1. Pronto (Free)

Pronto is a very clean and minimal jQuery Masonry WordPress theme that’s perfect for showcasing your posts in a grid like fashion, that will re-adjust depending on your visitors browser size. Everything is set to work right out of the box, simply install, add your posts and you are set. The theme includes an awesome notification region at the top for displaying important notices, a custom logo upload field, a custom flickr widget, threaded comments, light-box built-in…and some other cool features.

Download

2. Goodnews WordPress News/Magazine (Premium)

Goodnews is Premium WordPress News / Magazine Theme Fully Customizable , has an extensive Theme Options with Import/export System , WPML Ready, RTL Full Support.

Demo

3. Maverick – Blog/Magazine WordPress Theme (Premium)

Maverick is a fixed layout wordpress theme. It is suitable for almost any type of blogs including media, reviews, portfolio and even business. The Theme is extremely simple to get up and running, and includes a lot of options allowing for complete customization.

Demo

4. Ares Blog Magazine Newspaper Template (Premium)

Ares is The Clean Magazine, News and Blog Template built with latest WordPress features.

Demo

5. Kernel – WordPress Blog & Magazine Theme (Premium)

KERNEL , has 3 news blocks on homepage (7 post, 5 post and 9 posts news blocks), gallery page with two different styles (Default gallery and Fancybox Gallery), Blog page with 2 styles (“News and posts with big images” and “News and posts with small images”) and 3 sliders (Blog, Homepage and Breaking News slider). Redesigning KERNEL is extremely easy (no more hardcoded design). KERNEL with newest Orange Themes Control Panel makes editing/adding/changing all settings extremely easy, that’s why KERNEL is your best choice for Magazine or News Portals.

Demo

6. WP-Prosper (Free)

A flexible, professional premium WordPress theme from Solostream that can be used for a magazine style site, personal blog or business website. The theme includes 2 different featured content glider options, multiple homepage layouts, theme settings page and supports the new WordPress 3.0 navigation menu system.

Demo | Download

7. Magazine 2.0 (Free)

A premium WordPress magazine theme from StudioPress that runs on the Genesis Framework. The theme features 7 colour styles, 6 layout options, custom header, background and menus, comprehensive theme options and more.

Demo | Download

8. Mimbo (Free)

Demo | Download

Afterburner (Free)

Demo | Download

9. Meta-Morphosis (Free)

Demo | Download

10. Snips (Free)

Demo | Download

11. Deems (Free)

Demo |  Download

12. Dimes (Free)

Demo | Download

However hackers have found there way through the WordPress CMS and have reduced efforts of many WordPress users, The security concerns have always revolved around the WordPress, and loyalists of other open source technologies have often reprimanded the use of WordPress CMS because of the same reason. Though WordPress offers an in-built security system against the spams (Akismet), the WordPress users may have to work a little extra hard and bit more cleverly to maintain the security of their WordPress powered websites.

The write up further comprises of detailed description of various tips which users can practice in order to keep their website safe against the hackers. It will also help in opposing the harm caused by other non human entities like PC’s or robots. Furthermore, the article also elaborates upon using a few WordPress generated Plug-ins in order to keep the WordPress website and blog safe and secure.

Update your website on a regular basis.

The WordPress community is maintained by fervent WordPress developers across the globe, and time to time they come up with the latest updates for your WordPress powered website or blog. It is mandatory for you to keep your website updated with all the latest features. WordPress developers work hard to maintain the security of your website, and by constantly updating it, you move a step closer towards the security of your website. Updating has added advantages as well. When you update your website, it facilitates your website to run better and make a lot many more plug-ins compatible with your website or blog thus adding to the scope and functionality of your website. Besides, updating your WordPress website is not at all a tedious process. It is very convenient and your entire data will be saved before updating the website, and it only takes a few seconds to perform the entire task. There are two options available to update your website. You may do it either from your dashboard or in case you wish to do it manually, use no site other than WordPress.org.

