Based upon the emails we get each month from readers who are trying to find our Twitter feed, I feel this post is probably long overdue, but I wanted to point out to our readership that we do in fact have a Twitter page!   If you’d like to follow WPHacks.com on Twitter, you can get our updates here (@HackWordPress). 

Our Twitter feed includes notification each time we publish a post here on WPHacks.com, but as an added bonus, you will also get some retweets of our favorite WordPress-related content published by others. 

Note:  If you’d like to follow my personal tweets also, you can do so here.  (@KyleEslick)

By the time you’re reading this, it is quite possible that the BuddyPress revolution will have happened, but if you’re reading this soon after this was posted, I can safely say that the BuddyPress revolution hasn’t happened yet. It’s under way, but is hasn’t happened.

What on earth are you going on about?! I’ll go back a step. You’ve probably got some idea what BuddyPress is and will have heard about it, but chances are you don’t really know what it is exactly. Well, in a nutshell, BuddyPress turns your WPMU (the version of WordPress that allows you to have multiple blogs, i.e. the software WordPress.com uses)  installation and turns it into a fully functional social network! In other words (from BuddyPress.org):

BuddyPress will add a social networking layer to a new or existing installation of WordPress MU. BuddyPress is a suite of WordPress plugins and themes, each adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.

But WordPress MU isn’t as popular as WordPress.org… No. It’s not, which is probably one of the reasons that a version of BuddyPress for the standard install of WordPress is in the works. There’s no official release date yet, but word on the.. er… web. is that it’ll be available in a couple of months. Taking a step back here, how awesome would that be! For those of you who have multiple writers or even just readers signing up on your blog, you can now message them with exciting stuff happening on your site and all of the other exciting stuff that comes with BuddyPress (although features will probably differ slightly between WP and WPMU).

But I want to try it out now! You do?! That’s lucky, as I’ve just written a series of posts about BuddyPress on my blog, Nometech.com! The series, in three parts takes you through the installation of WordPress MU in part one, then the installation of BuddyPress in part two and finally customizing and ‘getting to grips’ with BuddyPress in part three.

I’ve got something to say about this. Leave a comment below then. And you heard it here first. The BuddyPress revolution is coming!

This post was submitted by Alex Denning, a Twitter fan and WordPress blogger on Nometech.com.

In his “State of the Word” addresses at recent WordCamps, it is my understanding that Matt Mullenweg (the co-founder of WordPress) has often made mention of the growth of WordPress and the growing number of professionals and businesses which are earning a full time income using WordPress.    As someone who makes a majority of his income online, this is something that I’ve spent some time working towards as well.

I’m sure upon hearing about these numbers, many people’s initial reactions may be that Matt is referring to the many premium theme authors who earn their livings creating professional themes which are in turn sold to the WordPress community, but what people may not know is that there is also a huge market for WordPress freelance work that designers and developers are making a large income from.   These freelance jobs can range from building a custom plugin for someone, custom coding work, or even completely custom theme designs!

I know we have a lot of readers who are very talented developers and designers.  If you are looking for freelance work as a WordPress designer or developer, here are a couple of great places to find potential clients:

1. WordPress Jobs – This is the official job board and includes a feed so you can easily keep updated on what jobs are needed.
2. eLance – eLance is a website which is used by all types of freelance designers and coders, but includes a very busy WordPress section where people can post their needs and freelancers can bid on them.  You can also review rankings, earnings, and other information about the freelancers.

These sites were designed specifically with the intention of helping freelancers find clients, and I’m sure there are many others available as well.  To our readers that do commissioned freelance work professionally, what have you found are the best ways to find work?

The premium Wordpress themes market has continued to grow and evolve over the past two years, so much so that we’ve started seeing a few complaints that all of the premium themes seem to generally look the same.  It seems a few designers are setting the trends while the rest of the designers just follow and release similar themes, causing many of them to just look like variations of the others.

One of the theme designers that recently caught my eye is a team of WordPress theme developers who launched a new website called WordPress Now.  Since the website has launched, they’ve already got three themes released, and the have two more which are in their final development stages.

Here are the three designs that WordPress Now currently has for sale:

Bloom Theme

Triumph Theme

Elements Theme

To see the true flexibility of these themes, you can view the live demos of each theme here.

As an added bonus, I spoke to the developers at WP Now and was able to land a couple sneak previews of upcoming premium themes that haven’t been released yet.

Vintmint Blog Theme (Not Yet Released)

Simplista Lifestream Theme (Not Yet Released)

So, what all is included with the purchase of a WordPress Now theme?  Your purchase includes a number of features (features differ with each individual theme), a large FAQ for answering questions, tutorials for getting started, and of course theme support!

WordPress Now also offers some impressive price options, offering their themes for as low as $49.00 to start, as well as offering a few WordPress developer options for designers.   Their two unreleased themes (shown above) will be available at even lower prices ($29.00 and $39.00 respectively).

If you’d like to learn more about Wordpress Now, you can read more about the features and support information here.

With the recent release of WordPress 2.8 this past week, there has been a number of complications and/or frustrations from the WordPress community, leading to a lot of discussion about how long you should wait to upgrade WordPress when a new branch is released.  Historically the WordPress team has always done a great job of testing their releases, which I think lead to a strong confidence from the WordPress community when it was time to upgrade.   Combine that with the one-click upgrade option that is now built into WordPress and the annoying tag reminding you to upgrade, and you’ve got a huge number of people who upgraded to WordPress 2.8 immediately upon its release.

Unfortunately, with each new WordPress branch comes changes which sometimes break WordPress plugins, create problems with the WordPress theme you are using, and usually includes changes to the code.   If you upgrade before the themes or plugins you rely on have been updated, this can cause problems.   The iThemes team recently touched on this subject with their post, When Should I Upgrade WordPress?  Their post also includes five helpful things that need done BEFORE you do your one-click upgrade:

1. Make a backup of all your site data
2. Upgrade of all your plugins
3. Visit plugin and theme author websites
4. Disable all plugins
5. Ask yourself if you need to upgrade now

I also recommend waiting a week or so to view feedback before upgrading.

I know several of you haven’t upgraded WordPress to 2.8 yet.   How long do you plan on waiting until you upgrade your WordPress installation?  Please include which version of WordPress you are currently using with your comment!