Smart Resources for WordPress Designers and Bloggers

There are so many free WordPress resources in the community just for the asking. And new stuff is popping up all the time. Today I leave you with just a few.

Things you might not know about WordPress

If you are logged into WordPress.org, what’s stopping your from favoriting the plugins you love. Share them on your profile page on WordPress.org and find them quickly when you need to go back to them.

There are numerous WordPress conferences, called WordCamps, happening across the globe—with session tracks for both causal users and seasoned developers, from here in Las Vegas to Cape Town, Africa to Sofia, Bulgaria. I organized WordCamp Seattle this past May, and it was incredible. I also spoke at and did some training in late August at Chicago, WordCamp. To find one near you, simply go to WordCamp Central.

Speaking of WordCamp, if travel isn’t in your future, you can view tons of videos of presentations from WordCamps over at WordPress.tv. You never know what gem you will find there.

If you build WordPress websites, as a designer or developer, you really must check out  Code Poet. You’ll find favorite case studies, resources, ebooks and a boatload of real world strategies. Sign up to get regular updates on everything that hits Code Poet. Or if you want to contribute to the WordPress core, the new Core Contributor Handbook is a must.

And, if you have some extra minutes on your hands and are curious about how many times the current version of WordPress has been downloaded (because we all need to know that, right?), you can see it happening live at the WordPress Download Counter.

Here’s a random fact that lots of people don’t know. You should never use the full word, “WordPress” in your top level domain name (for example wordpressrockstar.com). You can use it in a subdomain, though. Why? Because it’s trademarked and they want to protect their company identity and brand. They they prefer you to use WP instead (for example, bobWP.com )

If you want to use the WordPress logo, it’s available for download. But there are some fake logos out there, so be careful. (WordPress loves it if you call them out.) You can see more of what fake logos look like and access a  bunch of real ones to download here.

And finally, for all you trivia buffs, at exactly 9:40 AM PDT, September 15, 2012, WordPress by the numbers:

• WordPress.org has 1,600 themes (not counting all the great premium themes)

• WordPress 3.4 has been downloaded 17,083,918 times (and counting, for the fun of it, click here to see how many more since I posted this)

• WordPress.org has 21,295 plugins (and counting)

• WordPress plugins have been downloaded 347,779,732 times (and counting)

• And in a recent interview with Matt Mullenweg, WordPress founder, 60 million websites and blogs are using WordPress.

So there. Don’t you feel just a little ‘WordPress smarter’?