Description: Customized WordPress blog featuring adsense ads, and embedded flickr photo gallery.

The site is built on Word Press 2.7 and utilizes several revolutionary Word Press Plugins that extend the site from a normal blog to a sophisticated Content Management System. One of the best features is the Flickr Album that enables the site to showcase and rotate images from my Flickr account. Natural search optimization is promoted through various means including relevant articles, keywords and link trading with other Croatia related sites.

I’ve been researching tutorial sites for advanced WordPress theme development lately and have discovered some excellent resources. The WordPress community is passionate about the platform. This is reflected in the outstanding theme development I’ve seen in the past several months.

Here is my collection of resources for aspiring and advanced WordPress developers.

WordPress Codex:
The WordPress Codex is the Vatican of the WordPress universe. All knowledge resides here. The community is constantly updated detailed information covering every aspect of coding in WordPress. The Encyclopedia nature of this site is best used as a reference tool rather than a tutorial.

How to Create a WordPress Theme From Scratch by Kai Loon
Kai has put together a very readable yet detailed three part tutorial on WordPress Theme development. My favorite section is the tag definitions. This is an excellent learning tool to see all of the WordPress tags in a single location. He does this with each primary section of a theme. I’ve read and referred to this site many times, and can’t recommend it enough.

How to Create a WordPress Theme from scratch by Sam Parkinson
Sam created an excellent overview on WordPress Theme development. LIke Kai’s site he provides detailed explanations followed by detailed code examples.
Additionally there are other articles on this site covering WordPress plug-in development. Overall this resource is excellent, and one I refer to quite a bit.

Jquery.com
This resource is for advanced developers, or those who dare to take a dive in the deep end of WordPress Theme extension. If you’ve ever run across sliding panels, or ajax type interactive tabs, then it’s likely the developer used jquery.com as their resource. This is a huge library of free scripts and lesson on how to implement them. Any developer with basic PHP and java knowledge can make these work. It’s worth checking out and bookmarking this page, as I’m seeing a rapid growth in these components within the WordPress theme community.

I recently finished a new client site for 24hr Care, a local company providing in-home senior care. I employed my normal Word Press custom CMS design for this project. the client had specific needs such as the ability to post their own article content, list upcoming community events, and resource both care givers and families interested in have their loved ones cared for.

The primary challenge of this assignment was to incorporate multiple form questionnaires that the client could control with minimal effort and zero programming ability. Fortunately my quest for a suitable solution lead me to machforms.com. These guys have it pretty much figured out, as far as form development is concerned. For only $39 I was able to acquire a fully functional forms CMS, but one that is customizable enough to fit most any needs and cool looking enough to impress clients. I’ll likely use it on all of my future sites that need a robust solution for form development. The admin is easy to manage and showcases the amazing power of this software. It was a real fine.

For the custom site homepage, I used the menu code system that I used on Broadcastsolutions.com. It worked quite well and matched their already established branding initiatives.

Nexugen.com is an ecommerce store that features natural anti-aging skin care products. The store is built with Zen-Cart, and is wrapped in Word Press, which I configured as a content management system. A central homepage mixes elements from Word Press and from Zen-Cart. The customer can easily navigate either to a blog to read articles about skin care products, or they can go to the store to shop.

This site encompasses several features for natural search optimization including dozens of relevant articles that are keyword centric, various modules to support meta-tagging and keyword featuring tools to attract search engine spiders.

This configuration has proven to be immensely more successful than the old site in terms of SEO and customer experience. Since I launched it in November 2007, sales has steadily increased, as well has natural search terms list ranking.

Technology: WordPress (used as CMS). Zen-Cart. Various modules and extensions added as well.