Select a strong Password.

Password is the key to your entire hard work in the virtual world. Anyone who has been around the Internet scenario for sometime now knows this as a basic rule to choose a unique and unpredictable password for the website or the blog. It should be a complete “NO” to select date of births, name of children, spouse, parents, best friends etc as password. While selecting a password include both small and capital case alphabets, a number and etc to make it impossible for people to guess your password.

Carefully check the entire file permission

One of the intelligent steps which you can take to secure your WordPress website is keep a constant check on the file permissions. The file permissions can be established with the FTP clients and FileZilla is another functional option to carry out the same.

Use .htaccess

The .htaccess file is available by default in your hosting folder. It stands for Hypertext Access and is used to get an easy access to directory level configuration files and be able to manage the web server configurations at a decentralized level. You can use .htaccess to block various IP adresses. Various other SEO and security advantages of .htaccess are offered in through the following tricks: Canonical robots.txt, Canonical Favicons, Canonical Sitemaps, Canonical Category, Tag & Search URLs, Canonical Feeds and Simpler Login URL. Canonicalization means being able to keep the useful and functional bots on tracks, chck any sort of illegitimate behavior and offer a user friendly experience to every user.

Use SSL Encryption

The SSL Encryption in general is a paid service that you receive in order to safeguard the data that your blog exhibits. An encrypted data means that no other person who is using your router will be able to intercept the data which belongs to you. The advantage with WordPress is that SSL encryption is for free here and you can avail the benefits of the same just by adding “define (‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true)” into your wp-config.php. SSL Encryption makes it really difficult for others to both intercept and decrypt your data.

Never expose the wp-config.php file:

Your WordPress powered website will not have a more important file than wp-config,php and hence you must safeguard it against all odds. Keep it out of reach from and you can easily do the same by inserting doing a little coding in the htaccess file,
<Files wp-config.php>
order allow, deny
deny from all
</Files>
it increases the security of your blog or website by hiding it away from the reach of hackers or such illegal entities who mean harm.

Remember “admin” shouldn’t be the “login”

Be a little creative while deciding a login name. Mostly people put the “admin” as the login name while creating the default WordPress profile. It is perhaps one of the bad practices people do and has the potential to get your website being noticed by spammers and other non human entities like robots etc.

Use an SFTP

Instead of uploading files through FTP, try using a secured version of FTP, SFTP which automatically encrypts whatever files that you send.

Back-up on a regular basis

We live in a very uncertain world where anything may turn around, any problem can creep up any moment and such stuff may happen which we could never imagine. So the most wise thing to do, would be to maintain a regular back up of your website. There is WordPress available plug-in called the Backup Buddy which easily creates a back up for your website if you don’t wish to do it manually.

There are plug-ins also which are being provided to the users, to easily safeguard their WordPress web application. Some of these plug-ins are discussed below in the write-up,

Plug-ins for securing WordPress based websites

Use only those plug-ins which belongs to the original WordPress Directory:
Before getting started with the use of Plug-ins, always opt for only those Plug-ins which have been listed in the WordPress directory. Though we do not intent to run down the customized plug-in installation, the fundamental reason behind using WordPress Plug-ins only is the fact that they are completely safe, doesn’t contain any viruses or bugs and will do no harm to your website. If you are not much of a technical person and do not understand PHP, it will be a good idea to stick to WordPress generated Plug-ins.

Login Lockdown

This plug-in takes it upon itself to lock the number of login attempts a user can make. More often than not, a hacker may try several various options while guessing the password. If you have enabled Login Lockdown, you will be able to check that out. Login Lockdown takes into consideration every failed login attempt and IP address from where the request was made. Also it disables the ability to login from different IP if the failed login attempts increased beyond the number stipulated by you. However the admin panel allows you to remove the IP address

if required, from the admin panel. The only requirement before using Login Lockdown, is the simple fact that you would have to remember your own password, else even you will be locked down.

