It seems as though the WordPress 2.5 back end redesign was so nice, it inspired at least one person to develop a front end theme that looked the same. Welcome to FreshPress, a WordPress theme that mimics the look and feel of the 2.5 administration panel.

FreshPress is a three column theme with the left most column dedicated to post content and the other two columns dedicated to widget sidebars. Above the content is a large rectangle which reminds me of the RIGHT NOW section of the 2.5 administration area. This box showcases featured articles with a small area on the right with links to more featured articles. Also worthy of noting is that the number of comments for an article displays the same as you would see it in the 2.5 back end.

The color scheme looks exactly like the one you would find in the back end of WordPress 2.5. Although 2.5 comes with two color schemes labeled classic and fresh, it’s obvious as to which one is represented in this theme.

The footer is somewhat customizable as you can add as many boxes as you want by simply editing the footer.php file, copying and then pasting the div container that makes up the box. Even the footer uses the color scheme found within the footer of the 2.5 backend.

Overall, this design seems simple but also Fresh, as the name implies. Perhaps it’s because I’ve gotten use to the way the new administration design in WordPress 2.5 looks but I have to admit, the redesign makes for a nice front end design as well. For all the negative things that were said of the look and feel of the redesign, I find it amazingly ironic that someone would create a theme using the new look as inspiration.

What do you think? Do you like this design or do you get enough of these colors in the back end?

It looks like the crew over at Premium News has been busy, releasing their eighth theme in the last five months. This premium WordPress theme is called Fresh News, and it was based upon the extremely popular Flash edition news theme.

Here are some of the features included with the Fresh News theme:

• Automatic Image Resizer (requires PHP GD Library to work)
• Custom Page Templates for Archives, Sitemap & Image Gallery
• Built-in Gravatar Support for Authors & Comments
• Author Profiles & Archives
• Featured news section
• Video Panel (for use with Flash videos)
• Traditional Blog Layout (for homepage)
• Integrated aside / sideblog section within the sidebar of the theme (optional)
• Navigation Dropdown Menu’s
• Sidebar Tabbed Box
• 2 different homepage layouts (featured section)
• Widgetized sidebars
• Integrated Banner Ad Management
• Integrated Flickr & Feedburner

Upon first glance, there are two things that jump out at me about this theme. I don’t believe previous versions of premium News themes have had multiple colors (I could be wrong), but Fresh News comes with 6 different colors to choose from.

The other really neat thing you get is something that I’ve been suggesting premium theme designers do for months now, and that is to provide a blogging template with the theme. It looks like if you purchase the Fresh News theme, you will get a blogging template that you can use. This opens up a lot more options for a potential buyer and creates more appeal to bloggers that don’t want a content management homepage.

Here are some screenshots of Fresh News:

Homepage

Post Page

This theme comes with everything you’ve come to expect from the News theme crew, and it is available at the same price. You can purchase a single-use license for $99.95 or a multiple-use license for $249.95.

Check out the Fresh News WordPress theme!

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 a lot of people that have upgraded to WordPress 2.5 have all flocked to the Fluency Admin plugin, but many people probably didn’t know that you can also change the color of your dashboard to a more “classic” WordPress look from within your dashboard.   This was added for people that are slow to accept change.

All you need to do is go into your “Users” tab and select “Your Profile.”  Once that is done, you should see the following:

Here you can select the “Classic” radio button to change to a darker and more familiar blue color.  This change is only saved for the individual user, so other users logged in will need to log in and make the change as well if they want the classic look.

Hopefully future versions will contain more options, but for now, it is at least nice to have a choice!

If you haven’t heard of a sitemap before, now is probably a good time to start learning about them if you run a blog. A sitemap is a XML file originally created by Google for webmasters to use to create a “map” of their website.

A good sitemap is dynamic, keeping the freshest content at the top. This way Google knows to index any new posts or updated posts. Google’s spiders then use your Sitemap.xml file when they index your website to ensure they get everything new or that has changed. A sitemap also helps ensure pages get indexed that use JavaScript or Flash, but do not contain HTML links (without a sitemap, these normally would not be discovered by a search engine).

Eventually the Sitemap.xml file was adopted by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com, making it as important for webmasters to use as a Robots.txt file to get their website maximum exposure and control what is indexed.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m going to assume you are a WordPress user. If you’d like to create a sitemap for your WordPress blog, look no further than the Google Sitemap WordPress plugin. This is the WordPress plugin I use for this website. When activated, it will create a sitemap on http://yourdomainname.com/sitemap.xml and do all the maintenance work for you. You’ll want to then log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account and add your sitemap, or make sure your homepage links to your sitemap somewhere (usually the footer) so the search engines can find it.

For those that are curious what they look like, you can see what our sitemap looks like here. Are you using a sitemap for your blog(s)?