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)

Wow, what an exciting couple of weeks this has been!  This is a very exciting day for me personally as I have just finalized the move that took the blog formerly located at HackWordPress.com over to its new home at WPHacks.com.  

After months of trying to acquire a “WP” domain that I felt was suitable for this website, I actually ended up acquiring the best one I could have possibly hoped for at an affordable price.  I feel very fortunate as I had made offers much higher than what I ended up spending on domains that weren’t as good of a fit as this one.

So, what are the reasons behind the switch to this new domain name?  Here are a few reasons, ranked in the order of importance:

1. Having WordPress in your Domain is Trademark Infringement – At the time I registered HackWordPress.com, I was not aware that the term WordPress was trademarked.   I was aware of trademarks of course and know that most products are trademarked, but WordPress was open source so I guess I just assumed it wasn’t.   A few months after launching this blog I found out that it was in fact trademarked, but there wasn’t a lot I could do at that point.   I had already established a blog and a brand of my own on that domain name.   I had a brief discussion with Matt Mullenweg & Lorelle and learned that they were unhappy with my domain name, though to their credit I have never been actually asked to move to a new domain name. 
2. Better Domain Name – Though I will lose a little bit of that keyword value the old domain name carried (and all backlinks), this new domain name is a MUCH better domain in my opinion.   I’ve dropped from 13 letters down to only 7, and I feel having the word “hack” after WordPress (WP) sounds much better than having it before.   This new domain is also quick to type and very easy to remember.

A couple of things of note to our readers about the domain transfer:

• The feed URL will remain the same (which I’m sure will be a relief to all the sites that steal our content via our feed each day). 
• Monday I plan to publish a very detailed post on how to transfer your blog to a new domain, so keep an eye out for that. 

How Can I Help Your Transition to the New Domain Name?

From a readers perspective, nothing really should change.   You’ll still get our content via our feed and the old URL will redirect to the new domain.   The one thing you could do to help us out is to update your links on your blog to the new domain (or updating the domain part of the URL to the new domain if you linked to a specific post).   All permalinks remain the same with the exception of the domain name itself.

Questions about the change?   Thoughts on the new domain?   Let us know in the comments below!

Last week I announced a premium WordPress theme giveaway from several of the most popular premium theme authors.  It is hard to believe that it has already been 9 days!

You may remember that I originally announced a deadline of Thursday, October 9th, 2008 to have all entries completed and I planned to announce the winners sometime today. Unfortunately, due to some things that have since come up, I won’t be able to collect entries and do the drawing until tomorrow (Saturday), which gives everyone an extra 24 hours to blog about the giveaway on their site or leave a comment.

It looks like our regular posting schedule should resume Monday morning!

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:

1. 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.
2. 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!

Today while going through the site to read and respond to comments, I was thrilled to notice that Hack WordPress has reached its first milestone, 500 subscribers!

It has been just under 4 months since this domain was registered and the site was launched. It has been a ton of work, but in that time I’m pretty proud of the work we’ve done and look forward to working towards the next milestone, 1000 subscribers. I’m also hoping to release our first WordPress theme this weekend so keep an eye out for that.

If you have knowledge of WordPress and would like to contribute to the growth of this site, as well as gain some exposure for yourself and your website, we currently have some opportunities available to write for us as a guest author or weekly contributor. Contact us with questions.

Thanks to everyone for reading, commenting, and making this site so great to write for!