As usual there are some not so smooth sailing spots, one of them being that I noticed WordPress not “keeping” an assigned theme when either playing around with widgets (such as which to use, where to use and customizing a few) or installing some plugins. It’s quite an interesting bug, as in the Themes panel it shows as being assigned is design B but in reality it falls back onto the default theme A and is displaying this one. To fix it, one clicks onto activate (the now unintentional already active design A) and then again B to get B back. It does not seem to be a huge issue except that it is annoying as doing so destroys the selected and specifically arranged widgets under theme B and I have to start over (will write the positions into the theme itself I think).

Apart of that it’s an interesting study of new ways to customize, building possibly my own framework.

The files of WordPress define many useful PHP functions. Some of the functions, known as Template Tags, are defined especially for use in WordPress Themes. There are also some functions related to actions and filters (the Plugin API), which are therefore used primarily for developing Plugins. The rest are used to create the core WordPress functionality.

Many of the core WordPress functions are useful to Plugin and Theme developers. So, this article lists most of the core functions, excluding Template Tags. At the bottom of the page, there is a section listing other resources for finding information about WordPress functions. In addition to this information, the WordPress phpdoc site details all the WordPress functions by version since 2.6.1.

Build a ‘WordBurner’ Email Newsletter Manager using WordPress and FeedBurner

by Paul Burgess

There are lots of different ways to communicate with your users these days. RSS feeds, SMS, & sites like Twitter have changed how we speak to our audience. But for my money, you can’t beat the personal touch of a good ol’ email newsletter.

Of course keeping up a newsletter can take effort, but in this tutorial I’ll show you how to use your regular Wordpress website combined with Feedburner to make a simple email newsletter manager.

There are many dedicated and great email newsletter solutions on the market. This is not intended to replace them, but rather to offer an easy way to email visitors of your personal site or blog a round up of updates and news without having to install new software or set up new systems.

— (Via NETTUTS – Web development tutorials and links – » Build a ‘WordBurner’ Email Newsletter Manager using WordPress and FeedBurner).