What a difference a year makes. A quick search yielded a lot of professional themes for Wordpress. Unlike last years crop, which mostly were personal themes that could work for writers, many newer themes seem to offer a more polished, professional image. More features are built into the themes, and unfortunately, some do require a little bit of programming to get working. As always, I’ve tried to link to either the Wordpress theme viewer or the designer’s site. And I’ve tried to get non-linkjacked, non-sponsored themes. But there are a few here that have links embedded in the footer. Use with caution.

Threat to Creativity- Wow Cool. Colorful, Pop-Art Magazine theme. Unique and artisitic. I can’t wait to see this in use. (ed. Guess what? I’m trying it out now. There’s a few rendering issues at low res…But it’s pretty nice)

Calling Mr Warhol. Mr. Andy Warhol.

Chronicles- A Clean, magazine feel.Love the color scheme and design. very nice for a professional image.

Freelancer for Hire- Wouldn't you be impressed?

Inanis Glass- A Glass look theme from Wordpress theme viewer. Great techy feel with lots of features. Check out the author photo and animated buttons.

Me and My Aero

Gravel- Red Grungy theme. Reminds me of this site’s WP-Premium, but with a little more personality. I haven’t downloaded it yet- Does anyone know if it’s got any features?

A Blurry Mirror

Desk Mess- Another Basic, writer themed theme.You’d think Personal blogs from aspiring writers were all over the internet,  wouldn’t you?

Looks Familiar?

Abynsthe- An Outdoorsy, cabin and wood theme. Like the whole Camp Crystal Lake Vibe, but why Absynthe?

The Smell of Wormwood

Kanata- OOH, Look. Desk Images, Wood and Notebooks! It’s the Writer theme Trifecta!

Wood. More Wood. And Pens.

MT Dark- Yet another Dark Personal Blog Theme. Yawwn.. I’m getting tired of these. Maybe it’s time to shake things up…

Coffee anyone?

Mysterio- No, Not the next Spiderman villain, but a sci-fi, techy theme to satisfy your inner Gibson.

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto?

Screwdriver- What? Too Clean Cut? How about a nice steam punk feel, fresh from Vault 19?

Tighten up your Blog

WasteLand- Still too Clean? Fine….Here’s a Post-apocalyptic Theme for you to Groove to:

Mutants Untie!

Maro-I like the layout of this.I Like the Advertised advanced features.  The colors, I don’t know. I liked them at first, but think they’re just a little off. Give it a shot.

Brown? Maroon? Muddy?

Voodoo Empire 2- The thumbnail doesn’t do this theme justice. This is a neat, red theme that looks simply fantastic.

Who Do? You Do.

Deep Silent- Another red One. This time a soft Romantic / Gothic header and professional type make a pretty interesting theme.

Run Silent, Run Deep

Cellar Heat-From the Popular Smashing Pumpkins comes this theme. Check out the others they have available also-lots of creative designs for artists and writers.

Victorian Basement

VideoGraphEx- Got content? Not the fanciest Theme, But designed for video Bloggers.

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A big problem with  creating a Wordpress site for for writing is trying to differentiate it from the millions of other personal blogs. We see this with Programmers, Designers, Photographers and Artists. Throw up a template, and you look like any other blog. Modify it, change widgets, add your own blogroll, and it still looks and feels the same.  But there are some plug-ins out there designed specifically for the working writer that can give you a professional, polished Writing Site:

Amazon Reloaded- If a writer writes a book, they’ll want to sell it on Amazon. And if they sell on Amazon, they’ll want to be an Associate. And if they’re an Associate, they’ll want an easy way to add amazon products and tags to their posts. And if they do that, they’ll want this plug-in, which puts an Amazon Search engine in you’re editor, allowing them to quickly add links without navigating away from their site.

Creative Commons Configurator- Allows a writer to assign an appropriate License to their posts and feeds. Just Like Cory!

Daily Word Count- from Gnomebox, a great plug in for NaNoWriMo and for helping readers see your progress. They’ll keep coming back to cheer you on, or laugh in the face of your despair! Either way, you Win!