WP-DB-Backup

This plug-in solve all of your back up related problems. It is very essential to maintain a back up of all of the data base for the website and this plug-in provides efficient back up of the data base, either on your e-mail account or on the web server. You have the liberty to adjust how often you wish the plug-in to generate the back up of your data base.

WP Security Scan

WP Security Scan helps you keeping your website protected against the hackers and other attackers, simply removing the version of WordPress from the top of each page. It is other wise very difficult to remove the version number from header section of the PHP, but WP Security Scan does it seamlessly. It is important for you to remove the version number because once the hackers know the version of your WordPress website, they would know what all security issues you have with your website and they will manipulate the same for their own advantage.

WordPress, though is a widely used and preferred customized content management system for a website, but since the very beginning the security concerns have haunted it. Because of the amazing functionalities that WordPress offer, it is an undeniable option to create a website, but waking up one day and finding out that the web application has been hacked and all the useful information is lost, is definitely not a pretty sight. As they say better safe than worried, thus employ all the above mentioned tips and make sure that your WordPress website is safe and protected.

Optimizing your site is the most important thing you need to do. Doing so will assure the well-arranged and approachable content of your blog. Plugins are among the most preferred applications used for the purpose of SEO optimization. There are many plugins and they cover the wide range of tasks required for successful SEO campaign. Here are listed the top 15 that will help you achieve that. 

All in one SEO Pack

Many website owners refer to this plugin as one of the most helpful. All in one SEO Pack is easy to use plugin that will add meta tags, optimize your post titles and as overall help your blog to avoid duplicate content. Also important is that you can manually adjust the meta data such as keywords, titles and descriptions for every page and post on your site.

HeadSpace2

This plugin is also a good helper for the site owners. You can handle the meta data and many other various SEO tasks. Tagging your posts, writing descriptions and creating SEO friendly titles – all this results improved ranking of the page and increased relevance on search engines. There are many other features that allow you wide customization of the pages. The multiple languages make this plugin widely used.

Easy WP SEO

It is a SEO plugin which is very effective and keyword related, helping for the On-Page optimization. The main tasks are related to managing of the keywords as follow: calculating the density of the keywords, analyzing the tags, making SEO friendly keywords. You can see the score of your pages and posts – a task that would usually take you a lot of time. The plugin makes suggestions for changes that have to be made thus improving the performance of your website and making it more visible for the search engines.

SEO Friendly Images

The proper ALT and TITLE tags on pictures are crucial for the better acceptance of the search engines. This plugin will help you to optimize all your images and to make them friendlier in the perspective of SEO. This plugin will not only help your pages to rank better, but you can rank with your pictures in places such as Google Images.

Platinum SEO plugin

It is a good SEO plugin offering a lot of features that can be helpful in the improvement process of your website. The features start from optimizing the posts and pages, auto generating meta tags, adding automatic 301 redirects for changed permalinks and many more.

Pingback Optimizer

Backlinks are important part of your website optimization. Many blogs pingbacks and trackbacks, these types of notifications are when another site linked to yours. Usually they remain unnoticed by the search engines but if you treat them properly they can work for you. Pingback Optimizer is plugin that places the trackbacks and pingbacks in RSS feeds, which are submitted in RSS directories. The directories in their turn link to the url of you trackback or pingback and enhances the ranking on search engines.

Google XML Sitemaps

XML sitemaps are used by Bing, Google, Ask, Yahoo and etc. Creating sitemaps will make the crawling task much easier for the search engine bots. The better structure of your website ensures that the information will be distributed better. It is a good way to notify the search engines about every new post on your site. The option to rebuild the sitemap manually in case of errors or problems remains.

Sitemap Generator

If you are looking for a way to make widely customizable WordPress sitemap then this is the plugin for you. You can choose what to include and what not to with the help of the multi-level permalinks, categories and pages.

