Before we can write our function, we need to understand exactly what we’re trying to do. Our goal is to cache our sidebar to a text file and update that cache whenever we publish a post, change our theme or make changes to the sidebar widgets. Since we’re planning on using our cache to display the sidebar on a different application, we need to be able to easily delete the cache without any ill-effects (we don’t want our sidebar broken at any time).

Releasing a WordPress theme on a marketplace, such as  ThemeForest, where the audience is so large and diverse, has some challenges. You cannot test a solution directly with the client. You need to plan in advance for all edge cases, and ensure that your theme is as customizable as possible. If you’re inexperienced, chances are that some things will unfortunately slip through the cracks. Luckily for you, we have drawn on our hard-earned wisdom to help you avoid repeating the same mistakes we made.

Jean-Baptiste Jung will show you how you can easily add data (posts, comments, categories, etc) to your WordPress blog, without any manual effort.

Perhaps one of the biggest holes in WordPress prior to version 3 was the lack of custom menu support. Menus often had to be hand coded into header.php  and, whilst they could be ‘smart’, it often let the client needing a PHP savvy developer to make alterations to the setup.

Security has always been a hot topic. Offline, people buy wired homes, car alarms and gadgets to bring their security to the max. Online, security is important, too, especially for people who make a living from websites and blogs. In this article, we’ll show you some useful tweaks to protect your WordPress-powered blog.

As most of you already know, Wordpress 3.0 has been released. Although it’s still in a beta release stage, you can take it for a test drive and check out the many new features that are available. Many people already use Wordpress for many things other than just blogging but this release will certainly create opportunities for managing content even more effortlessly than before and using Wordpress as more than just a blog.

One of the great things about working with WordPress and developing your own themes is the community and all of the resources that are available. If you’re not sure how to do something or looking to see what solutions other theme designers and developers are using, you can find plenty of information and tutorials to help.

If you are a regular user of WordPress then you might get bored of the default user interface of WordPress. Although the User Interface of WordPress is good but there is always room for improvement. Automattic the company behind WordPress has decided to go for Open Source Design Contests to make the User Interface of WordPress even better.

WordPress has pretty decent typography features in the core installation. But there are plenty of areas ripe for improvement. That’s where the plugins below come in. Whether you just want more control over how the basic text on your site shows up or you want to do something a bit more advanced, there’s surely a plugin available to help.

Any good website owner knows that they need to be constantly looking at ways to improve their site even through small little tweaks. If you’re using Wordpress you’ll notice that it isn’t easy to create a development version without creating a separate installation. Of course, you can make changes directly on a live WordPress site but that isn’t recommended for anything other than minor tweaks.