Justin Tadlock

It’s another in the Weekly Roundup series and I have quite a few articles, blogs, and sites to share with you. I’ve tried to hop around the Web a little more this week, while taking a small step back from designing themes — I need a break once in a while. So, here are the things that I’ve read this week that I you might find interesting.

WordPress:

I’ve only found a couple of useful WordPress things this week. Be sure to check them out and check back next week for more.

• Blogtheme.com Warning
  Mark Ghosh at Weblog Tools Collection points out another site stealing themes. If you’re a WordPress theme developer, you might want to check this out.
• WordTube Plugin
  I haven’t played around with this yet, but it looks like another option that I might add to some of my news/magazine themes in the future. Plus, there’s an MP3 option that I might implement on my sister’s site once she decides to put some music up.

Feeds:

I’ve finally updated my feed reader. These are three sites that you should definitely check out. Be sure to subscribe also.

• Armen Thomassian
  It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally gotten around to adding Armen’s blog to my feed reader. I’ve kept up with his posts for a few weeks now, and he definitely deserves to be on my list of subscribed sites. Plus, he went straight to the top because his name starts with and A! I never miss his new posts now.
• Caroline Middlebrook
  In the vast online world, Caroline Middlebrook is trying to compete on the Web with her website and make a few dollars along the way. She’s got an interesting story, and you should definitely check out her blog.
• Nyssa Brown Design
  Nyssa’s site is a wonderful experience in design. Yet another designer I’m envious of. I’m happy to add her to my feed reader this week.

From the feed reader:

This week was a good one for my feed reader. Here are some wonderful articles from the blogs that I subscribe to.

• Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy?
  Caroline Middlebrook writes about how she creates her audience by leaving comments on others’ blogs. It’s something we should all look at. She’s pushed me to reevaluate my blog commenting strategy.
• Five Easy Steps to Editing Your Own Work
  Anna Goldsmith, in her first article at Copyblogger, describes the ins and outs of writing well. There’s nothing new here for me because these are basic tips that I learned in a few journalism and English classes. It’s always nice to get a refresher course on occasion though.
• Five years from now
  Chris Brogan asks an essential question to his readers — where will we be in five years (technologically)? It brought up an interesting discussion.
• The Secret to Building a Popular Blog and Getting Tons of Readers
  Another great article from Dosh Dosh this week. Maki takes a look at how to build a core audience and use them as distributors of your content. It’s quite long, but well worth the read.
• Three Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Writing Every Post
  Mohsin from Blogging Bits wrote an intersting article on narrowing your content down to a specific topic. This is a great article to go along with those which ask you to narrow your overall content down to a specific topic.

Design:

Since I’ve been expanding my work with theme development, I’ve also been expanding my bookmarks on design. These are some great sites to visit to fill your design needs.

• Komodo Media
  One of those sites that you just have to link to because of its design. I’d love to pick Rogie King’s brain on the design of this site. If only I had the skills to design like this…
• Kuler
  I’m finally getting around to using this great tool. This is basically the best color scheme tool I’ve found thus far. Everyone knows I’m not the best designer, so it has been useful for picking colors for a few of my upcoming themes.
• The Morning News
  Since I’ve been developing a few news and magazine-style themes lately, it’s best to see what other greats news designs are out there. There are quite a few elements that I like about this site.
• Themed Fonts
  If you’re looking for a few cool fonts to download, look no further. TypeNow has a large collection of free movie, music and video game fonts to play around with.

Other sites, blogs, and articles of interest:

This list is of sites that I’ve come across that don’t fit into the other categories. Don’t look them over though. There are some real gems here.

• Ayumi Hamasaki
  The Empress of JPop. Since I’m trying to keep up with Asian culture during my stay in South Korea, I figured I’d do some reading on one of the most popular artists in Asia.
• Asian Video Blog
  This looks like an interesting site that covers different movies from Asia. I think it’s best to see what Korean cinema has to offer during my stay.
• EPIC 2014
  A neat video about the year 2014 and how technology will change the world. I enjoyed it, but think it may be a little old now.
• Online Parallel Bible
  For those of you interested in biblical study, this looks like a great tool. You can view several different translations of the Bible alongside each other. Compare and contrast to your heart’s content. I’ve been reading the variations in the traslations of the Genesis over the weekend.

What, no Bill Maher this week? I didn’t see anything worth posting about him. He’s all over the Net anyway. I’m sure you can manage to find some good content.

So, this concludes my weekly roundup once again. You can always follow what I’m bookmarking throughout the week by checking out my del.icio.us bookmarks. Or, you can subscribe to the feed to keep updated when I post.

Be sure to check back next week for another weekly roundup.