WordPress, as most of us experience, is so strong and flexible. It is hard to think of a website that can't be brought to life with it.

Besides this power, it is still simple which is great. This simplicity sometimes ends up in some non-existing features which would actually be nice if they were available when needed -seems like the definition of plugins: )-.

As a designer/developer who spend lots of time with WordPress, I want to share a list of plugins which I use for almost every WordPress setup and they end up saving lots of time.

First of all, of course, I'll begin with a shameless self-promotion. The first plugin (Reporteur) is developed by me but I assure you that it fits the title of this post perfectly (else, I'm sure that the editor would probably remove it without even me knowing).

Oh, I'm also going to include the author's names, especially for avoiding mix-ups. There are many plugins so closely named but so far apart on features, usefulness and quality.

Reporteur

It is a simple Google Analytics reporting tool.

If you want to get your information right in the WordPress admin instead of going to the Google Analytics website, this is for you.

The plugin gives a basic information about your website (which were useful enough for my family and friends who forced and tortured me to create this plugin).
Author: stildv

Google Analytics for WordPress

This is a stable Google Analytics code including plugin.

We all know that, things work by just copy-pasting the Analytics code to the footer. Or was it better to the header? And how do we track outgoing link clicks or downloads?

Well, with this plugin, you don't need to worry about all that.
Author: Joost de Valk

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WordPress offers a huge space for creativity and flexibility when designing and developing new websites.

Any type of website can be built on top of it: from blogs to newspapers, corporate websites to landing pages and even social networks. All you need is a theme coded to handle that functionality.

Yes, WordPress theme development. That is an easy process for experienced hands who knows the capabilities of the application and familiar with its functions and "not too hard" for others.

To simplify developing new themes, there are awesome WordPress theme frameworks and starter themes that you can use as a base for skipping the repetitive steps and begin with an optimized playground.

Here are the 34 free and good-quality ones that will save your time from searching them. And, in the bottom, you can find a comparison table for these WordPress theme frameworks.

Roots

The main power of this framework is its extremely clean WordPress code output, clean head and URLs (even for the head, CSS and JS paths).

Upon its activation, it automatically applies many useful customizations (like creating a homepage, defining the permalink structure, etc.).

Roots has 2 widget areas and it includes Blueprint CSS, 960.gs, the 1140px Grid, Adapt.js, Less Framework 4, Foundation by Zurb, and Bootstrap by Twitter.

Skeleton

It is a theme aimed at helping you build simple, uncluttered, useable, and mobile-friendly websites.

Skeleton has styling for typography and form elements + includes simple tabs and accordions.

The theme is based on and inspired from Skeleton Responsive Boilerplate, Theme Options Framework, Thematic Framework, Formalize and TwentyTen Theme.

P.S. There are also optional styles for bbPress and Jigoshop.

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Having useful design resources under our hands always ease the process of creating beautiful websites, banners, posters, etc.

Mega Bundle 2, which is a big collection of design goodies offered for a very good price ($29 rather than $545), is providing WRD readers a chance to grow their design libraries by giving away 5 licenses (please check the details on joining it below).

Who created this bundle?

VectorPack.net  is a design studio creating professional vector art and design elements including stock vector art, Photoshop brushes, backgrounds, textures, fonts, seamless patterns and WordPress themes. Simply, every design element that we are in need of.

What included with it?

The Mega Bundle 2  is a set of 650+ design elements that VectorPack.net is offering for a price of $29 instead of $545.

It is available until the 13th of October (8 days from now on). This great Mega Bundle 2 contains the following items:

• 319 vector elements
• 278 PS brushes
• 66 abstract backgrounds
• 58 seamless patterns
• 30 textures
• 1 WordPress theme

Considering VectorPack.net presents such useful Mega Bundles at a discounted price regularly, subscribing to their newsletters would make sure you know about them in advance.

How to join the giveaway?

You can choose one of the methods below to join the giveaway:

• comment to this post
• or retweet this post (click here for an easy re-tweet)
• that's all

Winners will be selected randomly on 12 October 2011 (1 week later) and good luck!

WordPressThemeShock has recently released a design bundle which includes many freebies.

It is totally free to download and not offered for a limited time.

The bundle consists of:

10 WordPress themes

The themes have many custom options like 3 different image sliders, dropdown-menus, image gallery, contact form with captcha, etc.

750 high-quality icons

The icons include the most important items to be used in web apps like actions, files, media and much more. They come in 5 different size and in .PNG + .PSD formats.

