BuddyPress, the suite of  WordPress plugins and themes designed to work with WPMU, the multi-user version of WordPress, is now available in a version for regular WordPress sites.

BuddyPress adds features like a user profile, ability to add friends, instant messaging, groups, activity streams and more to your site. It allows your members to interact and connect.

You can get all the specifics on how to add BuddyPress to a single user WordPress install on the MPMU.org site:

http://wpmu.org/buddypress-now-supports-wordpress-single-user-no-wpmu-required/

thegreenfamilia.co.uk is included in the Studiopress showcase.

Woo hoo!

TheGreenFamilia.co.uk is now featured in the Studiopress showcase of sites:

http://www.studiopress.com/showcase/lifestyle/the-green-familia.htm

I’m happy that the extensive tweaking we did on this site, in combination with the beautiful graphics created by Sharon at comarni.com, is worthy of this honor.

Thanks to Brian at Studiopress 

It’s called a Wibiya toolbar and it sits at the bottom of your browser bar on sites where it has been installed.

On the toolbar are links to recent posts, random posts, Twitter, your Facebook community, if you have one, and other dubiously-useful links.

In general, I don’t like things popping up on my screen suddenly when I visit a website and I have to say I find the Wibiya toolbar more annoying than helpful.

If you want to present a professional website, I suggest you don’t consider installing this toolbar. The functionality and links that it adds can be better incorporated into your WordPress site in more attractive and useful ways. For instance, if you want to direct visitors to your RSS feed, the universally recognizable square RSS icon can be inserted into your header or sidebar or dozens of other areas. If you want to invite visitors to join your group on Facebook, an attractive Facebook icon and short invitation text will get their attention without the risk of annoying them.

It’s easy to get carried away adding features and “doo dads” to your site, especially a WordPress site. After all, there are nearly 7,000 WordPress plugins available now to add all sorts of features to your site.

Before you implement any add on or feature on your site, make sure you are clear that it adds value and is useful to your visitors.

It’s a clean theme with shades of dark gray, light gray, and blue. The look is different from many of the Studiopress themes because the header and footer areas stretch the full width of the screen.

The Executive theme from Studiopress

View the demo of the Executive theme

One feature in the Studiopress Executive theme is an SEO Options area inside the editor. Now when you create a post or page, you can enter a custom title, keywords, and description for that post or page. This will create the title tag, and the keyword and description meta tags based on what you enter in these areas. In the past, you would have to have an SEO plugin, like All in One SEO, to be able to specify and customize these values.

Executive is an attractive theme, but not unlike most Studiopress themes, its look is dependent on images, so changing the look of it will require either editing the images or dropping them altogether and relying simply on a color code.

The navigation on the Executive theme is set to display only pages so it’s a perfect theme for businesses who don’t want to have lots of blog posts, and hence categories, on their site. This gives the feel of a more traditional website without the features of a WordPress-based bloggish site. (Is bloggish a word?)

So take a peek at the Executive theme. It may just be what you’re looking for.

The folks at WordPress recently emphasized this in a blog post: http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/

WordPress included an automatic upgrade feature inside the WordPress admin. Just go to Tools — Upgrade to make sure your WordPress version is up to date.

You’ll also see a message at the top of your WordPress admin panel asking you to upgrade when new versions are released.

I’m really excited about this because the Lifestyle and Church themes are my two favorite to work with.

You can read about the new and improved features added to these new versions on the StudioPress site:

Church 4.0 theme:  http://www.studiopress.com/releases/church-40-theme-released.htm

Lifestyle 4.0  theme:  http://www.studiopress.com/releases/lifestyle-40-theme-released.htm

I had posted about this on the WordPress.org site and also on the WP-eCommerce plugin forum, as did several others, but the thread on the WP-eCommerce forum never got a response.

Finally, someone else has taken the time to figure something out, though my code guru points out that this isn’t really a solution but rather a work around. But, for what it’s worth…

Below are the steps you need to take to fix the conflict between the two plugins:

Step 1:
Add the following lines to your theme’s header.php file immediately below the call to wp_head():

<?php if(is_front_page()) do_action('jdm_head'); ?>

Step 2:
Open the main file for the Featured Content Gallery (content-gallery.php) and edit the following lines at the end of the file:

/* we want to add the above xhtml to the header of our pages: */
add_action('wp_head', 'gallery_styles');
add_action('admin_menu', 'gallery_options_page');

Change them to:

/* we want to add the above xhtml to the header of our pages: */
add_action('jdm_head', 'gallery_styles');
add_action('admin_menu', 'gallery_options_page');

If your Featured Content Gallery is on the homepage of your WordPress site, this fix MAY eliminate the conflict between FCG and WP-eCommerce. This is only really a band aid solution and may not work for all. The developers of Featured Content Gallery have not made any changes to their program and report on their site that there is simply a conflict between the two plugins.