While WordPress is built on open source technologies and philosophies it’s also a proven tool for generating income with your design and/or programming skills.

Web designers offering to create custom WordPress themes is something everyone is probably familiar with. I’ve noticed that you don’t see a lot of WordPress plugin creators getting much recognition in the “WordPress marketplace” for their creations and I’m not entirely sure why that is. My hunch is that it has something to do, once again, with WordPress and its strong connection to the open source movement.

Let’s put that debate aside for now and focus on what capable programmers can do to earn a few dollars using their skills. While I know of a few people selling copies of plugins they’ve written to users I think there’s probably another large market for programmers interested in writing plugins for private clients. With the incredible explosion of WordPress powered blogs and sites these days there has to be a large need for custom-built plugin solutions.

I’m sure site owners have problems that can’t be handled by the current crop of freely available plugins. If you’re a good programmer with WordPress experience it can’t hurt to put yourself out there and offer your services to see if there are any opportunities available to you.

Comment spam is a problem that’s raging out of control and WordPress blogs have become the spammers’ favorite target. The default install of WordPress makes it incredibly easy for robots and spiders to submit garbage comments laden with spammy links at a constant rate.

It’s almost impossible anymore to handle these comments without the help of a plugin.

The most popular spam fighting plugin, by far, is Akismet by Automatic. This plugin has always been my weapon of choice against spam comments because of its clever use of a centralized database.

In short, Akismet collects and categorizes comments from every blog running the plugin. It then uses rules based on the comment’s content and also how other blog owners have judged similar comments to decide whether or not the comment is spam. Akismet even works on trackbacks and pingbacks.

Akismet requires an API key from WordPress.com to run so you’ll need to make an account there first. That’s the only big hurdle in the installation and it’s worth it based on how well Akismet performs against spam. Your API key can be found on your WordPress.com profile page but if you’re having problems you can check out their FAQ for help.

Once you have your API key and the plugin is installed and activated on your own blog you’re almost ready to go. With your API key in hand, go to the “Akismet Configuration” panel available under “Plugins” on the WordPress administration. Now you simply paste your API key into the box provided and save.

Akismet will begin to automatically filter your comments, trackbacks and pingbacks as they come into your blog. Be careful though as Akismet is known to occasionally incorrectly mark valid comments as spam. You’ll have to periodically go through the comment moderation queue to look for any of these false-positives.

There are a lot of great WordPress themes available online that you can download and use for free. A free WordPress theme is an excellent solution for anyone looking to start a new blog on a small budget.

Of course, as the saying goes, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Anyone considering using a free WordPress theme needs to be aware of the dangers involved in using one on their blog.

There is an entire industry of WordPress theme designers who build designs, sell links in the theme’s footer and then release the theme for free online. After these sponsored links are sold they are embedded into the theme’s code in a way that makes them almost impossible to remove without some programming knowledge. An inexperienced user who tries to remove the links almost inevitably breaks the layout of the theme in the process.

The motivation for the theme designer is to make money (and there’s nothing wrong with making money) and the link buyers are looking for ways to raise their relevancy in search engines by getting more links to their sites out there. So what’s the problem? Everyone wins, right? You get a free theme, the designer gets paid and the buyers help their search engine rankings.

The problem is that using a free theme with sponsored links opens yourself up to having your blog tied with sites that search engines consider bad or spam. It’s guilt by association with the paid links in the theme you’re using. This then imposes a penalty on your own site whether or not your blog’s topic is related to the sponsored links.

If you’re looking to use a free WordPress theme on your blog remember to do your due diligence and make sure if the theme contains any links that look questionable. If you’re uncomfortable with the links then your best bet is to pick another free theme to use instead.

I’ve always felt one of the bigger holes in WordPress was its lack of any kind of built-in Ecommerce Software out of the box. Large majorities of people feel that WordPress is ready to be seen as more of a Content Management System than just a simple blogging platform but before you can take that claim seriously we need some online store functionality. With such great Search Engine Optimisation out of the box it’s surprising that this problem isn’t being addressed.

I’ve used a handful of third-party shopping cart solutions in my day and I would even be interested in a WordPress plugin that ties into one of those systems. I suppose that there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel when it comes to ecommerce and WordPress. It’s also interesting to me that some of the “powers that be” within the WordPress community haven’t been pushing for more ecommerce solutions.

I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before some established Web Design firm comes out with a really great plugin or extended version of WordPress that addresses this missing piece in the software. I think it’s an important move if WordPress is to transition away from blogging platform to a full-blown Content Management System.

Adii has written a post today about some new video themes that have been released. He wonders if themes centered around video are about to be the hot new trend in WordPress design.

That’s a natural reaction but what I wonder is what ever happened to simple WordPress theme design? Are the days of easy to install and use themes gone?

I noticed this trend, and I’m sure all of you did as well, when the number of “magazine” style themes began flooding the theme sites. At first these themes were only premium items that required a fee but more and more of them are being released for free now as time moves on.

Is this a case of the market dictating more complicated and diverse themes for WordPress? Or are the WordPress designers losing site of what users really want?

I don’t have an answer to these questions yet but I sometimes think the old saying that “Less is more.” is a pretty good policy to have and that people are losing sight of that.