Many design elements

And, there are many other design freebies like site templates, buttons or vector elements.

WordPress, without any doubt, can be used to create any type of website like blogs, newspapers, social networking and much more.

Jigoshop is a free plugin for e-commerce-enabling WordPress installations to easily sell both physical and digital products.

It allows the admin to track orders, views sales reports and track the inventory from a custom dashboard.

There are widgets like shopping cart, product search, navigation and filtering-by-price which can be positioned on any part of the website.

The store has several marketing tools like displaying related items automatically, discount coupons and cross/up sell.

Jigoshop can calculate tax-by-location and has multiple currency + shipping options. Currently, it has built-in support for PayPal, Moneybookers and cheque as the payment methods.

WordPressThemeShock is a fresh website that shares high-quality-yet-free design resources and WP themes created by their talented team.

The freebies include items like ribbons, credit card icons, navigation examples and more with PSD source files.

Besides these design items, it is possible to find creative HTML-CSS resources like "pure CSS3 frameboxes" or templates.

A bundle of creative design resources, Design Cocktail, was giving away 10 licenses to WRD readers which was announced last week.

The winners are selected today and announced at the bottom of this post. But before that:

What is Design Cocktail?

It is an attractive set of design resources like patterns, vectors or Photoshop brushes which are created by Designious and offered for $29 rather than $724 (if each item was purchased one-by-one).

The bundle includes:

• 40 vector packs (959 vector elements)
• 10 pattern packs
• 20 brush packs
• 15 tees designs
• design tutorials with sources
• a metalique font
• 3 Photoshop + Illustraor add-ons
• 3 un-released/fresh vector packs
• a WordPress theme

Here are the winners:

The 10 lucky winners are selected randomly and here they are:

• Betty (comment # 281787)
• eati (comment # 281799)
• @1618design
• Blusky (comment # 281736)
• @JMeReddish
• Nico (comment # 282970)
• Niju Mohan (comment # 283399)
• Dan(comment # 284208)
• saurabh khirwal (comment # 282102)
• @myimmortalize

Congratulations to all winners and thanks to everyone for joining the giveaway.

Design Cocktail, a bundle of various professional design resources, is giving away 10 licenses of the bundle ($29/each) to WebResourcesDepot readers.

Details of joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post, but before that:

What is Design Cocktail?

Designious, a website offering creative resources like vectors and Photoshop brushes, has created a bundle named Design Cocktail which includes:

• 40 vector packs (959 vector elements)
• 10 pattern packs
• 20 brush packs
• 15 tees designs
• design tutorials with sources
• a metalique font
• 3 Photoshop + Illustraor add-ons
• 3 un-released/fresh vector packs
• a WordPress theme

all priced for only $29 which would normally cost $724 if purchased one-by-one (it is also possible to get a 10% discount by simply sharing the resource – details can be found on the resource's web page).

How to join the giveaway?

In order to get a chance to win one of the 10 licenses Design Cocktail is giving away, simply comment to this post and/or tweet this article. You can do both to increase the chances.

Winners will be selected randomly on 7 February 2011 (1 week later).

Good luck to everyone.

As you already know, WebResourcesDepot uses WordPress as the blogging engine (which is clearly an awesome application).

Lately, WordPress added WRD to their showcase which features websites built with the platform and uses its functions deeply.

Rating is open to anyone and thought it would be the best if the readers who experiences WRD regularly rate us too.

Besides that, WordPress Showcase is a great place to find inspiration on WP-built websites which are categorized well.

Thanks so much in advance for your support and being an awesome reader with your comments, tweets, suggestions and everything.

For a designer, developer, photographer or anyone/any business creative, the website of their own is the best place to showcase their skills and services.

You may be "about to design your new portfolio website" and thinking whether you should start from scratch or get inspired from/use a template.

And, not sure to use a CMS or maybe considering to start designing it in Photoshop?

No worries. Here is a collection of 20+ free portfolio templates, WordPress themes and PSDs to help you get started or inspired for a beautiful website.

XHTML/CSS Portfolio Templates

WaterColored Web Portfolio (With PSD) (demo)

This XHTML portfolio template is the result of a series of 2 tutorials which also includes the PSD of the design.

It has an image slider that is built with jQuery to display the featured works and a sidebar to display any other updates (from the blog, Twitter, etc.).

Seven Seas (demo)

A single page portfolio template with a unique design that has a slider and tooltips integrated.

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