BlogmyQuery – BMQ

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over four years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

We continue to nourish you with a monthly spoon of inspiration. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for April 2012. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

• All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

Noisy Neighbors

Designed by Katerina Bobkova from Ukraine.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Bird Songs

"”Spring would not be spring without bird songs.” – Francis M. Chapman." Designed by Raymond Lopez from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Bear On The Moon

Designed by Oxana Kostromina from Germany/Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1536×2048, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1536×2048, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Retro Light Wall

Designed by Marian Cepa from Slovakia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Happy In April

"Here’s to a cheery-even-when-it’s-raining kind of April!" Designed by Candace Jones from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

The Heart Sees What Is Invisible To The Eye

"What your sees and what your heart feels may not be same.The heart sees things more clearly than the eye. Best Example is feeling of love which can be feel and can never be seen. In Love, you will see what your heart wants you to see, to feel, to make you happy which an eye can’t see." Designed by Harshi Shah from India.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Who’s The Fool

Designed by Julia Factor from Israel.

• preview
• with calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Tidy Desktop

"Spring time, cleaning time! Here’s a simple and clean calendar to help you keep your desktop nice and tidy." Designed by Axura from Italy.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Scrap April

"April is a month of love,dates and flowers." Designed by Irur from Ukraine.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Circus

"There are 48 more clowns in this picture. Find them all." Designed by Cheloveche.ru from Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Vintage Times

Designed by Pietje Precies from The Netherlands.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

The Big Burn

"Indoor Tanning is more risky than you think! It’s true! Before you go back to the tanning bed, get the real facts from real sources. Find out why youth are more at risk and discover the burning truth about indoor tanning." Designed by Zgm from Canada.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Jean-cloud Van Damme

"Hope that this little cloud will make you laugh. Happy Fools’ Day everybody)." Designed by Marika Smirnova From “oblako Studio” from Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Busy April

"This wallpaper based on idea of Estonian folk tale. We want to believe we are very busy nation and that is our goal to be the best in everything :-)Springmonth is a good start to change life more active and busy. Of course there are little detail focused on Easter Holiday, too." Designed by Anne Pikkov from Estonia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Graceful Descent

"Ahh, the warm, fat raindrops of Spring, gently floating to Earth. Don’t they look happy?" Designed by Matt Mink from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Cherry Blossom

"The photo was taken in Toronto High Park in 2011." Designed by Tetyana Kovyrina from Canada.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Always In Spring

"Color and optimism for everyone this spring." Designed by Destaca Imagen from Spain.

• preview
• with calendar: 640×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×960, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 640×480, 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×960, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Spring Up !

"Energy-efficient wallpaper." Designed by Anna Pochodaj from Poland.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1440

Dyed Easter Eggs

"Colored Easter Eggs were a really special part of my family’s Easter traditions. The eggs symbolize new life offered by Jesus’ death and resurrection on Easter." Designed by Evan Chiu from Cincinnati, OH, USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Bulbs

"April light is coming…" Designed by Dennis Nielsen from DK.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×720, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×720, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 2560×1440

Sky Buster

"Get ready to lift you mood and get some new energy!" Designed by Pixeltoxhtml Team from India.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 2560×1440

Funny Bunny

"Our funny bunny takes a look at the giant carrot in shape of an easter egg." Designed by Adconcept Werbeagentur Gmbh from Germany.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×720, 1280×800, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1280×720, 1280×800, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

Fools Month

"Really liked this quote from Mark Twain, so wanted to design something around fools day on the first of the month." Designed by Martin Lucas from UK.

• preview
• with calendar: 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200
• without calendar: 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1600×1050, 1680×1200

Spring Invasion

"Spring is here and you can’t hide! Just beware of viruses ‘cause you don’t want to stay inside on such a beautiful day." Designed by Nose Invaders from Sweden.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Life Is Beautiful

Designed by Christine Bradway from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050

Skate Boarding Into April

"Brownie Bunny wishes all a blast into the 2nd quarter of the year! Stay cool, cute and green! =)." Designed by Lew Su-ann from Brunei Darussalam.