SEO Slugs

If you have long file names that are assigned to your blog posts for example website.com/how-to-find-solutions-for-your-website, this is called a slug. SEO Slugs removes the commonly used words ( like, you, how ,the and etc. ) and in this way makes the posts friendlier to the search engines.

SEO Title Tag

Useful plugin that allows you to generate custom title tags, also you can define title tags for pages with error 404. The option to edit slugs and title tags all over the site make this plugin very helpful.

Automatic SEO links

This plugin can help you to link words or phrases that you desire. When you set word or phrase, the Automatic SEO links changes all the matches over the website. You can also customize the target, the title and the relevance for every link, and change the status to no-follow.

SEO Smart links

The usage of this plugin will automatically link keywords and phrases on your site to relevant categories, posts and pages that are also on your site. You can setup keywords and match urls to then, also adding no-follow attribute.

WP Backlinks

Link exchange is now very simple task thanks to this plugin. Upon installation, a small form is generated on the sidebar of your site. This form allows other bloggers and web masters to submit link to your site in exchange for link on their. WP Backlinks searches the web master site and one it finds reciprocal link – the link exchange is successful.

Robots Meta

The plugin provides you with the opportunity to set no-index to feeds and the index of pages, posts and archives. It is quite useful for setting no-index attribute to great range of content.

SEO Rank Reporter

It is simple and very useful plugin that tracks your keywords in Google rankings and on every 3 days you receive report. This is useful to summarize the traffic flow in your site and helpful when you are trying new techniques. You will be notified with emails for any major changes in the ranks.

1. WordPress Usage Top 100,000 Websites Infographic

2. Prolific Rise of WordPress Infographic

3. WordPress facts & figures infographic

4. The Rise of WordPress Infographic

 5. How are we Blogging? Infographic

 6. Which Blogging Platform Should You Use Infographic

 7. WordPress Self Hosted Vs WordPress.com infographic

8. Should I move to WordPress infographic

 9. WordPress V’s Blogger infographic

10. The Ultimate Cheat Sheet infographic

WordPress Plugins 101 infographic

Videozoom

Videozoom is an elegant WordPress video theme with a neat featured slider, which is ready to play any videos you want to embed into your posts. Just like a WordPress photo theme this kind of theme is perfect for building an online portfolio.

Wptube

WP-Tube Premium is a multimedia-rich video blog theme. Incorporating some of the best wordpress plugins made it possible to develop a youtube-like theme that can be installed without hassle.

Adventure – A Unique Photography and Video WordPress Theme

Adventure is a minimal photography and full screen video WordPress theme with a unique look and functionality that completely ditches the standard layout. It concentrates on content and your imagery with a great range of shortcodes, theme options framework and more.

SleekPro Magazine

A wonderful theme for showcasing your work.

Black Label – Fullscreen Video & Image Background

This is a must see WordPress video theme playing videos in full screen.

Gamevidz

Gamevidz, a magazine style free WordPress themes built for egamer and video games blogs with rounded corners and fixed width.

Groovy Video

Groovy WordPress video theme is a colourful, funky video blogging theme, which is sure to put you at the top of the pile. Video blogging (vlogging) is trendy right now (all the cool kids are doing it), so do get your groove on with this theme! Get it? Got it? Good!

Irresistible

Irresistible is a visually-rich personal blog, with a little bit of a multimedia focus. Incorporating some nifty video-options and widgets, Irresistible should meet all of your personal blogging needs. Just add your content to the mix.

Wave: A Video Centric Theme for WordPress

Video

Create unlimited video categories, show popular videos, rate videos and share them on social network. This theme is just perfect for Video Blogging.

MyStream

MyStream is a flexible and extremely customizable personal blog theme with massive social media & lifestreaming influences. Change the background to your visual identity, move the many available widgets around and VOILA: you have YourStream.

