From time to time, I run across a number of very useful WordPress resources or interesting posts related to WordPress, which I share in my WordPress news and notes posts.   Here is a few that have caught my attention over the past month or so:

• WordPress Optimization Bible -The WordPress Optimization Bible is a collection of useful tips and tutorials on how to speed up your WordPress site. If you ever experienced slow WordPress admin panel, “MySQL server has gone away” message, pages taking forever to load or you want to prepare your site for a major increase in traffic (for example Digg front page) this is the guide for you.
• What’s in Store for WordPress Themes in 2009? - Justin Tadlock shares his thoughts on what he expects out of WordPress themes in 2009.   In my opinion, you’ll see many more premium WordPress themes, as well as a shift towards theme frameworks and child theme releases.   Click over to see what Justin is expecting!
• 135+ WordPress Tutorials - Instant Shift has compiled another large collection, this time featuring a number of our WordPress Tutorials and our WordPress code page.
• The A to Z of .htaccess - Alex of Nometech has published an excellent post covering a bunch of information about the .htaccess file.    Useful resource to bookmark for any webmaster!

Here are some WordPress-related news and notes I’ve run across over the past week and felt were worth sharing with everyone:

• Price Reduction at Theme Hybrid - The theme club by Justin Tadlock, Theme Hybrid, is currently offering a $10.00 membership to his theme club for the first 100 members.  You can read more about the club here.
• How to Integrate Pagination into your WordPress Theme - Jean-Baptiste Jung has explained how to build PageNavi plugin functionality directly into your WordPress theme.
• 15 Premium Quality Free WordPress Themes - Noupe is at it again, this time with a collection of free WordPress themes that they consider to be premium quality.  I think they did a pretty good job narrowing this down to 15 quality themes.
• How to Add PollDaddy Polls on Your WordPress Blog - Leland of Theme Lab has written a detailed write up explaining how to add PollDaddy polls to your WordPress blog.
• Building a Control Panel for Your WordPress Theme - Custom Theme Design has published a great post about building a control panel into your WordPress theme.  The example even includes code snippets.
• How to Exclude Categories from your RSS Feed - Have a few categories on your blog that you don’t want your feed readers to see?   Web Kreation has written a great post explaining how to prevent certain categories from showing up in your feed.

Here are some WordPress-related posts I’ve enjoyed recently and hope you will also find useful:

• 13 WordPress Plugins You Probably Don’t Use But Should - This is an interesting post that covers some nice WordPress plugins that most people aren’t aware of.
• 6 Tricks to Creating a Magazine WordPress theme - Jean-Baptiste Jung of Cats Who Code shares some tips for creating a magazine WordPress theme.  Because creating one of these is a lot different than building a standard WordPress theme, this is a good read if you plan on attempting to make your own magazine theme.
• What Makes a Perfect WordPress Theme? - Joost de Valk has written a terrific post about what makes a perfect WordPress theme.   Some of it is common sense stuff, but there is a few things people don’t always think about and it is a lot of information collected into one post.
• Interview with 4 Premium Theme Authors - Vandelay Design has published an interview with 4 premium theme companies, including iThemes and Woo Themes.   I think this is a good post for someone to read that is considering going into this market.   It talks about the support, tutorials, and other factors you need to consider before you start selling themes.

Here is this weeks collection of WordPress-related posts:

• WordPress Developer’s Toolbox - Smashing Magazine is at it again, this time providing a useful toolbox for WordPress developers.   We were fortunate enough to have about 5 of our posts featured here.
• WordPress for iPhone Downloaded 100,000+ Times - If you think about how many iPhones are in circulation after only a couple years in existence, this is truly an amazing statistic and a great sign for WordPress.
• Feed Pauser WordPress Plugin - Keith of Techie-Buzz (also Weblog Tools Collection) has released an awesome new WordPress plugin that pauses a post from being made available through RSS.  Click over to get a more detailed description.
• Different Ways to Display Content in WordPress - Devito Design does a great job of sharing a bunch of different ways to display your blogs content in WordPress.

Here is another batch of fun and interesting WordPress-related posts that I thought many of you might enjoy:

• 10 Social WordPress Plugins - The WAHM Blog shares 10 different WordPress plugins that any social networking junkies may want to check out.
• 10 WordPress Statistics Tools - Mashable has collected a bunch of tools for collecting WordPress statistics.
• The Ethics of Premium WordPress Themes and Open Source - This is an interesting post that examines the ethics of using open source code in your theme and then selling it as a premium WordPress theme.