• preview
• with calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440
• without calendar: 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440

Along Came A Spider

Designed by Octavo Designs from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1600×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1600×1200, 1600×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200

There’s No You In I

"There’s No You In I wallpaper typography, helvetica, minimal." Designed by Dan Ciobanu from UK.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 1920×1440

Join In Next Month!

Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

A big thank you to all designers for their participation. Join in next month!

What’s Your Favourite?

What’s your favorite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comment section below.

Stay creative and keep on smashing!

(il) (vf)

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

If you’re looking for some great ways to improve your WordPress workflow, read on for a massive collection of free themes, plugins, tools and tutorials. These resources were all linked via the Smashing Magazine Twitter stream, Facebook stream, and other social-media streams around the Web.

These awesome resources have now been organized and consolidated for easy reference to help you get the most out of the world’s #1 publishing platform. Enjoy!

Free WordPress Themes

There are probably a billion WordPress themes available these days. But not all of them are worth using or even looking at. Fortunately our readers send in some amazing and beautifully designed themes for us to check out and share. So without further ado, here are some of the best WordPress themes we’ve discovered along the way, neatly summarized and linked for your surfing pleasure.

Grid Portfolio Theme
Beautiful minimal and modern WordPress themes. Design for illustrators, photographers and graphic designers.
The focus should be on your work, not the theme.

Foghorn Theme
Foghorn is a minimalist WordPress theme built off of the foundation of Twenty Eleven. It has a custom options panel for switching layouts, removing sidebars, uploading a logo, and changing footer text.

BonPress: WPZOOM
BonPress is the perfect personal blog theme. Packed with a post formats feature (for audio and video) and multiple custom widgets, like Twitter, Flickr, it will offer you a unique experience from blogging.

Roots WordPress Theme
Roots is a starting WordPress theme made for developers that is based on HTML5 Boilerplate, Starkers, and the most popular CSS frameworks.

NeueGrafik: A Free Modern WordPress Theme
This theme is totally unique and simple, it’s great for any graphic designer, illustrator or photographer to showcase their portfolio.

Free Minimal Swiss Design WordPress Themes (4 Themes)
In this post the authors release yet another freebie: an original set of four exclusive minimal, clean WordPress themes designed by Marios Lublinski and released for the Web design community.

Free HTML 4.01/HTML5 WordPress Theme: Spectacular
A free WordPress theme that aims to provide a warm and pleasurable atmosphere for personal musings and ramblings.

Scherzo: Free WordPress Theme
A clean, readable theme. Boasts a responsive design, which means it displays perfectly on all devices, including mobile phones (not just iPhones), tablets and desktops.

Unspoken WordPress Theme
Advanced WordPress Premium theme that was developed from your proceeding wishes. Unspoken is our first, clean, simple and easy to customize premium WordPress theme specifically designed for your news or magazine website.

Free WordPress 3.1 Theme: Splendio (With PSD Sources)
A new freebie: a beautiful theme, designed by Vlad and Elena Scanteie which was developed exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Suburbia 1.1 WordPress Theme
Suburbia is a free premium WordPress theme for magazines. The layout is very clean and flexible and designed in a modest and minimalistic style.

Portfolium 1.1 WordPress Theme
Portfolium can be used on portfolio websites or blogs and has a minimalistic design that is perfect as is or as a foundation for your custom design.

Typominima: A gorgeous typography-based minimal WordPress theme
Neat and flexible grid-based theme for WordPress CMS and Portfolium that can be used on portfolio websites or blogs. If you are designer, artist, photographer, or other creative specialist, you can take a full advantage of Portfolium’s fresh minimalistic design — perfect as is, or as a foundation for your custom design.

