Managing a blog with a single author can be time-consuming enough, but adding in multiple authors can exponentially increase the amount of time and effort it takes to manage.

There’s editorial workflow, scheduling, and author management to consider, among other things.

Below are fifteen plugins that can make managing your multi-author blog a lot easier.

They include editorial workflow plugins, scheduling and calendar plugins, and plugins that will benefit your authors or make it easier to communicate with them. Read more

Whether you just want to create a slightly customized theme or something completely unique, creating a WordPress child theme can greatly speed up the development process.

Child themes let you start with the basics of an existing theme, so you’re not having to reinvent the wheel. You can pick a theme that has the functionality and basic layout you need, but then customize everything about it as you would designing a theme from scratch.

For this tutorial, we’ll be creating a child theme based on the newest WordPress default theme, Twenty Eleven. We’ll also be using some handy plugins and other tricks to make it even easier to create a child theme.

You’ll need some very basic HTML and CSS knowledge, but the good news is that for a basic child theme, you don’t need to know any PHP! The theme created is very basic, but it will give you the building blocks you need to get started creating your own themes, even if you’ve never created a WordPress theme before! Read more

Social sharing options are pretty much a must for any blog.

You want to make it easy for your visitors to share what you’ve written with their social networks so that others can discover your content.

And the best way to do that is to include a button or two that puts the idea of sharing front and center, and makes it incredibly simple for your users to post your link to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or elsewhere.

Below are ten great social sharing plugins for your WordPress blog. Most are free and all have sharing options for multiple platforms. Some even include upwards of a hundred or more services you can implement. Read more

Have you ever visited a blog and noticed immediately how the typography added sophistication and really made the content stand out? Perhaps it was an elegant typeface that fit the theme of the blog, or white space that was used proficiently throughout the layout. Whatever it was, it caught your eye, and you probably wondered how they did it.

These kinds of readability enhancements are done either via manual CSS styling or with plug-ins. If you’re not familiar with CSS coding, then plug-ins are definitely the way to go, and this article highlights the top 10 typography-related WordPress plug-ins for enhancing the readability of your blog.

Plug-ins like these are important because they help you better handle hyphens, spacing, character formatting, text enhancements, quotes and much more. By using just a plug-in or two, you can breath life into an otherwise dull layout and keep readers longer.

So, let’s look at how to make your blog come to life with enhancement plug-ins. Read more

A few things can be learned from this latest roundup of new WordPress themes, all released within the past five months or so.

First of all, there’s a definite trend toward more premium themes, with fewer high-quality free themes available.

Minimalist and simple, clean themes are definitely the favorite of designers at the moment, representing the vast majority of the themes in this roundup.

There’s also been an increase in jQuery integration in themes, though this has been a growing trend for awhile now.

A large percentage of themes in this list have at least some jQuery integration built-in, and some have quite a lot. Read more

Although never fully intended as a CMS, WordPress is indeed one of the most widely used CMS in the world.

When working with some clients, you’ll often encounter difficulties training your clients on how to use it properly in order to update the content of their websites.

This is were the WordPress User Manual Plugin comes in really handy. This plugin is a very solid and professional effort by the folks at VideoUserManuals.

They created a very comprehensive video and online manual packaged as a WordPress plugin that you, as a developer, can give to your clients.

The plugin contains over 30 video tutorials and over 100 pages of instructions, always updated and covering from version 2.8 through 3.01 (and updated with every new stable version).

One week from today, we’ll be giving away 3 Lifetime Licenses to the WordPress Manual Plugin (which sells for $24 per month) to three lucky WDD readers. Read more

In the past few years, the popularity of WordPress has skyrocketed, which has led to a growing demand for themes. With this growing demand, we’ve seen new premium or commercial WordPress theme shops popping up everywhere.

Some may say that the premium WordPress space is getting a bit saturated, and they’re probably right. However, more premium theme providers does mean a wider selection for those seeking more than what a free theme can offer.

The only problem is being able to find quality and professionalism in the vast sea of premium themes. It seems that the majority of premium theme designs out there are lacking, and appear a bit amateurish.

So for this post, we’re showcasing 10 great places where you can purchase professionally designed WordPress themes.

All of these shops are run by either designers or people that understand design – and as you can see, it shows in the quality of each theme. Read more

WordPress 3.0 is, without doubt, one of the most exciting updates to the platform in a very long time.

As well as things that all users will notice such as custom menus, custom backgrounds and a new default theme, there are also massive additions to the code-base such as the ability to run multiple sites from a single install and custom post types.

These things bring WordPress up to speed as an extremely powerful CMS as well as a publishing platform.

Since January of this year I’ve been getting involved with the core WordPress community to contribute back to its ongoing development and today I’d love to tell you a little bit about how that works. Read more

Today, the cool guys over at Obox Design introduced their new line of professional WordPress themes called “The Obox Signature Series”.

Thanks to David and Marc, we will be giving away a total of 10 copies of the “Arcade” and “Left Handed” themes (single user license).

All themes are packaged with OCMX-Live, a powerful add-on to the WordPress backend which allows you to control and customize many of the elements of your theme.

To participate in this great competition, simply follow @oboxthemes and leave a comment below with your Twitter username and anything else you’d like to say about these awesome themes.

[UPDATE] – Congratulations, the winners are: #61, #129, #123, #43, #134, #120, #3, #110, #104, #62. You will be contacted by email to receive your prizes. Thanks to all of you who participated in this giveaway. Read more

Liveblogging may very well be the future of traditional news media and blogging. Now you can stream information live on the internet and Twitter while an event is happening using nothing more than your laptop and free LiveBlogging software.

People have been doing it on a widespread basis for the past year, thanks to a plethora of free LiveBlogging tools that have sprung up almost overnight.

Whether you are a business striving to build a name and reputation in your industry or you are a web designer or web dev pro building a reputation, you need to be aware of Liveblogging and the tools used to conduct it.

We have moved from the “I’m blogging this” world to the “I’m Liveblogging this” world very quickly. People are no longer satisfied with hearing news after it has happened – they want access to news while it is happening. Read more

Ready to start your own blog or online portfolio? Interested in downloading and incorporating WordPress into it? Or maybe you need to spruce up your current site?  Well here are 10 essential WordPress plugins to get your blog started today.

Maintaining a blog requires some work, but with WordPress plugin capabilities it has become a lot more convenient and less time consuming.

Literally take these plugins and dump them into your /wp-content/plugins/ directory, turn them on in your Dashboard and Voila! A fully functional blog with all your vital needs. Read more