Wow, has it really been a year already? We are pleased to announce that today marks the one year anniversary of the date I registered HackWordPress.com. I remember spending most of that day building this site’s original theme and forming a plan for what this site would become. The next day I hit the ground running and began posting!
In looking over our archives for the past year I am really proud of how this site has grown. My original intention was to feature a few hacks a week as well as build out our WordPress theme galleries to make this a valuable resource for the WordPress community. I quickly learned that when it comes to code and hacks, it is truly is a community project, so I ended up opening this site up to guest authors. Since then we’ve had a number of authors contribute to the success of Hack WordPress while at the same time showing off their blogging and coding talents.
While contemplating what to do to celebrate our first birthday, I came up with two things. The first, as mentioned in the title, is a redesign of the theme this blog uses. Though this site is still built upon the Revolution Media template, I teamed up with my friends over at the Blog Design Studio to do a theme overhaul. We took readers feedback and this is what we’ve come up with.
If you are looking for a custom design for your theme or an overhaul to an existing theme, I definitely recommend the Blog Design Studio team. I’ve known Mayank for a long time and got to know the rest of the team while we were redoing this template. They’ve been great to work with and I’m very happy with the outcome.
The Hack WordPress Anniversary Giveaway
The other thing I have to announce is the Hack WordPress anniversary giveaway! Before I explain how to enter, here is a list of premium WordPress themes that I’ve collected to give away to our readers:
- 6 Month Developer Subscription – The winner of this prize will receive a 6 month developer subscription to Woo Themes (Courtesy of the Adii and the Woo Themes team)
- 2008 Theme Club Subscription – The winner of this prize will receive a copy of all themes released by iThemes in 2008, valued at over $1400.00 (Courtesy of Cory Miller of iThemes)
- 3 Revolution Single-Use Licenses – All 3 winners will get their choice of which Revolution theme they want their license to be for. (Courtesy of Brian Gardner of Revolution Themes)
- 5 One Theme Single-Use Licenses – All 5 winners will receive a webmaster (single-use) license of the extremely popular One Theme (Courtesy of Lee Cooper and Karl Forshaw of One Theme).
- 2 Gabfire Single-Use Licenses, 2 Multiple-Use Licenses, and 2 Developer’s Licenses – Winners will have a choice of which of Mehmet’s 3 different themes you would like your license to be for. (Courtesy of Mehmet of Gabfire Themes)
- 2 TV Elements Single-Use Licenses – Winners will get a single-use copy of the extremely popular TV Elements video theme. (Courtesy of Jason of Press 75)
How Do I Enter the Hack WordPress Anniversary Giveaway?
This giveaway is fairly simple, with everyone having two different ways to enter. Here is what you need to do:
- Blog About This Contest (3 Entries) - Write a post on your blog about this contest and link to this post. The post needs to include the prize list found above (links in tact) and details on how to enter. (I will be using trackbacks/pingbacks to track this so make sure it shows up here to receive your entries). This will earn you 3 entries into the drawing.
- Leave a Comment (1 Entry) – Leave a comment on this post giving us feedback on the new theme. What do you like and what could be improved? This will earn you one entry into the drawing.
Doing both will give you 4 entries into our drawing. I will collect entries through Thursday, October 9th and plan to announce the winners sometime Friday, October 10th.
We will be drawing names, so the more entries you have, the better chance you have to win! Obviously we would like to fit people with the best theme for their needs, so if you have a preference or a few favorites that you would prefer to win, you can add that to your comment/post so we know which prize to award you with if you are one of the first names drawn. First name drawn will get their choice of prizes, then the next drawn name will get their choice of the remaining prizes, etc.
If you have any additional questions, please leave a comment below and we’ll get this post updated with any clarifications needed. Otherwise, thanks to the theme authors that agreed to participate in this giveaway and to all of our readers who help us celebrate by participating!
Kyle Eslick
Kyle Eslick is WordPress enthusiast who took his passion for WordPress to the next level back in 2007 by launching WPHacks.com as a place to share hacks and review WordPress-related products. You can learn more about him by following his personal tweets here.
reaally excelent job. thanks 
Thanks I have been trying to figure this out for awhile now. I knew it wasn't that hard I ...
Thanks for your effort. Nice work. Keep posting such thing. 
Hello, and thanks for your theme. I am studying Wordpress Mu for a project.
I am fighting with something. On my ...