Modernist: Free WordPress theme with focus on typography
Yet another freebie: a beautiful Modernist WordPress theme, designed by Rodrigo Galindez, and released for Smashing Magazine and its readers. This theme is based on the design ideas of Jan Tschichold, Josef Müller-Brockmann, Dieter Rams, and other modernists.

Free HTML 5 Responsive WordPress Theme for Photographers
Photum is a theme to use with WordPress that will turn your site into a clean portfolio that you can use to show off your photos.

Renova WordPress Theme
Renova, a new single column theme for WordPress. The main design of Renova concentrates on a minimal style dedicated to those writers who need a simple layout, without the useless stuff. Just words… your words.

Free E-Commerce WordPress Theme: Balita: Smashing Magazine
In this post the authors release yet another freebie: the Balita WordPress theme, a theme dedicated to shops that sell products for children.

Ari WordPress Theme
A free WordPress theme for WordPress 3.0+ and translation-ready.

WordPress Anniversary Theme
On January 25, 2003, a seemingly one-off comment by “Mike” on Matt Mullenweg’s blog started a chain reaction that resulted in the creation of WordPress. Today, WordPress powers millions of blogs and websites, making it incredibly easy to build a website!

Free WordPress 3.0 Theme for Portfolios and Magazines: JournalCrunch
In this post the authors release yet another freebie: JournalCrunch WordPress 3.0+ theme, a theme for either portfolios or magazines with an integrated journal.

Academica: Free WordPress 3.0 Theme For Educational Websites — Smashing Magazine
A free WordPress theme designed specifically for educational websites such as universities, schools, etc.

Free Theme: Quality Control, a Simple Ticket or Bug Tracker
This theme allows for the easy creation of a ticket / support system right within WordPress, and for free.

Free Designer Theme
Beautiful minimal and modern WordPress themes. Designs for illustrators, photographers and graphic designers. The focus should be on your work, not the theme.

HTML5Press
HTML5Press lives here. HTML5Press is a WordPress theme based on the HTML5 template by Jesper.

Landing pages, squeeze pages, sales pages, and A/B testing made easy for WordPress
The authors deliver high-quality premium WordPress themes and plugins that make it easy to take your website to the next level.

Bubblog Theme
A modern, clean WordPress theme. It has a management console, is widget ready, advertisement ready, and is an easily customizable theme to use.

WordPress Plugins

Besides themes, plugins are another way to customize your WordPress website with advanced functionality and interactivity. As with themes, there are plugins for just about everything you can possibly imagine. But also like themes, it can be difficult to sift through the fluff, and find those gems that truly improve your website.

When you do find a WordPress plugin that’s great, you just have to share it with others in the community. So put on your plugin-checking goggles, because it’s about to get interesting!

Event Organizer
Event Organiser adds event management that integrates well with your WordPress site. By using WordPress’ in-built ‘custom post type’, this plug-in allows you to create events that have the same functionality as posts, while adding further features that allow you to manage your events.

Ninja Forms: A New Free Plugin for Creating Forms in WordPress
Every website needs forms – it’s an integral part of visitor/customer communication. However, custom forms can be a downright pain to code.

Bookings: Zingiri
Bookings is a WordPress plugin allowing you to provide online booking services for your website.

How To Safely Store A Password
bcrypt uses a variant of the Blowfish encryption algorithm’s keying schedule, and introduces a work factor, which allows you to determine how expensive the hash function will be. Because of this, bcrypt can keep up with Moore’s law. As computers get faster, you can increase the work factor and the hash will get slower.

WordPress › Welcome Pack « WordPress Plugins
Welcome Pack is a BuddyPress plugin that enhances the new user’s experience

WordPress › Pricing Table « WordPress Plugins
WordPress Pricing Table plugin will help the admin to publish a pricing table on your WordPress page, or even to post content to it. WordPress Pricing Table plugin has a full-featured (but easy to use) administration option to create a pricing table.

WordPress › Anti-Splog « WordPress Plugins
The ultimate plugin and service to stop and kill splogs in WordPress Multisite and BuddyPress, from WPMU DEV.

