WordPress resources are abound us, with dozens of sites showcasing tips, plugins, themes, et. al. The following list is a collection of the most talked about, best-known resources for finding plugins, tips, news, themes, and so on from the designers and coders that make blogging possible through the WordPress system.
The list has also been built around the amount of articles, age, and usefulness of each individual blog - what it gives back to the community. Also included are some sites that primarily feature “blogging tips”, which include tutorials for WordPress or are using it as their blog platform.
If you have any sites that you enjoy reading, please feel free to leave a link in the comments area. Otherwise, enjoy the collection!
Themes and Design Inspiration
1. Smashing Magazine - Design inspiration headquarters with compilations of WordPress and related CSS design websites showcased.
2. Theme Shaper - A fairly new and upcoming blog that has released several themes and has presented a new look at WordPress design and usability.
3. Binary Moon - From the designer of the Mimbo Pro theme, there are tips and website maintenance tips on the site.
4. Brian Gardner - Brian has effectively brought inspiration to the theme market with both premium and free themes and offers design inspiration for others.
5. Futurosity - Futurosity contains several high quality themes and tips for website owners.
6. Justin Tadlock - Justin has created several themes that extend the functionality of WordPress while providing inspiration for other aspiring designers.
7. Nathan Rice - Nathan has created several themes for popular websites and offers free tutorials and themes for the community.
8. Ptah Dunbar - Ptah has effectively used WordPress to create stunning, functional designs for many mainstream websites.
9. We Love WP - We Love WP is a collection of the best designed WordPress themes, brought to visitors in an attractive fashion.
10. Daily Blog Tips Themes - Daily Blog Tips has burst onto the theme sphere with the release of several free and premium themes. The blog also features hundreds of other blogging tips and WordPress tutorials.
11. WP (WordPress) Designer - Small Potato of WordPress designer launched his blog more than two years ago with the purpose of designing great themes. Today, the blog and resources created are still intact, but the community has fallen apart since the original owner left.
12. Headset Options - A collection of great themes used widely across the blogosphere. Includes basic tutorials to using WordPress.
13. Adii - Adii (the WordPress rockstar), has built up a web business around the premium themes market and continues to produce tutorials and themes for bloggers.
14. Solostream - Michael Pollock was one of the first people to feature and built a web design business around WordPress. While he doesn’t update his blog, you can still find his premium (and free) themes with some tutorials on his website.
15. Elite by Design - At Elite by Design, Brian has released several themes and has offered tutorials and posts about WordPress.
16. Theme Lab - Leland, through Theme Lab, has created more than 60 high quality free themes and offers short, concise tutorials for working with WordPress.
17. Design Disease - Design Disease has created themes for many high-profile sites and blogs, with some of its popular themes released as free themes.
18. Clazh - Abrit Jacob of the blog Clazh has brought some great themes to the market along with some blogging/WordPress tips.
19. WP Guy - WP Guy is a relatively new resource with simple tips, plugin and theme related, to help you build a better blog.
20. Armen Thomassian - A WordPress theme designer who created several somewhat popular, simple themes.
21. Cory Miller - Cory Miller has developed a successful collaboration between several designers, creating themes designed more towards corporate/company blogs.
22. You The Designer - You the Designer features tutorials that are geared more towards bloggers and people looking to create elegant website themes.
23. Darren Hoyt - Darren along with several other designers have helped make the magazine layout popular in WordPress, beginning with the free version of Mimbo Pro.
24. Elliot Jay Stocks - Offers some design inspiration and short tutorials on WordPress coding.
25. Foxinni - Malan Joubert’s blog with a small (but ever-growing) collection of unique themes he has created.
26. WP Elements - At WP Elements, a relatively new (late 2007) site, Jason has created themes (including the one on this site) that have recreated the purpose of blogging - sharing any kind of information - including movies and other forms of medium. He has released several free and premium themes to date.
27. IAMWW - Will Wilkins has created a few extremely popular, minimalist themes.
28. Jauhari - At this blog, there is a fairly large collection of WordPress themes and blogging tips.
29. Magnus Jepson - A premium theme designer who has created several themes for high profile websites.
Plugins, Tips, Tutorials, and Basic Setup
1. WordPress Codex - The Codex contains information on getting started and any changes to the WordPress system.
2. Lorelle on WordPress - Lorelle covers popular blogging news, WordPress tips, digests, and news roundups.
3. Blog Perfume - The creator of the Feed Analysis tool, that also showcases blog system tips, plugins, themes, and useful resources to take your blog to the level you want.
4. Easy WordPress - Easy WordPress offers tutorials, tips, plugins, and themes for use with WordPress.
5. Specky Boy - A design and resource website for website designers containing themes, icon packs, links to resources, and more.
6. WP Themes Gallery - The WP Themes Gallery site features useful tutorials, tips, and news stories relating to WordPress.
7. WP Zoom - Pavel Ciorici has created a one-of-a-kind resource with his site which showcases themes, plugins, and resources for maximizing the potential from WordPress.
