Here’s a list of the plugins on my site right now:

1. Akismet
2. Ad Rotator
3. cforms
4. Google XML sitemaps
5. Jetpack
6. Platinum SEO Pack
7. SyntaxHighlighter Evolved
8. WordPress Database Backup
9. WordPress Download Monitor

Plugins like Platinum SEO Pack “could” be replaced by implementing some of the most common optimization features in custom meta boxes and having it available per Post/Page. The rest of SEO depends on your content anyway.

Download Monitor is great for the free designer downloads I use on my site, but I’m sure with some wizardry I could use a Custom Post Type and even implement a counter to track downloads. But I think I’ll keep it for now.

Some would say that 9 is too much as well, whereas some would probably have three times as many plugins installed. In my career as a web designer, I’ve seen my fair share of nightmares when I log into client installations…it’s just bewildering to see dozens (yes, dozens) of update notifications on plugins, some of which are not even activated!

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Why do some people have an obsession with installing plugin after plugin to make their blog/website this super power of functionality? When in fact they are clearly doing the opposite!

Generally, most plugins will add some sort of custom JavaScript, CSS or HTML. The poorly coded ones will load multiple versions of  jQuery prompting you to wonder in the dark what’s wrong with your site, if you don’t have the technical capacity to figure it out…good luck! God forbid you get a white screen.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t install that totally awesome new plugin that allows you to add 50 social icons to all your Posts, but it might be a wise idea to disable any other plugins you might already have that do the same thing. You certainly don’t need to have plugins you are not using installed either, just delete them.

One of the keys to having a site that loads fast is by reducing the amount of server requests your site has to make, I feel mine makes too many as well and it’s something I plan on addressing. Google has been repeatedly saying that faster sites will be rewarded with better search engine placements, so take the time to evaluate your plugin library today and see what you can cut off, trim or substitute.

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Check your site speed here.

Are you obsessed with plugins? How many do you use? Let me know in the comments.

But that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that it was automatically tagged for a copyright claim made by some random entity called “Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society“. Looking at their Facebook page, they write this about themselves:

You get the pleasure of posting videos
We get the pleasure of making money from your videos
It’s a win-win situation

We are the Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society. In other words, we are a society that collects rights from the publishing of music onto sites like YouTube.

Our mission is to file copyright claims so that ads will be placed onto certain videos, and we will be able to make money off of them. We do not seek to have anyone’s videos blocked in certain countries or disabled altogether, all we are trying to do is make a bit of money. That’s not so bad, is it?

A wide variety of people post videos containing content that belongs to our organization. We didn’t make the music ourselves, but nonetheless we can still make money from it.

Really?

So this is some random organization which somehow claims to collect “rights” from music being published on YouTube…yet they claim they didn’t make the music themselves but “nonetheless we can still make money from it”.

Wow.

I need to start my own “Society”, that’s not so bad, is it?

If I’m not mistaken aren’t the artists/publishers the main beneficiaries of their music, rather than some random group of people who claim nothing but do claim the overbearing right to your videos and slapping ads on them as soon as a tune is heard in the background? And, how did they exactly get the process automated in their favor by YouTube!

This is why copyright laws are broken, and more laws are not the answer.

My video below was quickly tagged with ads from AdSense, even though I don’t have an AdSense account, and I got the notice that my video was being claimed by the “Music Publishing Rights Collecting Society”. If your videos get automatically tagged with a copyright claim by this bogus society, who don’t think it’s “so bad” to make money off of your video, you can very easily contest it using the premise that it is being used within the fair usage clause.

Just follow the directions on the YouTube site to claim your video back. Here’s the response I got:

Bogus Copyright Claim

If your video has been previously claimed by this “Society” you can still contest it and re-claim the rights to your video. Don’t let these thugs stop or scare you, and for goodness sake let’s stop them from making money from our videos!

World Record for Sky Lanterns, Hyderabad March 25th, 2012

…Video will be back shortly…it was brought under a new copyright claim by another entity called “Whacked Out Media” who are based in Hyderabad, they supposedly provide management services of some sort. From what I saw at the event, I personally would not hire them.

I’ll be hosting the video somewhere else.

BLOGit!

Even though WordPress has evolved to be used for various types of setups, it’s still at its heart one of the best blogging platforms out there. So we thought it would be nice to introduce a simple, yet versatile, blogging theme.

View the Demo

Homepage

The home page NivoSlider works by pulling the featured images from each Post within the “featured” category. The five latest posts will be shown from this category on your home page.

Other features include:

• Show the footer or not and use 1, 2 or 3 widget areas.
• Social media ready, just drop in your links.
• 50 amazing Google fonts to choose from!
• Customize static and hover link colors.
• Upload your own logo.
• Use WordPress or Facebook comments.
• Left or Right sidebar options.
• prettyPhoto powered image popups.
• …and much more!

Join ThemeSpace

BLOGit! is available from ThemeSpace, our WordPress and HTML themes club. For the current price of $35, you get a membership for a year which gives you access to all of our present and future themes! Free updates included!

Click here to learn more about ThemeSpace.

Digi Magazine will be released as part of ThemeSpace in March, 2012.

How cool is that! Go ahead give it a try in your Gmail inbox.

When we released the PSD a few weeks ago we knew we had to take the extra time to make this theme special. In addition to having a clean and great design, the theme supports Post Formats (Video, Image and Gallery) and has just the right amount of theme options to get you up and running in no time.

Homepage

The homepage slider works by pulling the featured images from each Post within the “featured” category. The amount of images shown on the homepage is related with how many you set in your “Settings > Reading” panel.

View the demo.