WordPress › Email Address Encoder « WordPress Plugins
A lightweight plugin to protect email addresses from email-harvesting robots by encoding them into decimal and hexadecimal entities.

The Sweet Plugin: User Switching
Today’s Sweet Plugin is User Switching, which has quickly become one of my all-time favorite plugins. It allows admins to easily switch to another user, skipping the log-in / log-out process, which can become quite time-consuming for testing the websites of different users. This is one plugin that is seriously worth checking out.

welaika/wordless – GitHub
Wordless is an opinionated WordPress plugin that dramatically speeds up and enhances your custom themes creation.

Pin, organize and show your favorite places through OpenStreetMap/WMTS, Google Maps/Earth (KML), GeoJSON or Augmented-Reality browsers » Leaflet Maps Marker WordPress Plugin
The WordPress plugin “Leaflet Maps Marker� allows you to pin, organize and show your favorite places through OpenStreetMap on your blog and via different APIs on external websites or apps

Front End Upload, a New WordPress Plugin — Monday By Noon
Announcing Front End Upload, a New WordPress Plugin

Simple:Press
Welcome to Simple:Press — the feature-rich, completely integrated and fully scalable forum plugin for WordPress.

Types WordPress Plugin: Easy Custom Post Types

WordPress › Wordgento « WordPress Plugins

yolink — widgets / yolink Search for WordPress
Optimize your website search, maximize engagement, and position your website to drive organic search rankings with the most powerful search solution for WordPress.

More Fields « More Plugins
More Fields is a WordPress plugin that adds boxes to the Write / Edit page. These boxes contains input fields, so that additional (more) fields can be added to a post. For example, if you write about books, you can add a box where you can enter the title and the author, etc. The boxes can be placed either to the right or to the left of the Write / Edit page.

Usernoise Modal Feedback: A Free WordPress Contact Form That Just Works
WordPress websites are always in need of a good contact form. Are you looking for a feedback / contact form that works right out of the box? Should it have an attractive aesthetic, with a simple yet full-featured form? Look no further than the free Usernoise Modal Feedback Contact Form plugin.

WordPress SEO by Yoast, version 1.0 — Yoast
The SEO plugin by Yoast helps all our editors add SEO juice to their post fast and easy. Editors should focus on writing content, not gaming results. But they are the ones most suitable to write descriptions and titles for their own stories. This plug-in allows them to do just that without needing an SEO expert to walk them through the process. An invaluable tool for any professional blog.

Michael Fields » Post Format Queries

WP Document Revisions — Document Management for WordPress
WP Document Revisions is a document management and version control plugin for the popular content management system, WordPress. Built for time-sensitive and mission-critical projects, teams can collaboratively edit files in any format — text documents, spreadsheets, images, sheet music… anything, while seamlessly tracking the document’s progress as it moves through your organization’s existing workflow.

WordPress Tools

Beyond themes and plugins, there are tools and resources to further help with improving the presentation, organization, and functionality of your WordPress-powered website. Here is our growing collection of WordPress tools that we’ve collected from around the Web:

Manage WordPress Websites from One Dashboard — ManageWP.com

WordPress Mobile Pack
The WordPress Mobile Pack is a complete toolkit to help mobilize your WordPress website and blog. It includes a mobile switcher to select themes based on the type of user that is visiting the website, a selection of mobile themes, extra widgets, device adaptation, and a mobile administration panel to allow users to edit their website, or write new posts when they are out and about.

zencoder/html5-boilerplate-for-wordpress
This theme is built on the HTML5 Boilerplate by Paul Irish and Divya Manian. The sole purpose of this theme is to save developers the time it takes to apply the HTML5 Boilerplate to WordPress. The “HTML5 Boilerplate” name is used with permission from Paul Irish.

Default WordPress Generated CSS Cheat Sheet for Beginners
The goal of this cheat sheet is to assist beginners who are looking to get into WordPress theme styling.

