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We never stop singing the praises of WordPress here at Arbenting, and that enthusiasm has fueled this post through to fruition as well. We decided that we wanted to present a list of the most helpful design blogs with a fixed focus on our favorite of content management systems. Beyond just the list though, we wanted to also give an informal run-down of sorts about each one of them, providing a bit of information for you to chew on (not literally, we don’t mean for you to physically try gnawing on your screen…so stop that). Please note that the sites are not presented here in any kind of order. We don’t know that we could put them in any kind of preferential order even if we tried, as we find all of them an essential addition to our reader.

Download the opml with all 10 blogs.

WP Candy

WP Candy is a wordpress blog featuring news, quicktips, tutorials and more. If you have never been there before I highly recommend browsing around the site a bit and tasting all of the goodies. WP Candy was co-created by Michael Castilla, a front-end developer, currently living in Miami, Florida and Dan Philibin, a self-taught web developer out of western Pennsylvania. Both guys are very passionate about WordPress and that fact really comes across in the site.

Live Since – September 2007

Twitter – @wpcandy

Article Highlights

• A Guide to CSS and WordPress: Part 1 The Advanced WordPress Help Sheet
•  
• 4 Simple Ways To Speed Up WordPress
• Automating My WordPress Workflow

Subscribe to the All-in-one WPCandy Feed or go to the WP Candy Feeds page to subscribe to one of the more specific feeds.

Pro Blog Design

Pro Blog Design, created by Michael Martin, covers blog design, coding and Wordpress. Michael is a Web designer from Belfast specializing in, you guessed it, blog design (you did guess it, right? I thought I heard something. Well, we’ll just pretend you did.). The blog is written by a number of different web professionals giving you a wide range of experience and opinion.

Live Since – August 2007

Twitter – @problogdesign

Post Highlights

• 30 Ways to Improve Readability
• 13 Tags to Delete From your Theme
• Make Your Template Unique
• 25 Ways to Spice Up Blog Post Photos

Subscribe to Pro Blog Design

Wordpress Hacks

Wordpress Hacks started out as a wordpress fan site created by Kyle Eslick, the founder of Apricot Media. It has since grown into a very helpful blog with contributions from a number of different talented wordpress enthusiasts. Also, the site covers a wide variety of WordPress related topics.

Live Since – October 2007

Twitter – HackWordPress

Post Highlights

• How To: Hack WordPress Theme Template Pages
• Building a Multi-Author Blog with WordPress
• How To: Making Your Old WordPress Posts New Again
• How To: Add Social Bookmark Links to your Theme

Subscribe to Wordpress Hacks

Theme Shaper

The Theme Shaper blog was created by Ian Stewart, the mastermind behind Thematic. Ian is a professional designer, WordPress enthusiast, and self-taught graphic artist with about 10 years of professional experience.

If you are a fan of Thematic, you absolutely must subscribe to this blog. And if you haven’t checked out Thematic yet, then do yourself a favor and go there today!

Live Since – January 2008

Twitter – @iandstewart

Post Highlights

• How To Modify WordPress Themes
  The Smart Way
• WordPress Child Theme Basics
• WordPress as a CMS: How To Think About Building a Website With WordPress
• WordPress Child Theme Basics

Subscribe to Theme Shaper

WpRecipes

WpRecipes is a blog created by Jean-Baptiste Jung of Cats Who Code (another great blog you should stop by) which delivers quick, clear and concise WordPress recipes straight to your reader.

Do not expect any long, in depth articles here. The entire blog is made up of quick code snippets and tips that I guarantee you’ll wonder how you ever lived without this awesome site.

Live Since – October 2008

Twitter – @catswhocode

Post Highlights

• Display your categories in two columns
• How to: Show related posts without a plugin
• How to: Create a tag page on your WordPress blog
• How to: List future posts

Subscribe to WpRecipes

Justin Tadlock

While Justin Tadlock is not completely about Wordpress, he also tends to post about life and blogging stuff now and then, Wordpress is the main focus of the site, and the articles are too good to not include him on this list. And really, there are very few non-WordPress related posts, so make this a must stop along your cyberspace WP broswing and you won’t be disappointed.

Live Since – April 2003, though the blog didn’t become Wordpress focused until October 2007

Twitter – Not Found. If anyone knows, please comment and we’ll change it.

Post Highlights

• The complete guide to creating widgets in WordPress 2.8
• The slippery slope dilemma: How much control should users have?
• Coding the WordPress Loop
• Why I created a WordPress theme framework

Subscribe to Justin Tadlock

WP Engineer

WP Engineer was created by Alexander Frison, a freelancer in the field of web and graphic design; Frank Bültge, a developer of plugins, themes and solutions and author of WordPress – Weblogs einrichten und administrieren; and Michael Preuss, a freelance webworker and WordPress theme developer. Together these three self-proclaimed ’WordPress Junkies’ provide some highly useful WordPress articles.

Live Since – September 2008

Twitter – Not Found. If anyone knows, please comment and let us know.

Post Highlights

• Publish The Feed Later
• Customize Your WordPress-Feeds
• The Perfect Title Tag
• Expand Search Results In WordPress

Subscribe to WP Engineer

Blog Design Blog

Blog Design Blog was created by Vinh Le to explore the importance of good design in the success of a website on which an individual or group of users produce an ongoing narrative (sorry, I just couldn’t bring myself to say the b-word again…not, the b-word, blog. I couldn’t bring myself to say blog again…dammit). Vinh Le is a Freelance web designer living in Quincy, Massachusetts.

While Blog Design Blog isn’t 100% WordPress based either, it is completely focused on blog design in general which is always relevant to WordPress designers and developers. It has also been a bit slow lately but I am really hoping for it to pick back up. If nothing else, the archives are full of some truly great reading material.

Live Since – February 2008

Twitter – @blogdesignblog

Post Highlights

• Why You Need to Become a Renaissance Blog Designer
• How to Disassemble a Free WordPress Theme Part 1
• How to Not Get Lost When Learning to Create a Blog Design
• 3 Things to Remember When Designing a Blog Footer

Subscribe to Blog Design Blog

WPZOOM

WPZOOM is a fantastic blog created by Pavel Ciorici. The site is a constant and consistent stream of wonderful WordPress articles as well as a bountiful supply of discussions and reviews on WordPress themes, plugins and other Wordpress related topics.

Live Since – April 2008

Twitter – @ciorici

Post Highlights

• 40 WordPress Plugins to Improve your Blog’s Performance
• Quick Tip: Insert “Reply To” Into Your Comments
• Tips to protect your WordPress blog
• Using WordPress as a Portfolio: Examples & Themes (15+)

Subscribe to WPZOOM

The Official WordPress Blog

No list of blogs for the WordPress enthusiast, developer or designer would be complete without the The Official WordPress Blog. I mean, it’s like all official and stuff. You get news, development updates and more, directly from the horse’s mouth.

Subscribe to The Official WordPress Blog

Your Turn

Do you have a favorite WordPress blog that we left out? Comment and leave us a link. And check back, because we will be doing a list of general web design blogs soon.