That’s not all, you can even feature another category right below the Slider and show as many, or as less, Posts from that category as you like. With a special “Home Sidebar” widget area you finally customize it with any widgets/content you want to show on your homepage.

Other features include:

• Show the footer or not and use 1, 2 or 3 widget areas.
• Social media ready, just drop in your links.
• 50 amazing Google fonts to choose from!
• Customize static and hover link colors.
• Upload your own logo.
• Use WordPress or Facebook comments.
• Left or Right sidebar options.
• …and much more!

Join ThemeSpace

Lens is available from ThemeSpace, our WordPress and HTML themes club. For the current price you get a membership for a year which gives you access to all of our present and future themes! Free updates included!

Click here to learn more about ThemeSpace.

In some ways, we at Weborithm, have been using this setup to create all of our products so far.

Read it here.

What is ShowDown?

The plugin allows you to host “Battles” or “Hot or Not” contests on your WordPress powered blog or website. Installation is as simple as uploading it via the plugins upload function in your admin panel. Once activated, you can enter any number of “Competitors” via the dedicated custom post type, which is just like writing a normal Post/Page.

Each Competitor gets their own dashboard which shows their Win/Loss/Drawn record. Once you have added enough contestants simply embed the shortcode (via the handy generator) in any Post or Page. Your visitors can now vote for their favorite image or content piece.

The plugin comes with two modes, Battle and Hot or Not. The Battle mode allows you to compete images between each other. Here’s an example of how it looks:

Battle Mode

The Hot or Not script allows your visitor to vote on an image, or content piece, on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a great way to engage your site visitors and hold contests. Here’s an example of how this mode looks.

Hot or Not Mode

The plugin also has the ability to link out images to any URL you like. So you could in effect use this to promote products and services with your affiliate link and make money as well! It’s a really amazing feature and you really need to try it to get an idea of what it can do for you.

Get ShowDown

View Plans and Pricing

]]> http://www.weborithm.com/showdown-wordpress-plugin/feed/ 1 http://www.weborithm.com/lens-for-photography-free-psd/ http://www.weborithm.com/lens-for-photography-free-psd/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:18:01 +0000 Hyder http://www.weborithm.com/?p=377 Update: You can now download the WordPress theme via Weborithm Products.

Lens exhibits a simple photography centric design. The main aim of this design are your photographs and nothing else, as is evident from the menu and text content being below the fold. The info box would be a popup when the “i” button would be clicked, showing further options to read more if the user so desires.

Usage

1. Free to use for personal projects only. Sorry, commercial projects (as in for clients) are not allowed for this one.

2. Please link to this page if you would like to blog about this download. Do not link directly to the file download.

Preview

Click for large preview

Download

Downloaded Here → Lens PSD
Size: 581.53 kB
Downloaded: 106 times

Get the WordPress Theme

Join our theme club ThemeSpace and get the Lens WordPress theme, among many others! Click here to find out more.

But how many options are actually necessary and what’s the tipping point? If you are a serious developer, your main aim would be to make your options page as intuitive and unobtrusive as possible. Using the right options can be the difference between a good theme and a great theme!

Ten Options Every WordPress Theme Should Have

10. Logo Upload – This is probably the first theme option you should include. Plain text headers are boring and users really should not have to edit a PHP file, or read documentation, to add their logo.

9. Link colors – Changing link colors is about as quick as it gets to providing a unique look to a template. Make sure you have an option for the static and hover state, at the very least. If you want to extend it further you can even add options to add borders and backgrounds. Be careful though, as these variations can grow really quickly. So K.I.S.S.

8. Background editing – While technically not a theme option, in the exact sense of the term, it is still an option/function that is added via the functions.php file. So yes, do include the add_custom_background(); function so that your users can easily add/change a background image and/or color. There’s no reason to design your own functionality for this as WordPress has it by default, so use it!

7. Layouts – Having a right, left or centered layout are probably the bare minimal choices you can provide to choose from. If you have a custom “home” Page Template you might want to offer On/Off switches for how content is displayed on that template as well.

6. Footer Widgets – are cool. Just like bow ties. You really should have footer widgets in your theme. Oh! and give your user the option to have either 1, 2, 3 or more. Of course, that depends on your design. But yeah, footer widgets are cool!

5. Thumbnails – The most immediate way a template can be adjusted from looking like everyone else’s blog/site is by adjusting the position/height/width of the thumbnail. Naturally choosing to show it would be the first iteration, but adding an option to use a wide, narrow or thumbnail size would be a welcome option to have.

4. Post Meta Tags – Sometimes users want to just show the date, or the category and the date, or just the tags on Tuesday. By the the time Friday comes around they decided that they’ll test the category display by itself for a week. I like to provide this option, that’s why I include it in my themes. Usually, its a choice of showing/not showing the date, tags, categories, comments and possibly author.

3. Font Selection – 2011 was the year that fonts really took off on the web. Thanks in part to amazing services like Typekit, Font Squirrel and Google Web Fonts. My themes generally contain the most compatible fonts, from the design point of view, available via Google Web Fonts. You may choose to add all of them as an option if you like. Generally, I feel a narrow choice provides your user with a clearer picture of what they would be happy with rather than getting frustrated with using your theme.

2. Credit Removal – Now that you’ve created your theme and signed it at the bottom please add an option for users to remove your credit link with a simple yes or no. It’s the polite thing to do. Forcing a user to edit a PHP file for this is just wrong (also, make sure and nofollow it if you do include it).

1. Documentation – What, you expected a magical theme option you’ve never heard of before? If your users have to come to you for help because they can’t figure out how to use your options page, you’re doing it wrong.

Do you have any specific option you provide, or would like to see? Please leave a comment below.