Have you tried this: http://wpml.org/ 
Do you know if this would work on a main page rather than the sidebar? I tried it...looked ok ...
I like the new theme, it’s very blue and I like that
Would kike to win, so I’m also going to blog about it. You’ll see me again in trackbacks
Greetings from Switzerland!
Love your new design. I often come to this site for the WordPress stuff
Will blog about this contest at WPStart.org too.
The theme is sleek and super sexy! Just love the header and congrats on finishing 1 successful year
Happy birthday
I love your sleek and easy design 
Keep up the good work.
Happy Birthday! It’s nice to see a good site that keeps on giving day in and day out.
Like the new look too!
As a wordpress designer i have to tell it’s awesome well looking as its mostly for content.
Really clean and loved the blue tones.
I blogged at http://themelib.com/contests/2008/10/01/october-10th-themes-giveaway-at-hackwordpress/
If I won, I would like to get iThemes wordpress themes just because I love them
Congratulations buddy! Love the work Mayank & his team have done. You have managed to maintain teh original feel yet supercharge the look and ease of use.
Happy Birthday to HWP!
Congratulations on a great year! The new theme is a little busy for my taste, but overall it looks very nice. I love the ajax sections in the sidebar.
Well, I’m going to hope this doesn’t go against me =)
I have to say I preferred your old theme. Well, actually to be honest that’s not totally true, most of the new theme looks great, especially the colour scheme, however I really preferred the old logo.
I realise you probably wanted a unique logo rather than just the official WP one, however I don’t think it works that great.
Anyways, HackWP has been my favourite niche WP blog for months now and you’ve always had a great writing style… personal but not too much so and I think that’s a hard thing for a lot of bloggers to achieve.
Anyways keep it up!
Josh
Looks good. Must be a UNC fan!
@ Chip – Actually I’m a Wolverine for life, but the maize (yellow) doesn’t work very well on websites.
Hi Kyle!
Happy 1 yr Anniversary. The site redesign looks great. very clean and crisp. The contest prizes look great. Hope I’m lucky enough to snag one.
Keep up the good work!
@ Will – Can you clarify what you mean by to busy? To many features?
@ Josh – Constructive criticism is welcome as well, so don’t worry about that!
This site is not affiliated with WordPress, so I felt that it was important to come up with a unique logo to avoid giving people that impression. With that said, the current logo may receive additional modifications. Unfortunately there wasn’t a lot of room to work with.
It’s good…but it kinda looks like so many other blogs about blogging to be honest, especially with that bulky array of 125^2 ads up there top right.
By saying it is too busy for my taste, I am talking about the header area. There are three different text menus in the header area, plus another text menu above the first post. This, combined with the ad in the header area, make the theme too busy to me.
I love the theme but I think the top/header is a little too crowded.. Also the feedburner item at the top of your sidebar is not in style with the rest of the site. Other than that, congrats and keep up the good work!
Thanks for this contest opportunity.
Theme look very solid and professional. About what could be improvement – subscription block in sidebar feels bit weird. Out of balance.
Links in footer could lose underline.
XML sitemap is for search engines, right? Why link to it instead of archives or something? Especially since that XML sitemap has errors and can’t be viewed or validated.
Congrats on completing 1 year Kyle, the blog has definitely grown to be a must read resource for WordPress users and I appreciate the time you take to do this.
The theme looks good too, yea and I would love to win one of the prizes too.. lol.
Well anyways best of luck for the future and keep going, I will have to find some more time to contribute regularly too
I like your theme and your blog overall. I’m learning new things about how to optimize my use of WordPress. Also, I’ve blogged about your contest on my blog. Please visit my post at this link: http://blog.earthformed.com/2008/10/01/october-9th-hack-wordpress-first-anniversary-theme-giveaway/
@ David – Yeah, I know what you are saying. 125×125 ad blocks are kind of a necessary evil unfortunately, but they help keep this blog online.
@ Will and Taeke – Thanks for the constructive feedback and I see where you are coming from. Multiple menus at the top of blogs have been in fashion lately, but it definitely does add a little clutter to the top. I may remove the top menu and restore it to the way I had it before the revamp.
@ Rarst – You and Taeke mention the new subscription block at the top of the sidebar. This is actually my favorite part of the new design! Is it just a gut feeling or is there something specific? I know there is a problem with the email part in the Safari browser which I’m trying to work out, but otherwise I really like it. Typically the subscription field should not match the rest of the blog, as you want it to stand out when readers visit.