Zevion

Zevion is a free brushed-metal design wordpress magazine theme with premium features such as animated gallery, post thumbnail, featured video, latest tweets, social bookmark, popular posts and more.

Object

Object is a supremely flexible theme designed to publish your photos and videos perfectly. The design sports 1 – 5 column layout options, 15 amazing colour schemes and one of the sexiest jQuery image galleries you’ve seen in a WP theme.

Cinematic

Cinematic free Blog, Movies, Video WordPress Theme.

Momentum

Momentum is a minimalist theme with striking red on white color. This theme brings up Christmas spirit in a minimalist and simple way. It has auto-slider feature posts and ability to add Youtube video at sidebar, can be edited from theme setup in WordPress admin panel without messing with the code.

Free Travel WordPress Themes

International Travel

Download | Demo

Listen to the Wild

Download  | Demo

  Cruise Theme (Free)

Download | Demo

 Euro Travel Theme

Download | Demo

 Tropical Island

Download | Demo

 Authorship Travel Theme

Download | Demo

Premium Travel WordPress Themes

 WP World Traveler

Download | Demo

Paper Plane

Download | Demo

Traveling

Download | Demo

Hotel Booking

Download | Demo

Lifestyle Theme

Download | Demo

1. Letter Frame

Demo | Download

2. Elegant Grunge

Demo | Download

3. Letter Frame

Demo | Download

4. Worn Wall

Demo | Download

5. SoulVision

Demo | Download

6. Photo Frame

Demo | Download

7. Color Paper

Demo | Download

8. Artistic theme

Demo | Download

9. Free WordPress Theme – KeKo

Demo | Download

10. Grunge High Quality Theme

Demo | Download

11. Grunge Style

Demo | Download

12. Grunge Fabric

Demo | Download

13. Note Paper

Demo | Download

14. Grunge Opal WordPress Theme

Demo | Download

15. Gamerpress

Demo | Download

 16. Grunge2 Wp Theme

Demo | Download

17. Outdoorsy Theme

Demo | Download

18.Deskspace Theme

Demo | Download

19. MysticGrunge Theme

Demo | Download

20. Cracked WordPress Theme

Demo | Download

21. Seabreeze Theme

Demo | Download

22. WordPress Theme ModernOak

Demo | Download

23. Papyrus

Demo | Download

24. Craftwork

Demo | Download

25. Echo History

Demo | Download

When it comes to do-it-yourself web design, WordPress is the most popular choice by far. It is free and simple. Most importantly, there are thousands of free WordPress themes that you can customize, as well as thousands available for purchase from a variety of vendors. The advantage of themes is that they take the guesswork out of web design and provide a stable architecture for your website. As you peruse themes for WordPress, however, you still have to think carefully about the choices you make. Just because you can build a website in minutes does not mean you should.

Before you even begin clicking through WordPress themes, you should identify your aesthetic. This actually can be a lot of fun. Think about the websites you visit and the designs that most appeal to you. Pick three favorites based on design not content and go to each of those sites. What do you like about them? Write down three features and three adjectives that pertain to each. A feature can be something as simple as “links on the left,” and the adjectives can be anything that makes sense to you. Next, look at what these websites have in common according to your lists. Do not panic if you cannot immediately find similarities in your lists. You do have a clearly defined aesthetic; you simply may need to look a little more closely to find the common thread.

Next, go back to those three favorite websites. What do you not like about them? Try to find three things on each site you would change if you could. This may be a bit more difficult because you like the look of these sites, but it is worth putting in the time and identifying three elements you would change on each site. After all, it is just as important to know what you do not like as it is to know what you do. Once you have your lists of likes and dislikes, it will be much easier to narrow down your WordPress theme options.

