While Connections Reloaded 3.0.2 perfectly supports WordPress 2.9, the new version of WordPress introduced the feature of Posts Thumbnails.

For some strange reason, your theme needs to have the necessary code to “enable” this feature.

So, I decided to put together a version of Connections Reloaded that adds supports for the new post thumbnail features of WordPress.

If you’re using this theme, you’ll notice a new section in your New Post screen that allows you to designate an image as a post thumbnail.

By default, the posts do not display the post thumbnails, since each display requires two database queries. You can turn this on by visiting the Connections Reloaded settings page.

If you are running this theme on your blog, do consider a donation.

Read more and download Connections Reloaded

If you’re following me on twitter, I recently tweeted that I was working on an updated version of Connections Reloaded. After a few revisions to fulfill all the requirements of the repository, I give you the new and improved Connections Reloaded v3.

The biggest feature addition to this version of the theme is the inbuilt options page that allows for easy customisation from within WP-Admin itself.

The screenshots above give you an idea of what options are available. I plan on adding more options. Comment and let me know what you would like to control from the options page.

Besides this, I’ve also worked on increasing the security of the theme. If you notice an vulnerability, please bring it to my notice before making it public.

There has been slight cleaning up of the code and I’ve also added the .sticky class to the stylesheet for sticky posts. While the theme always supported this, it wasn’t obvious.

So, go ahead give the theme a try. Current users, remember to upgrade. And, if you’re using the theme, do consider a donation.

I reported that the links to my plugins and theme were throwing up ID not exists error. The reason is that I have been using a simple download tracking script called PHP click counter for this purpose. It uses a flat-file database instead of mysql for tracking the counts. Sadly, it does have a problem of corrupting the mysql. I used to face this problem a lot at the start, until I modified code to include file locking. It’s worked fine for a few years until two days back.

Anyway, since I moved most of my plugins to the repository, I decided to do away with the script and link to the download file directly. This required editing of a huge number of posts and pages to point to the new link.

I have updated the links on almost all of these. You will continue to notice this error on a few plugins that don’t have their repository page, but I intend to get these fixed by the end of this week.

If you do notice download links not working, please drop in a comment or email, so that I can get it fixed ASAP.

If you try to download anything off this blog right now, it will throw you an ID doesn’t exist error. The problem is because the script that I have been using to power the downloads behind this blog decided to conk off As a result all the links have gone dead.

However, since I host all the plugins and my theme on the WordPress repository everything is safe and sound. So, for those interested right now, you can access all the plugin pages from my plugin profile and the theme from my theme profile.

I have several posts and pages right now to go through before everything will work correctly. I’ll update this post or make a new one once things are back in order.

Awoke this morning to find a lot of traffic being referred from Mashable.

On further analysis was pleased to find out that my WordPress theme Connections Reloaded has been featured in Mashable’s 20 Great Free WordPress 2.7 Themes. Mashable is one of the top blogs on the internet with over 168K subscribers and 35K Twitter followers.

Many of you may be aware that I updated Connections Reloaded recently for WordPress 2.7. It includes complete support for WordPress 2.7 including paged and threaded comments, gravatars, tags etc. As well as complete backward compatibility with versions of WordPress as early as v1.5.

So, if you’re running and earlier version of WordPress, you don’t need to worry about upgrading.

If you’re not running Connections Reloaded, why aren’t you?

Download Connections Reloaded or view the Demo.

I had posted earlier that I had submitted the updated version of my theme Connections Reloaded to the repository. It’s finally been approved today. So, grab it while it is hot

The changes in this version are:

• Complete support for WordPress 2.7
• Threaded comments and paged comments are now supported
• Custom Header. Now you can change the image header from within WP-Admin itself
• Support for all versions up to WordPress 2.7. So, even if you haven’t upgraded to 2.7, you can use the theme without modifications.

Download Connections Reloaded or view the Demo.

I have released Connections Reloaded 2.0.1.

The theme has also been added to the WordPress Theme Directory, so that you can view and download and rate it there itself.

Please redirect all support requests to the support forum.

Changelog:

• Now Compatible with WordPress 2.6 and above
• Complete Gravatar support
• Better support for WordPress widgets. Comes with inbuilt widgets for best compatibility
• Fixed XHTML validation problem on posts with no comments
• Tags are now displayed on all pages

The blogosphere has been abuzz with talks about sponsored WordPress themes. WLTC’s Mark took a stand on the listing of sponsored themes at WLTC. While WLTC will continue listing sponsored themes, these will be clearly marked.

Today Matt Mullenweg made his stand clear about the same in a guest post at WLTC.

He also started a WordPress Idea on removing these themes listing from WordPress.org.

My Stand

As of this date I have released one theme and several plugins.

I have received a few offers to sponsor my theme, but hadn’t taken a positive decision.

Without going into much details about this, I will state one thing. You will never find any sponsored links in any of my releases.

Whatever links you will find in my projects with be to the plugin / theme page and maybe this blog. If I have to credit somebody for their work, then there may be a link to them.

However, there will be no paid links in the theme / plugin and all of them will be released under GPL, which means you are free to do as you please.

I however request you to keep the links to my site as they benefit me indirectly and to credit me for any modification you do.

How do I earn my money?

Two methods, viz. Donations and my sponsorship program.

Regular readers would be aware that I don’t have a day job now and infact I will soon be joining doing my MBA, which means additional expenses and no work for the next two years.

I therefore rely on my donors and sponsors to keep this me and my blog afloat. I haven’t been disappointed so far.

If you are interested in sending in a donation or would wish to sponsor a link on the site you can follow the pages above or contact me directly.

I put up the Connections Reloaded 2 Roadmap over a year ago and updated the same with the Connections Revolutions Roadmap in mid-Feb.

It’s December now and the only site that is running Connections Revolutions is this blog.

With over 6000 downloads from this site alone for Reloaded, to be honest I lost the interest to create an updated version of this theme.
Nor did I receive any encouragement for the same, either in the form of donations and/or through requests.

Just got a request today about Connections Revolutions and would like to throw this question over to the public.

Would you like to see a Connections Revolutions? And what would you like to see in it?

It will have all the features of Connections Reloaded, but in addition to that it will sport a 3-layout, have complete internationalization, additional page templates, better WordPress Widgets support.

I also plan on implementing easy editting of the theme in the Admin area itself.

But, I will not commit to any timeframe. Studies, maintaining this blog and Techtites, besides my other ventures is a full time job.

If you are keen to get Connections Revolutions out, please send in your donation.
I hope to raise $500 by December end or early January.

You can send in a donation via Paypal. Click the button below. It will send you to the Paypal site.

Remember that donations of $50 and above will receive a special mention on the PR5 Donation Received Page

If you don’t wish to donate, you can even buy advertisements on various pages and feeds.

Connections Reloaded today crossed 6000 downloads.

And that is counting downloads only from this website. There are other theme sites where this is being downloaded from and I have absolutely no track of those numbers.

Thanks to everyone who is using this theme.

If you love the theme, please do consider a financial contribution.

Have you made changes to the theme? And would you like to show off? Comment and tell me about it.