@ Keith – Thanks!
@ Sharon – Thanks for participating! I believe the trackback made it through okay.
@Kyle Eslick
Bit hard to describe. Like it is unbalanced. Like there is one more icon missing to the right. “get notified…” is not a link. Choice of words for RSS and email is not consistent – like it’s different things while both are means to get same updates. “Go” after email form. Go where? Maybe it should be “Confirm” or something?
I don’t know, all those are small things but they add up to weird inconsistent feeling for me. Actually may be good for attention grabber as you said.
Kyle:
I would think it might look better yet to get rid of one of the two menus at the bottom of the header than the one at the top. Just my two cents worth.
Do multiple comments get multiple entries, btw? : )
That’s fair comment. It’s not like I don’t have advertising on my site. How do you get signed up with those 125^2 advertisers anyway, are they CPC or CPM?
db
Man, I am not gonna lie, you guys did one helluva job on this theme. It looks so sleek, great work. It’s stuff like this that inspires me as a theme developer…
Those prizes look awesome too, I’d love that 2008 iThemes one
@ Rarst – Well, thanks for trying to describe it. I will give it some thought and maybe tweak it a little bit.
@ Will – Thanks for the input. I will give this some thought as well. These modifications can be made easily, so I guess it is just a matter of finding something that looks good.
@ David – They are provided by the advertisers who purchase the ad space.
@ Ralph – Thanks! I have your comment down. Feel free to blog about the contest as well to improve your chances.
Is that on an ad hoc basis or is there somewhere I could sign up to cash in on the web estate?
Hey Kyle, congrats on 1 year! This site has grown into one of the top WordPress blogs around (in my opinion at least). Loving the new look too.
I think the black theme is best with the blue second. Very cool themes. Can one change the the top graphic easily? It looks difficult.
Happy birthday HWP! And thanks again Kyle for this great blog. The new theme is totally stunning! Congratulations
I think the new theme looks good however for seo purposes I’d use excerpts on the homepage/archives (when you click the month or category not the main archives page) but thats just me.
I will be blogging about this for sure. If I won I think I would like to win the WooThemes club membership. There are great themes I could use in that club!
I like this theme a lot, but I would agree that the multiple bars at the top make the navigation confusing. I do really like the clean fonts, though, and the layout has a lot of desirable white space.
Here’s hoping I win the contest – I’d love a more professional theme for my site that’s not as buggy as my current theme.
@ JBJ – Thanks! You’ve played a big role in this site’s success!
@ Emma – We use Robots.txt to filter out archives, tags, and other duplicate content.
Wow you guys, the design looks fantastic! I hope you guys keep up the good work!
Congrats on completing 1 year. Much appreciate your giving away premium themes for free.
Happy birthday to Hackwordpress, Kyle. You have done an amazing work here. So far, hackwordpress has been the best WordPress resource site for me. Keep up the good work.
I really like the new theme. It is stunning and color palette is perfect.
Congrats on completing 1 Year@ HackWordpress.Wishing You all the best for the furure.
I’ve blogged about your contest on my blog. Please visit my post at this link: http://www.bloggingbandit.com/kyle-eslicks-hackwordpresscom-1st-anniversary-giveaway-contest/
If I win I would like to win the 6 Month Developer Subscription to Woo Themes.
Kyle,
Congrats on completing 1 year.
The theme is looking good.
Kyle,
I have posted about this on my blog. check it http://www.niharsworld.com/2008/10/02/happy-birthday-hack-wordpress/
I never saw your previous theme, but I believe it was a good one, and congratulation for the one year anniversary of this blog
Hey Kyle,
It has been equal pleasure working with you. We all love your blogs and you’ve been an inspiration for me and it felt awesome working with you for both of your blogs.
Have blogged about the contest here:
http://erz.tech36.com/2008/10/hack-wordpress-contest/
Love your new theme – it’s really easy on the eyes and the color combination is just right. Hurray!
Great competition! I’m sure You’ll get loads of entries!
Hack WordPress has become a great resource for me and here’s to the next few years!
Kyle, just wanted to give you the link to my post on the giveaway in case we miss the trackback.
Good luck everyone!
Happy birthday!
Your theme is very nice,and i heared revolution themes is going open source,that is great news.
Posted about the contest at http://www.submityourcontest.com/the-hack-wordpress-anniversary-giveaway/
Just a small note regarding your theme, blue does not look much good with greyish background. And one more thing, notify me of follow up comments line is not properly aligned with checkbox at comment area.