Reverie: Versatile HTML5 WordPress Framework

HTML Sitemap for WordPress
There are plenty of plugins out there that will help you make an HTML sitemap

Web Design WordPress Function List

WordPress TextMate Bundle
The WordPress TextMate Bundle is a TextMate bundle that is built with the sole purpose of reducing the amount of time spent digging around the WordPress core to look up those little things that we work with every day.

WordPress 3 Template Hierarchy
The idea is that WordPress will look for files in a theme that will be used to render the current page in a specific order.

OnSwipe — Insanely Easy Tablet Publishing
Make your blog look beautiful on tablet Web browsers in under 3 minutes.

WordPress Initialization

Wonderflux — WordPress free, open source theme framework

WordPress Widget Boilerplate
The WordPress Widget Boilerplate features file organization, documented code, and is built with the WordPress API for best practices.

Force Reload of Scripts and Stylesheets in your Plugin or Theme — tutorial plugin theme — WP Engineer
Force Reload of Scripts and Stylesheets in your Plugin or Theme

Instant WordPress
Instant WordPress is a complete standalone, portable WordPress development environment. It turns any Windows machine into a WordPress development server. It can even run from a USB key.

Reverie: Versatile HTML5 WordPress Framework
Reverie Framework is an extremely versatile HTML5 WordPress framework based on ZURB’s Foundation, a powerful tool for building prototypes on any kind of device. Reverie follows HTML5 Boilerplate standards, and is hNews microformat ready. It is optimized for search engines, while at the same time improves readability.

andreascreten/wp-cli — GitHub
A set of tools for controlling WordPress installations from the command line.

WordPress Tutorials

Wrapping up these super-useful themes, plugins, and tutorials, here is a hand-picked collection of some great WordPress tutorials:

Using TextMate for WordPress Code Cleanup
In this post, the author will show you how to add two useful commands to TextMate, then move through the steps taken for theme code cleanup, finally putting the commands into practice.

WordPress Internals: How WordPress Boots Up — Theme.fm
The authors have written their own Twitter (or other service feed plugins / widgets), to those who are simply interested in PHP and software architecture. They invite you to join us on a journey deep into WordPress core code.

Importing WordPress Users via CSV Files
Conceptually, the idea is simple: import the data to create actual users for a WordPress-powered website. The trick is to clean up the data as much as possible to ensure valid username and password information. Once the data is good, importing it is easy, using a plugin.

How to Redirect Logged-In Users
WordPress provides a variety of ways to redirect logged-in users. In this DiW post, we explain each of these methods along with some useful tips and tricks along the way. These techniques enable you to redirect logged-in users to internal pages, external pages, and even return them to the current page.

How to Build a Shortened URL Service with WordPress Custom Post Type
The point of this tutorial is to push the limits of WordPress, and that’s going to take some real thought!

Ajax-Powered Error Logs for WordPress
This tutorial shows you how to set up dynamic error monitoring on any typical website. But the script will require some tweaking to get it to work with WordPress.

Scaling WordPress for High-Traffic
This talk (presented by Envato’s very own developer extraordinaire, Ryan Allen), will detail some of the potential pitfalls and solutions when maintaining massive WordPress blogs, such as “Tuts+”.

How to optimize plugin loading — Practical
This tutorial is primarily for plugin developers, but it can also be useful reading for anyone working with WordPress, to help them better understand how plugins load, and what can be done to improve them.

WordPress Optimization — DreamHost
There are many reasons why you may want to optimize your WordPress blog — primarily, you want your website to load quickly. That of course encompasses a number of other things such as wanting to make sure your website can handle large volumes of traffic without choking, and making sure your website’s processes aren’t being killed due to using too many server resources.

WordPress HTTP API — easily GET or POST in WordPress — Yoast
The WordPress HTTP API makes fetching from (or posting to) remote servers a breeze. It does this by allowing you to be transport agnostic when you either fetch or post something. The HTTP API will choose the fastest and most reliable method out of the five different transports available in PHP. It will take care of discovering what transports are allowed on that server at that time.

