Starting Points:

Blank Themes - If you’re creating your own WordPress themes, these blank themes are a great starting point. They’ll save you time by giving you the bare-bones structure and still allow you the creative freedom to design whatever you want.

6 Themes that are Perfect for Customizing - I wrote an article about customizing themes that listed 6 themes that are great for customizing. Use any one of these as an excellent starting point for your designs.

Color Tools:

A great deal of your theme’s success will depend on the color choices you make. Here are some helpful tools for deciding on the right colors.

Color Schemer Gallery

COLOURlovers

Website Color Picker

I Like Your Colors

Codex Info:

If you have much experience at all with WordPress, you’ve probably at some point referred to their Codex (a source of information on all things WordPress). Here are some of the Codex articles that are most relevant to theme designers.

Theme Development

FAQ on Layout and Design

The WordPress Loop

Anatomy of a Template Tag

Search Engine Optimization for WordPress

Accessibility

Photoblogs and Galleries

Developer Documentation

Icons:

Almost every blog uses icons in one form or another. Here are 4 high-quality sets of icons that are great for your blogging needs.

RSS Icons - Most blog readers now recognize the common, orange RSS icon. Using the icon is a good way to draw attention to your subscription link.

Mini Icons from Brand Spanking New - A free set of greyscale icons that includes such icons as speech bubbles that can be used on blog themes.

Blog Icon Pack from graphicPUSH - Some icons that are commonly used on blogs.

Web 2.0 Icons from Utombox - A number of icons for popular web 2.0 sites like Technorati, Flickr, FeedBurner and more.

Articles and Tutorials:

Here are some of the best articles available for helping you to learn more about all aspects of WordPress themes.

Customize Your Own WordPress Theme

WordPress and SEO

Optimize WordPress for Search Engines

Blog Design 101: Creating Your Own WordPress Theme

Secrets of WP Theming - Part 1

How to Create a WordPress Template or Theme

Photos:

Pictures and images can make a huge difference for a theme. The resources below will provide free or low-cost images. Be sure to check the restrictions if you are distributing the theme. Many of the photos will be limited to your own use and prevent distribution. If you find a photo that you really like you can always contact the photographer and ask them for permission.

Stock.xchang

iStockphoto

Stockxpert

flickr Creative Commons

Theme Galleries and Places to Distribute:

All of these sites list themes that are available for download. It’s not easy to get a theme listed, but it can really help to get more exposure and downloads.

WordPress Theme Viewer

WPThemesFree.com

Weblog Tools Collection

CSS Galleries:

You’ve worked hard creating a beautiful design. CSS galleries are a great way to get some exposure for your designs.

CSS Vault

CSS Based

CSS Beauty

Support:

You’ll probably experience some difficulties along the way. Most of your questions are already answered in the forums and you can always post new ones.

WordPress Forums

Validators:

If you’re going to distribute your theme you’ll probably want to make sure it validates.

HTML

CSS

RSS/Atom

Browser Testing:

Your visitors will be using many different browsers, which requires testing on your part.

BrowserShots - Get screen shots of your site in a number of different browsers.

BrowserCam - A paid service for testing a site.

I’ve been working hard lately, trying to make my own personal site more usable and I found a few things that were holding me back with my old design that I wasn’t very fond of.  I decided it was time for a change, to grow my site a little and make it easier for people to find the information they needed at a glance instead of digging through content and pages to find it.

I changed my color scheme as well. Gone are the days of insane backgrounds and large format images. I’ve redesigned my site to work properly, load fast and be an information hub for people looking to get their websites designed by me.

I might even distribute my layout on wordpress.org once I get it completely fine tuned.

That being said, I’ve also redesigned my blog to go along with this theme. Tell me what you think in my comments.

I’ve been working on a few different projects lately and have completed a few as well I’m working very hard on a cool project right now that I think is a great way to show my wordpress theme skill to the world;) I’ll keep you posted.

I’m doing a lot of ecommerce work and some random design work as well as message board themes lately. I’m becoming a jack of  all trades and I’m loving every second of it.

Until next time, thank you for checking out my blog and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask

WordPress MU 2.6 beta 1 is now available. WordPress 2.6 is due for release shortly and it’s already on it’s third beta so it’s times for WordPress MU to be updated.

This release has many new features as well as a few security fixes. In his beta 1, beta 2 and beta 3 posts Ryan listed some of the main features, including post revisioning, gears support for faster loading, theme previews, better SSL support and much much more.

WordPress MU specific changes include:

• The version number is being bumped to 2.6 rather than 1.6 because of version confusion. Minor MU versions will probably append a letter to the version.
• Signup page now has a nonce to help defeat spammers.
• Plugins in wp-content/plugins/ are version checked like in WordPress. mu-plugins isn’t covered just yet.
• Major object cache changes.
• And many more bug fixes. Check the timeline for a list of changes.

Download wordpress-mu-2.6-beta1.zip

I was “wild” back in high school.

2nd row from the bottom… on the right… best bowl cut EVER

Till next time!

You can download an MP3 for free from here : http://www.musicglue.com/hotleg

It’s sweet, just do it

Here’s the scoop about who has donated money towards the prize.

I’m not going to get into some crazy politics now, I want this blog to be more centered on website design than anything so I’ll just leave it at that.