• Twitter for Wordpress
  This plugin can be coded into your theme or used as a widget. It is a very simple plugin that offers customizable CSS for styling.
  
• TweetMeme
  TweetMeme easily allows your blog post or page to be retweeted. It provides a live count of how many times your post/page has been retweeted throughout Twitter, and is a very popular plugin for large brands like TechCrunch and Mashable. The tweets are tracked at TweetMeme.com.
  
• Lifestream for Wordpress
  Obviously this plugin does a lot more than a twitter feed, but it offers several key advanced features like the use of custom themes for feed display.
  
• Tweetroll / Tweeple
  These tools give you customizable widgets to show your recent tweets, list your followers, and other stats. There is also an option to monetize your tweets.
  
• TweetSuite
  TweetSuite offers a whole host of features like tweet tracking, most tweeted, and retweets.
  
• Twitter Widget Pro
  Twitter Widget Pro properly handles and displays your Twitter feed in your blog’s sidebar.
  
• Tweet Stats
  Tweet Stats utilizes the TweetBacks plugin (above) to display "Most Tweeted" and "Recently Tweeted" widgets on your blog.
  
• Tweet This
  Tweet This adds "Tweet This" icons to your posts, shortens the post URLs, and automatically tweets new posts. Note: This plugin may or may not work in Wordpress 2.9 — there have been mixed reviews on using it with the latest WordPress release. I’ve gotten it to work, but your mileage may vary.
  
• Tweetable
  Tweetable turns your Wordpress admin into a Twitter client with status updates, URL shorteners, and the ability to tweet your posts as they are published.
  
• TwitterCounter
  TwitterCounter allows you to easily integrate and customize TwitterCounter.com followers and stats widgets for your sidebar.
  

Good luck and happy developing!

Nikole Gipps is a punctilious web developer, marketing-minded writer, enthusiastic gardener, improvisational cook, loving wife, and fun mother of two. Read more about her work at That PHP Girl or follow all of her adventures at the nhgnikole mashup.

• Removed the decorative sidebar and shifted the content left.
• Dropped the sidebar lower, modified it to randomly select testimonials, and added a logo to the top of the page on that side.
• Created custom backgrounds for the page, header and footer.
• Swapped out the footer widgets for a special announcement and a link list (using WordPress links).
• Used a structure of pages instead of posts.
• Connected to an existing shopping cart to create purchase options.
• Changed color schemes and some font treatments to achieve the right look.
• Created a graphic for the slogan to connect the elegance and star power of the event.
• Formatted the content and pictures for flow.

The end result is a flirty and fun site featuring the site owner’s favorite colors that does a great job in getting across the feel of the event itself. It is a big departure from the original format of the Rockstar Wedding Planner LIVE! site, which was more of a long sales form — and the folks at RSWP couldn’t be happier with their new design! The event (and the site) are sure to be another smashing success for Daykin Productions.

• Custom backgrounds throughout.
• Dropped navigation in the header, expanded wording in the footer.
• Replacement header featuring Callandra’s fantastic logo.
• A new sidebar that changes from the blog to the static pages, and features a rotating testimonial and social media icons.
• SEO helpers like the WPSEO plugin, sitemaps, and search engine pinging.
• New blog formatting to suit Callandra’s needs.
• Custom WordPress templates for blog archives, recent posts and testimonials.

The end result is the launch of Cherry Tree Occasions — Wedding Planner to the Wildly Romantic! I think all the small details on this site make it one of my favorites. Callandra and I really came together as a team to make this site great!

• Custom imagery, headers and backgrounds.
• Modification of the base theme, and restructuring of the header.
• Changes and additions to the stylesheets (CSS), including font changes.
• A "social media hub" with a custom icon theme and links to all her various social media profiles.
• Assistance for the site owner in making new posts, adding images, and generally using WordPress.
• Critical plugins like Google Sitemaps and WPSEO.

• Custom PHP programming in the menu bar, sidebars, and content areas, including a request form.
• A new logo.
• Changes to the stylesheets (CSS) and new icons.

The company is continuing to work on their site and refine their message, and I see great things for their future.

Of course, if you do get stuck, I’m always here to help. And Mark, go ahead and tweet your heart out now.

This project’s modifications include:

• Custom PHP/HTML/CSS/Wordpress programming for the order form, footer widgets, menu bars, and sidebars.
• Copywriting and typography assistance.
• Customizations for the Lifestream Plugin for Wordpress, featuring the On Stage Free Icon Set
• Aquaticus Social – Free social media icons for the feeds at the bottom right
• WPSEO and Google XML Sitemaps Generator plugins.
• Custom cut-out images for the featured images section.

The client is very pleased with how it turned out, and I really enjoyed this project because I got to work with graphics and icons more than I usually do. You can see the final result live now at MyTechTeam.net.

I did have one noteworthy snag though … I learned the lesson of saving your work before upgrading! The theme had been upgraded in the past week, and what I thought would be an easy upgrade of the version I modified turned out to be hours of work. I guess a few lines of the new code didn’t work with the existing site, so I spent a lot of time fishing through to figure out where the problem was. I did figure it out in the end though, which was important to me in terms of presenting a quality product to the client.

To recreate Hear Florida in WordPress and upgrade it to the client’s needs, I pulled out the base HTML and CSS from what I believe was a modified YooTheme template, along with the content. I then …

• Configured the site to use permalinks.
• Removed all layout-based tables from the content, and generally cleaned up the HTML and CSS for the site. (Tables displaying tabular data were retained.)
• Installed and activated the WPSEO and Google Sitemaps plugins.
• Used the Google Maps API to create location pages which put the logo and address on a point on live maps. Each map point includes that location’s logo and contact information.
• Added a blog with a feed and Feedburner connection. The blog features several custom archive page templates, including a category listing, a single page, and an all-posts listing.
• Added social media connections (Twitter, Facebook, AddThis) to the sidebar and the blog posts.
• Created a newsletter signup form for use with a custom newsletter template.
• Made a dynamic sidebar to load content as it is added by the content admin.
• Created a Q & A section which includes a form to ask questions, a format for reading the answers to previous questions, and social media connections for sharing the content.
• Organized the site and navigation for clarity, ease of use, and elimination of redundancy.

Overall, all parties are pleased with the result and I am confident that this new version of the Hear Florida site will prove to have better longevity and marketability for the company.

Customizations made to the base them include:

• Adjusted the CSS for the div columns for the front page slider to allow for more text and less image space at a 300px height slider.
• Removed the image resizer and link from the front page image. Swapped out the Woo Themes image function for get_post_custom_values($key) to pull the correct image.
• Took out subscription widget and added my own sidebar links to the blog using the Woo Themes Hand-drawn Icon Set.
• Removed date-based archives in blog sidebar for a recent posts widget.
• Added hard link to Portfolio category of the blog into the header; changed exsiting code to highlight Portfolio instead of Blog when the user was in the Portfolio category of the blog.
• Creation of a custom contact form and response thank you page.
• Added Read More, Testimonial, and Recent Posts widgets to the bottom of the front page.
• Removed footer/widgets from the blog (for now).

<?php // Changed from using thumbs.php to displaying full image. ?>

This way, if you are using a theme framework for your site, you can known which customizations you should move over to the new version.

Why use PHP comments instead of HTML comments? HTML comments will still show up when you view source on a page. PHP comments are removed by the PHP engine before the page is sent to the browser.