WordPress SEO Tips — WPShout.com

Admin Bar Tricks
In this DigWP post, the authors round up a ton of tips, tricks, and plugins for ultimately mastering the WordPress admin bar.

Optimizing WordPress Permalinks with htaccess
The topic of this post is how to use htaccess to optimize WordPress permalinks.

Writing Unit Tests For WordPress Plugins
When my WordPress plugin had only three users, it didn’t matter much when it broke down. By the time I reached 100,000 downloads, every new update made my palms sweat. My first goal for the WordPress Editorial Calendar was to make it do anything useful. I was new to JavaScript as well as PHP, and didn’t really know what I could pull off. In a few days I had a proof of the concept. In a few more days I had a working version, and was asking friends to install it. The calendar worked… sort of. I spent three times as much time fixing bugs as I did with coding. Once the plugin worked, I wrote unit tests to make sure it kept working. The unit tests for my calendar use QUnit, but they really use just three functions: test, expect, and ok. This article shows you how to integrate unit tests into your WordPress plugin, where to write unit tests, and how they can help you.

How to Setup Your Own Nginx Powered WordPress Server
Nginx is a Web server software that allows your server to serve files. Nginx is fairly new to Web server work, relative to other popular Web servers. If you look at the graph below, you can see Apache as the “top dog� (going all the way back to before 1995), while Nginx just started showing up in March, 2007.

Group WordPress Project: A Purpose & A Name
This time, the author is looking to narrow things down a bit, and needs your help to determine the overall purpose of the theme, and to start thinking about a possible name.

Inside WordPress Actions and Filters

How To Create Custom Post Meta Boxes In WordPress
Creating custom meta boxes is extremely simple — at least it is once you’ve created your first one using the tools baked into WordPress’ core code. In this tutorial, the author will walk you through everything you need to know about meta boxes.

How to use Ajax in WordPress
AJAX is the technology that lets you update the contents of a page without actually having to reload that page in the browser.

Limiting The Visibility Of Posts In WordPress Via Usernames — Smashing WordPress

How to Sync A Local And Remote WordPress Blog
If you prefer to work on your WordPress projects locally, but have to get them to sync remotely, then this tutorial is for you.

WordPress Multisite: Practical Functions And Methods — Smashing WordPress
Multisite is a powerful new feature that arrived with the release of WordPress 3.0. It allows website managers to host multiple independent websites with a single installation of WordPress.

The Definitive Check List for Publishing Your WordPress Plugin
This tutorial will guide you through publishing your plugin in the WordPress plugin directory. It works as a check list to help you make sure the plugin will be ready for the prime time by the time you hit publish.

Last Click

More than 40 Keyboard Shortcuts to Use in the WordPress Editor

WordPress functions.php Snippets

WordPress Snippets
Code snippets for WordPress developers

Huge Collection of Code Snippets: HTAccess, PHP, WordPress, jQuery, HTML, CSS
There are all sorts of different types of code and snippets that just keep growing and growing… and finally it gets to a point where I just need to dump everything, and start over again fresh. That’s the purpose of this post.

(jvb) (il)

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over two years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

We continue to nourish you with a monthly spoon of inspiration. This post features 20 free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for January 2012. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

• All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

A New Ending

"Wishing everyone a lucky and successful year 2012!" Designed by Lina Itskovitch from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Red

"Photo taken at a friend’s house with one of her toys and my glass of rose wine. It’s perfect for a cold winter day, warmth for the soul and body." Designed by Diana Samoila from Romania.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Caucasian Mountains

"From Caucasus with love!" Designed by Ilona from Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Bloody January

"Something to cure that New Year’s hangover." Designed by Suety Kwan from USA.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Back To Go To Work

Designed by Forsaken from France.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Royal World

"Our first submission to the Desktop Wallpapers. To start a great new year, we designed a world that represents our goals and aspirations for this new year." Designed by Javier Castillo from Guatemala.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Cold Flakes To Write Home About?