In Series- Let’s you l ink multiple posts together as a series. Keeps your readers reading, and makes it easier to post in-depth articles and essays. Hey, you could even link a book’s chapters together.

RSS-Footer- Speaking of feeds- this plugin adds a custom attribution to your feeds. It’s an easy way to link back to your site if someone scrapes your content.

Submission Tracker- Another plug-in from Gnomebox. Creates an Admin page for entering submissions and response times. A Behind the scenes Plug-in.

Table of Contents Generator- Scans your long post or article for headings and places a table of contents with links wherever you want it.

Writing Projects- From the Guy who made submission tracker and Daily Word Count, Allows you to track projects and put a status bar on your blog.

WP-Wall- Adds a whitespace wall for user’s comments

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Then, reality sets in. Developing content and working on your “Real” writing become chores, not fun.

Even worse, you realize that although you’ve trained yourself to develop plots and realistic characters, to edit yourself and set realistic goals, you know bupkis about SEO, CMS, WEB 2.0 and all the other things you thought you could get away with not knowing. After all, this blogging is supposed to be all about giving the masses a voice, right?

Tough. Like anything else, like writing, blogging has it’s own learning curve. Sure, wordPress is easy and powerful. But I collect Plugins the way I used to collect Lovecraft. Some help, some take up space, and some are useless. So here’s a list of the plugins I use on various websites and Why:

Akismet- The spam Blocker that’s included with Wordpress is still one of the best. You should have already enabled it. if not, shame on you.

Bad Behavior- The other Spam Blocker. Bad Behavior maintains a list of bad sites and blocks these users from ever seeing your precious posts.

All-In-One-SEO- Allows you to ad meta data to your posts to get them noticed by Google.

Democracy Poll- The easiest way to add Interactivity. And that’s a good thing.

Google Sitemaps- Helps Google Index all your pages. ANd if it helps Google, it helps you.

MicroKid’s Related Posts- Lets you search your posts and manually add related posts to posts. Posts. Posts Posts. ( Not Spam)

Popularity Contest- Alex King has written a whole mess of popular, useful plugins, but this is really useful. It allows you to rank pages and posts on a variety of criteria.

RSS-Footer- Ads a footer with a link back to your site to your RSS feed.

Sociable- Adds Social bookmarking buttons to your posts, making it easier for readers to share and recommend your pages. Try it now!

wp-Cache- Reduces Server load and speeds up page rendering by creating static pages of your posts. That’s technobabble for pleases your readers if you get a bunch all at once.

wp-Database Manager- Lets you update and manage your database from the dashboard. Great for Piece of mind.

WWSGD- What Would Seth Godin Do? Ask readers to subscribe a couple of times, then quietly disappear.

Bonus: 4 Firefox Extensions for writers

scribefire- Lets write blog entries and add site reviews from Firefox without having to fire up the old Dashboard.

Logos- Dictionary, quotes and more

FireFtp- Full Features FTP for managing your Wordpress Install, themes and Plugins.

Tree Style Tabs- Puts Browser tabs down the left side of your browser and lets you organize them like bookmarks

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82 year old runs Linux

I was interested. I’ve been running PC LinuxOS for a couple of months and thought I’d update readers on what’s happening.

First, I’m Using Open Office and Celtx pretty exclusively for Word processing. I still use Firefox for the web and Thunderbird for Email: Both of these work pretty much the same as Their Windows Counterparts.

I’ve got a whole slew of Strategy games that I play Pretty Regularly: Wesnoth, Warzone 2100, FreeCiv and have started to get some of my windows games into the system through Wine when I have the time.

I’ve fallen in love with Enlightenment: It really makes a difference on my ancient machine. I got the Synaptic package for PCLinux from Bugnux. I can’t say enough about this and am working on a review. The only bad thing is a lot of the KDE applications I was using like Ktorrent, don’t show up in this manager. If anyone can tell me what I am doing wrong, I’d appreciate it.

Also, I’ve started Work on a Linux Distro for Writers for my own amusement. If anyone has anything they’d like to see included (Or left out), let me know.

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