Two of our Premium themes, BlueSky and MotherNature are going to be available for free download from this moment onwards !

These themes have been built with a lot of care and attention to details, as we do for any theme that we release from this website. Check them out and Enjoy it while it is free !

Enjoy the new year with these free themes !

Enjoy it while it is hot at FastTrack theme page.

For anyone who is starting their blog right now, they can just install the WordPress 2.3 [and some plugins if they are privacy conscious] and start using one of my upgraded themes.

but there are people who have customized the theme so much, that they do not want to upgrade their theme with my latest version.
They want to know what exactly I changed for making theme WordPress 2.3 compatible.

The new feature that is added in the WordPress 2.3 system is the Tags functionality.
Once you upgrade your WordPress installation to 2.3, you would see a text box under the ‘Write Post’ area, for adding “tags” to both new and existing posts. This will let you store the tags along with the posts in the database.

Step 1: Display the Tags under each post’s content

Add the following code somewhere after the call to the_content() or the_excerpt() within “the loop” in index.php, archive.php, search.php and single.php.

<p><?php if (function_exists("the_tags")) the_tags("Tags: ", ", ", "<br/>");?></p>

This code makes sure the function "the_tags()" exists, before calling that. This way the theme will still work on earlier versions of WordPress.

One Important thing to Note:

the_tags() method will only work, when you made a call to the_post() method while initializing the loop.
Some themes still use start_wp() method instead of the_post(). Those themes will not show the Tags at all, even when you made a call to the_tags().

Step 2: Display a Tag Cloud on the Sidebar

If your theme is Sidebar Widgets Compatible and you are using the Sidebar Widgets option, you could easily drag and drop the Tag Cloud Widget [that comes with WordPress 2.3] and be done with it.

If not, you can add the following code somewhere in the sidebar.php file.

<?php if (function_exists("wp_tag_cloud")) { ?>
<li>
<h2><?php _e("Tags"); ?></h2>
<p>
<?php wp_tag_cloud(); ?>
</p>
</li>
<?php } ?>

Again, this code checks for the existence of the method, before calling it, just to make sure the theme works fine in previous versions of WordPress.

I think we have covered two important steps so far.
When someone clicks on one of the Tags, it will lead them to an archive page [WordPress loads the archive.php if found within the theme folder].
So we will just add a heading for the Archive page to let them know they are viewing the archives for that given Tag.

We will open up the archive.php. Usually there will be code that checks if this is an archive for category, or month or day etc.
We will add the following lines to it.

<?php if (function_exists("is_tag")&& is_tag()) { ?>
<h2>Archive for the Tag "<?php echo single_tag_title(); ?>"</h2>
<?php } ?>

This will just add a heading in case someone is viewing your archive by Tags.

Wow. Thats it?
Yeah, and your site is now ready to Rock and Roll with WordPress 2.3.

Disclaimer :
While I made sure the code given here works fine with my themes, there is no guarantee that this will work with your theme without any issues. If you do have an issue, doing it manually, please contact your theme author.
Do not post it as a comment here. Thanks.

New Feature:

WordPress 2.3 introduces a new feature called “update notification”.

What it does?

Whenever you [mostly the administrator of the blog] login to your WordPress installation, It checks the version of WordPress and any plugins you installed and notifies you if there are new versions of them.

Sounds Good. How is it achieved?

Your WordPress installation sends the data about your website, to a remote server [WordPress.org] and receives the information from that Server and notifies you if there are new versions.

Cool. What is the problem with this?

The Problem is with the data that is being sent. It is sending personally identifiable information such as your website’s URL, your hosting server’s capabilities, your host’s IP address, the list of plugins you are using and their versions to WordPress.org.

How would they use this information?

When asked, they do not even know what is the use of knowing your website’s URL but their response was “they will find some use for it in the future“.

We will have an option to turn this feature off. right?

No. There wont be any option that you can go and uncheck. You should grab the following two plugins and install them, according to the same discussion.
1.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-wordpress-core-update/
2.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/disable-wordpress-plugin-updates/.

Ok. at least there are some options for those who know how to upload new plugins and install them.

but how about those innocent people who does not know how to install these two plugins?

Those websites will send that information to WordPress.Org and they will use it according to their privacy policy.

Thats all I have for now and if I come to know more things, I will update this post.