Designed by Marc James Productions from Sault Ste Marie, Canada.

• preview
• with calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1152×860, 1200×800, 1600×1200
• without calendar: 800×532, 1024×768, 1152×860

Winter Melancholy

Designed by Aleksandra Laczek from Poland.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1366×768, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

The Year Of Dragon

"Dragon is the legendary animal in the Chinese zodiac calendar." Designed by Cheloveche.ru from Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200
• without calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1200

Delicate Frost

"Don’t let Jack Frost nip too much at your nose but do let him decorate your windows!" Designed by Tirelessweaver from Canada.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1440×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1440×1050, 1600×1200, 1680×1050, 1680×1200, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 1920×1440, 2560×1440

Resolution Libs

"It’s time for New Year’s resolutions! And the best way to keep them is by writing them down and keeping track of your progress. So this wallpaper is a recreation of the chalkboard in my house." Designed by Illuum Design Team from Canada.

• preview
• with calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1366×768, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Carry Warmth Carry Each Other

Designed by Marika Smirnova From “oblako Studio” from Russia.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

What’s On Your Mind?

"Sometimes it seems that girls are from another planet. I just can’t figure out, whats going on in their heads…" Designed by Kristjan Ait from Estonia.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Facts

"I was reminded of a simple fact while I was browsing for inspiration for this wallpaper. I’ve read on Wikipedia that January is the coldest month on most of the northern hemisphere and the hottest one on most of the southern hemisphere. I found it fascinating that someone in Australia is enjoying a surf while I am watching the first snowflakes of the winter. I was hoping to create a wallpaper that will serve as a reminder of the fact that we live in a fascinating world full of varieties and contrasts. The old-worn-out-encyclopedia style hopefully emphasizes the educational theme of the wallpaper :)." Designed by Danijel Gajan from Serbia.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Memorize Me

"This calendar has 4 sheets. Each sheet shows 4 months.The Sundays of these 4 months are colored in the order of the rainbow colors.If you commit these columns to memory, you won’t need to resort to any pocket calendar or electronic device to know when the next holiday is, to know the date of the first Monday of the next month…." Designed by Araz Kelian from Lebanon.

• preview
• with calendar: 1024×768, 1280×800, 1280×1024, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080, 1920×1200, 2560×1440

Soft Wishes

"Let yourself be carried away by the delicate desires of your heart…" Designed by Katia Piccinni from Italy.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×900
• without calendar: 320×480, 640×480, 800×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1152×864, 1280×720, 1280×800, 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1400×900

Bonsai

Designed by Marta Miazek from Poland.

• preview
• with calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1920×1440
• without calendar: 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×960, 1400×1050, 1600×1200, 1920×1440

Owl

"The first month of phpfaber’s calendar for 2012 with our hero Owl." Designed by Katerina Bobkova from Ukraine.

• preview
• with calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080
• without calendar: 320×480, 1024×768, 1024×1024, 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1920×1080

Join In Next Month!

Please note that we respect and carefully consider the ideas and motivation behind each and every artist’s work. This is why we give all artists the full freedom to explore their creativity and express emotions and experience throughout their works. This is also why the themes of the wallpapers weren’t anyhow influenced by us, but rather designed from scratch by the artists themselves.

A big thank you to all designers for their participation. Join in next month!

What’s Your Favourite?

What’s your favorite theme or wallpaper for this month? Please let us know in the comment section below! And Happy New Year 2012!

(il) (vf)

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

As the end of the year approaches and the holidays near, many of you might already be pondering your new year’s resolution for 2012. Before you get back to serious business in the new year, you should lean back, relax, spend some quality time with loved ones, and give a good book or eBook a closer look. After all, you don’t want to fall behind just as the year begins, do you? This is an occasion to catch up on developments in the fields of Web design, Web development and coding.