Now it is time to start looking through those themes. WordPress will provide you with a sample page, a description, and the download statistics for each theme.  You should check the stats because the more popular a theme is, the more customization you will need to consider to make it distinctly yours. While nobody wants their site to be cookie cutter, this matters more if you are creating a commercial website than a personal blog. As with all things, moderation is key. Tweaks and modifications should never be made solely for the sake of change. If you like a primary element, such as the font or a particular color, feel free to keep it. You do not need to reinvent these themes for WordPress; you just need to make whichever one you choose your own. Making deliberate changes while keeping the elements that drew you to the template will result in a site that is truly reflective of you.

This is just one approach to selecting a WordPress theme. The most important thing to remember is that you should dedicate some time to thinking about your website design before committing to a theme. Yes, you can customize it and yes, you can always replace it with another one, but with this site you are establishing your web presence. First impressions are lasting ones; you might as well make a good and meaningful one.

Choosing a WordPress theme from the thousands available requires careful consideration. Identifying your needs before perusing themes for WordPress will help greatly.

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 1. WordPress Cheat Sheets: Template Heirarchy Map

2. WordPress Cheat Sheets: Theme Anatomy Model

3.The WordPress Help Sheet (*.pdf)

4. WordPress Template Tags Cheat Sheet (*.pdf)

5. The Advanced WordPress Help Sheet (*.pdf)

6. WordPress Optimization/Cheat Sheet

7. GraphicRating – My WordPress Cheat Sheet

8. WordPress Visual Cheat Sheet

9. WordPress blog maintenance checklist (*.pdf)

10. 30+ WordPress snippets collection

11. WordPress Cheat Sheet for SEO

12. WP Help Sheet (HTML version from WPCandy *.pdf documents)

13. WP Loop Cheat Sheet

14. WordPress Theme Development Check List (*.pdf)

 15. WP Plugin API Cheat Sheet

16. Web Design WordPress Template Tag Reference Guide

17. WordPress 3.0 Cheat Sheet

18. WordPress Theme Generator

19. WordPress Template Designer CheatSheet (*.pdf)

20. WordPress Cheatsheet by Andy Wibbels (*.pdf)

21. WordPress Codex

22. WordPress Optimization

Art Full Theme

This is one of the most used magazine word press themes. It features fluid columns organized in a magazine format. It includes a customizable homepage, which shows the latest posts and the desired features at the homepage.

The Options WordPress Theme

The second word press theme that I will look at is the Option Theme. It has two different style sheets: one dark and the other light. The home page contains 5 sections and from the theme option, you can choose 14 other different options.

The Structure Theme

This theme has customizable home page and contains built-in image and video features that are also customizable. Further, this theme allows you to place contents blocks anywhere on the page. It provides a very unique way of managing your internet content.

The Visionary Magazine WordPress Format

It has a customized front page that makes your content look like news on a magazine site. It also has a sidebar navigation tab that is customizable using the jQuery script. Further, this word press can be connected with the YouTube, Metacafe Video and Google Video. With valid XHTML, these features can be easily utilized on this word press.

The Morning after WordPress Theme

The morning after theme is new three column homepage that has customizable header image or text. It a “featured” feature which highlights and associates images or thumbnails with the recent posts.

The IndoMagz WordPress Theme

This amazing magazine like theme has customizable homepage with an embedded gallery format category. Further, this new word press theme has a customizable archive page.

The Mimbo Magazine WordPress Theme

Mimbo magazine theme has a clean starter that is grid-based many it easy to use for any designer. It has no images and only has little CSS styling. This is an easy word press format to use for anyone who is starting on word press.

The Grid Focus WordPress Theme

The Grid Focus Theme has three columns on the homepage. It has conveniently placed navigation bars at the top and bottom of each page. The archives category is presented through a JavaScript which is at the top.

The Massive News Theme

This word press theme has a fully automated premium feature. It enables the editing of articles, images, links, and descriptions through its Massive News panel.

The Zeke WordPress Theme

This  is a classic three column widget ready theme which is developed to work well with wordpress 2.2 versions and above.