And given a preference, I would love to win WooThemes subscription or iThemes themes.
I like the new bright background, the old one was to dark.
What ii don’t like is that there are to much menu’s in the header: to much written words before you can see the post title. The Post title doesn’t stand out enough, it’s to hard to spot it.
You can find my post here:
http://whatireallyneedtoknow.com/hack-wordpress-theme-giveaway/
ciao
alex
id love all the premium theme prize, but affter look at every single of that prize im choose 2008 Theme Club Subscription from itheme.
okay here my blogpost
http://ectwebmall.com/the-hack-wordpress-anniversary-giveaway/
id love to give another blogpost about this contest, are that valid entry?
Hi Kyle,
Congrats! One year old and going strong! ; P
The one thing I had to do [when reading about your contest from the index] was scroll up to see if I had to “Leave a comment” for the post above or below… the social bar you have is closer to the beginning of the next post rather than being closer to the bottom of the post it’s meant for…
The new design is nice to look @. The sub box looks odd… partially because the RSS Feed Icon is centered. Maybe make it larger? And the
Become one of our
2009
Readers
looks too uneven… also you mentioned trying to draw more attention to the Sub Box, to make it “stand out”… maybe using the orange instead of any of the blue will really draw attention to it… the message isn’t the most compelling one ever… ; P Include a little blurb about why(benefit(s)) one should sub… like how you do have free theme contests…
now the Feeds/Sub notice @ end of post looks great.
This part may seem silly…
The sidebar… the blue versus grey… looks flat… almost like I don’t know if I should click on “Recent Post” or “Top Commentators”, there’s no edge/3d effect/button/etc, maybe “too square” comes to mind? I realize that most people will be familiar with these “tabs”… but it’s just something I was thinking while looking at this design. It should be super obvious that the tab is highlighting the content within the box… a border encompassing tab and box…?
I hope I don’t come off as sounding too harsh… I LOVE the colour(hey I’m Canadian, it’s how we spell color) of this blog theme! Author commenting is SO easy to see… SWEET!
I wouldn’t mind winning any of those themes in this contest Kyle… hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge… ; P
Thanks &
God Bless,
Yoon
Happy Birthday, Hack WordPress. Here’s another cheers to another better year ahead. I’ll blog about it later in a day and see if I could win the Woo membership as I’ve been wanting to get one of the themes myself.
Yan
Here’s my entry post
http://bloggingtips.my/the-hack-wordpress-one-year-anniversary-giveaway/
If I were to share my opinion, I’d like see a better logo design than current one but that’s a matter of individual taste.
Yan
Your theme looks much neater, great color combination and it is much easier to navigate.
Blogged it on:
http://contests.bloggingfromscratch.com/hack-wordpress-anniversary-giveaway/
Congrats on the first milestone. This site has helped me a lot when i was looking for wordpress theme. The new design looks great and the header is awesome.
Happy Birthday! Thank you for a great one year
Personally I would recommend dropping the recent comments and trackbacks on the sidebar. I think I read somewhere about “Nobody wants to read about something they haven’t read from someone they didn’t know”. Just my 2 cents
Haha, that’s so true banji
Hi Kyle,
My post about this giveaway:
http://erik-son.net/contest/the-hackwordpress-anniversary-giveaway/
I’d like the iTheme themes.
Thanks.
Well I was about to leave some advice on what to change for the new design…. but I can’t find a thing. It’s fantastic, awesome, clean, modern, easy to navigate. Colors are good and easy on the eyes.
In other words, great job, don’t change a thing.
Hi ! You’ll certainly like our post
http://for-free-on-internet.com/?p=476
The full article page is : http://for-free-on-internet.com/?page_id=473
About your theme : looking over the themes from your giveaway anniversary all we can say is that this is a perfect content oriented blog theme . Don’t change anything !
We would be interested in “6 Month Developer Subscription for Woo Themes” Prize .
Thank you !
I love the blues you picked. It gives the site more of an energized look. If I had a complaint (which I really don’t), I would like to see a round logo instead of the shield. Maybe a design contest would be fun! Great work guys!
I can recognize before reading the credits that this theme is designed by BlogDesignStudio.
I really really like this designer’s style so sorry I don’t have anything much to add.
I blog about the giveaway here
http://www.se7enize.com/nice/premium-wordpress-themes-contests.html
Happy Birthday HackWordPress!