The Smashing Bundle Countdown To Christmas

For each of the last seven days, we have been offering a different special bundled deal. We hope many of you have found an appealing offer in there, and we hope we were able to inspire some of you to get your colleagues and office friends a resourceful printed book or an eBook for the new year. In this post we’d like to kindly inform you about the books we’ve prepared for the last three days of our Bundle Countdown to Christmas and we are confident that they will make your visit to the Smashing Shop worthwhile.

The last three Smashing Bundle Deals of the year.

December 22nd – “Mobile Bundle” for just $9.99 instead of $20.93
Today Santa is mobile and so you should be, too. The “Mobile Design” eBook offers everything you need to keep up in the mobile Web game. Insights, techniques, trends and tips on getting your own mobile app set up are only a few clicks away. In addition to that, we threw in a mobile portfolio for your work. Be prepared and start the new year by optimizing your future projects for mobile use.

December 23rd – “Coding Bundle” for $9.99 instead of $17.82
Coding night, jQuery bright… This bundle is a treat for all truly smashing coders. It covers CSS, jQuery and JavaScript at an intermediate level. The eBooks are all authored by experts of the respective field and offer the Smashing quality you are used to. Two of the three eBook have just been published. Be one of the first to enjoy the still dewy read!

December 24th – “Smashing Book Super Bundle (Print + Digital)” for $34.99 instead of $89.96
Finally, the Christmas Eve bundle deal is the grand finale. We are proud to present the Smashing Book Super Bundle with both printed and digital versions of the Smashing Book #1 and Smashing Book #2. Each book comes in a printed and a digital version (EPUB, PDF and MobiPocket formats). If you’ve been avoiding the Smashing Books until now, you won’t be able to pass them up any longer. Read some of the outstanding reviews that the Smashing Books have received, and let the readers themselves convince you.

Let’s Get Merry!

Now you’re all set for these last Smashing special bundled deals of the year. We sincerely hope you find our offers valuable to you and your colleagues, and perhaps you’ll find gifts for people who you never know what to give. Please keep in mind that all Christmas deals are valid only for 24 hours and then will be offered at the normal price.

Thank you for reading, dear friends. We wish our worldwide Smashing community a blissful last couple of weeks of the year. Enjoy the countdown to Christmas Eve and always remember to stay Smashing!

Yours sincerely,
The Smashing Team

(al)

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.

Today we are glad to release a yet another freebie: a Twitter GUI PSD for the recently released Twitter UI update, designed by Jon Darke of Every Interaction and released exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers. The PSD provides the full mockup with all layers in vectors, allowing you to scale up the design elements without loss of quality. The set includes two versions: one for personal accounts and also the new Twitter Enhanced profile page with 835×90 header image for brands and advertisers. The set is compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS4+.

Download the Set for free!

You can use the freebie for all your projects for free and without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word. You may modify the file as you wish.

• large preview – personal profile (.png, 0.3 Mb)
• large preview – enhanced profile (.png 0.3 Mb)
• download the .zip-package (.zip, 2 Mb)
• download mirror (.zip, 2 Mb)
• release post on the designer’s website

Features

• 100% pixel-accurate
• 2 versions: personal and enhanced profile pages
• All assets redrawn in vector, hence scalable
• All layers labeled and grouped
• Adobe Photoshop CS4+ compatible

Behind the Design

“As designers, we often produce various assets for our clients, be it their online presence on their Web pages or in social media. Hence, often we need to skin pages such as the Twitter profile pages for brands that we are working on. When those sites update their UI, we also need to update our resources in order to be able to display an accurate representation of what a client’s Twitter page would look like. So we thought that we could share the PSD file we created with the rest of the design community. Hopefully, it will help you save some time to focus on the creative work!”

Thanks Jon, we sincerely appreciate your time and your intentions!

(vf)

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© Smashing Editorial for Smashing Magazine, 2011.