my non-blogging websites as well. 

So, how about you?  What was the first version of WordPress you used?  

At the time when Hack WordPress was created close to a year ago, there were only two sites that were completely dedicated to WordPress (Weblog Tools Collection and Lorelle on WordPress), and both focused a lot of their time covering WordPress news and the community that surrounds it.

The original intention when building this site was to feature a number of WordPress hacks, tips, and/or how-to guides each week to kind of fill the gaps and provide resources for WordPress users.  Over time, I feel this site has branched out to become much more, but the core of this site is still focused on providing WordPress theme hacks.  In addition to the ones I’ve written, we’ve also had some great hacks contributed from a number of different WordPress enthusiasts.

Because I felt that our archives are not as focused as was originally intended, I have decided to create a place to strictly collect links to our posts providing WordPress hacks, WordPress tips, and WordPress guides.  This will replace the Archives link in our menu.

There are a number of new WordPress hacks planned for the future, so the plan is to update this post every time a new hack is published!

Theme Hacks

• How to Add Widget Support to Your WordPress Theme
• How to Prevent WordPress Plugins From Breaking Your Blog
• How to Add Edit Buttons To Your Theme
• How to Add WordPress Tags to Your Theme
• How to Setup RSS Feed Auto Discovery
• How to Use WordPress Conditional Tags
• How to Hide Your Subcategories (Children)
• How to Prevent Google From Indexing Your Images
• How to Create a Two-Tiered Navigation Menu
• How to Make WordPress Function Like a CMS
• How to Add a Print Button To Your Theme
• How to Add an Email Button To Your Theme

Stylesheet Hacks

• How to Create a Print Stylesheet
• How to Use Multiple Stylesheets

Post Hacks

• How to Add Daily Blog Posting via Del.icio.us
• How to Convert Your Author Links to Point Towards the Authors Site
• How to Show Only a Post Excerpt
• How to Display a Last Modified Date on Your Posts
• How to Add Bio Information to Your Blog Posts
• How to Alternate Post Background Colors
• How to Add Author Gravatars to Authors Posts

Comment Hacks

• How To Separate Comments and Trackbacks
• How To Single Out Author Comments
• How To Add Numbers To Your Blog Comments
• How to Display Recent Comments First

Page Hacks

• How to Create a Custom Page Template
• How to Hide Individual WordPress Pages
• How to Add an Author Page To Your Theme
• How to Optimize Your 404 Error Page

Categories/Archives Hacks

• How to Limit How Many Archives are Displayed
• How to Remove Ads from Select Categories
• How to Display Recent Posts for Specific Categories
• How to Change the Author Archives Permalink
• How to Convert Your Categories to Display Post Titles

Blogroll Hacks

• How to Separate Your Blogroll Categories

Just wanted to drop a quick post and let you know that I was recently interviewed by Jean of Cats Who Code and that it is now available online for anyone to read.  If you’d like to learn more about me professionally or personally, click here to read the interview.