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.

I’m not really sure if this is a trend or just coincidence, but over the past week I’ve noticed quite a few of the blogs that I stumble upon require you to setup an account before you can leave a comment.  Anyone know what is up with that?

This is obviously a very useful WordPress feature for blogs that have a strong community built around their website, but I think most people should consider the consequences before they require you to register to comment.  A choice like this could keep truly hinder a new blogs growth or discourage a blogger who isn’t seeing the reader interaction they were hoping for.

As with pretty much everything, there are some positives and some negatives to doing this.  Off the top of my head, here are a few positives and negatives of requiring registration to leave a comment on a blog:

Positives of Registration

• Spam Prevention - Requiring registration should stop spam completely.
• More Options - Requiring registration opens up some interesting opportunities to customize comment appearance, allow you to create profiles, etc.   I’ve seen a few high profile websites do this, but the registration usually is optional instead of being required.

Negatives of Registration

• Less Comments - Some people value comments more than others, but I think most bloggers would find less comments to be a negative as the whole concept of blogging was formed around the concept of reader interaction with the writer.

I personally do not leave comments on blogs that require registration because it just isn’t worth it to me.  I have enough accounts to manage without trying to remember my account information.   I also think things like spam can easily be avoided for WordPress users using tools like Akismet and Bad Behavior, Spam Karma 2, or Math Comment Spam Protection (which we use here).

I’d like to hear what you think in the comments below.   How do you feel about blogs that require registration to comment?   Do you take the time to register or do you just decide not to comment at all?

If you deal with WordPress template tags, I just ran across an incredible new WordPress resource. It is called the WordPress Template Tags Reference Guide, and is basically a reformatted version of WordPress.org Codex page for template tags.

If you deal with template tags regularly, I would definitely recommend booking this page.  I have added this to our WordPress Resources page.