8. WP Candy - WP Candy features tutorials and resources - “The Best of WordPress” - for people who use WordPress.
9. Performancing - This blog (primarily for blogging, productivity tips) has created/had designs created for WordPress as well as offered WordPress tutorials and resources.
10. WP Fun - At WordPress Fun, Andrew Rickmann has tutorials, plugins and resources for developing websites with WordPress.
11. WordPRess Expert - WordPress Expert (John Lamansky) covers news, tips, and plugins related to WordPress and also offers services accordingly.
12. WordPress Garage - Another site that primarily focuses on WordPress news and resources, there is a lot of information contained here.
13. WordPress Max - Simplified, “WordPress for the Geek Impaired” - basic tips or advanced tutorials put into easy-to-follow context.
14. Alex King - Alex King is one of the most famous WordPress plugin developers, having created the Share This plugin and several popular themes.
15. Hack WordPress - Kyle features dozens of plugin and theme reviews as well as news and tips featuring the WordPress system.
16. Webmaster-Source - Webmaster Source is targeted towards people who develop websites (bloggers), so ti offers some great tips on creating better designed websites.
17. Jeffro2pt0 - Hosts the popular WordPress Weekly talk show addressing WordPress news.
18. PlanetOzh - Features several tips and news-related stories on WordPress.
19. Joost de Valk - Joost has created several plugins especially for creating search engine optimized WordPress blogs.
News
1. Blogging Pro - Blogging Pro, although recently sold, has been able to churn out great resources and news stories relating to the blogging platforms.
2. Ryan Boren - Ryan features several (not updated consistently) important WordPRess security vulnerabilities and how to avoid them; lead developer at WordPress.
3. WordPress Publisher Blog - The Publisher Blog contains news and announcements from sites that have switched to WordPress.
4. Matt Mullenweg - Matt Mullenweg is the leading developer of WordPress, so his blog showcases sites that have switched to WordPress and any updates.
5. Blog Herald - The Blog Herald features news stories from across the web, but also has a weekly posting on WordPress news from people experienced with the system.
6. Weblog Tools Collection - One of the larger “news” blogs on WordPress, it covers most of the important news and any useful plugins or themes they may happen to find.
7. WP Assist - Essentially a news provider that contains links to recent posts from several top WordPress topic blogs, also features other services.
8. WP Source - WP Source is a site similar to WP Assist but features a larger collection of blogs, not focused entirely on WordPress.
9. Mashable - Mashable routinely creates resource lists targeting certain categories of WordPress news - plugins, news, or themes.
May 31st, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Nice list. A few of these I haven’t seen before. And of course - thanks for mentioning Theme Lab!
May 31st, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Thanks for the link back.
Although I visit most of these sites on a weekly basis, there are a few that even I didn’t know about.
May 31st, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Leland and Justin, you’re welcome and thanks for your comments.
May 31st, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Hah, thanks for the link! Stop by and be part of the show sometime.
May 31st, 2008 at 8:51 pm
Thanks for putting ThemeShaper in amongst such fine company!
May 31st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Thanks for including Hack WordPress on your list, although I can’t thank you for making my feed reader overflow! Hehe
May 31st, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Thanks for the link too! We’ve also built a resource for WordPress tutorials at http://ithemes.com/tutorials … and are planning more tips and tutorials there too.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:02 am
Hey thanks for mentioning my blog, I’ve officially became a resource! lol
Expect lots of WordPress innovation to come, I can’t wait to bring it!
June 1st, 2008 at 5:41 am
Hey, thanks for the mention… and the great list of WordPress resources!
June 1st, 2008 at 10:28 am
Thanks everyone for your comments.
The list isn’t necessarily comprised of sites offering tutorials, etc., but also includes the blogs/sites of people who are involved/design with WordPress.
June 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Thanks for the link.
This is a nice roundup. I already read quite a few of them, but there are several that are new to me.
June 1st, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Thanks for the link to IAMWW.com. Awesome list of WP sites!
June 1st, 2008 at 3:10 pm
[...] 57 Best WordPress Resources – a nice list of WordPress resources for themes, plugins and tutorials. [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Excellent roundup!
June 3rd, 2008 at 5:22 am
Thanks a lot for including my wpzoom
June 5th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Awesome list! I’m hoping to release a few of my own themes as well as keep listing great WordPress themes for designers to use as jump starts at my own site, WP Foundations (http://www.wpfoundations.com).
Thanks for the list and some new sites to follow!
June 5th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Another site which has a large showcase of quality free and premium WordPress themes is http://www.premiumwp.com/
June 6th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
[...] 57 Best WordPress Resources - A large collection of sources for WP resources. Webmaster-Source was included, so of course I had to add it to BlogBuzz. [...]
July 8th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
[...] at IAMWW - the home of the IAMWW and Moo-Point themes - when I spotted a post called “57 Best WordPress Resources.” Since Mr. Wilkins’ blog is the most uncluttered thing anyone’s seen on their [...]
October 6th, 2008 at 12:26 am
what a huge collection there..thanks