For those who don’t know what it is, WordPress Theme Generator is an online site that generates custom WordPress themes. It doesn’t require any HTML, PHP or CSS knowledge. All you have to do is visit the site, choose from the different layout options available to customize the theme design and layout. The theme you create is automatically displayed on the right side so you can preview the theme while you’re creating it. When you’ve come up with a design that you like, just click on “Save” and you’ll be able to download all the necessary files as one zip file.

Personally, I haven’t tried it but I believe it’s a good alternative for those who don’t have any background knowledge in HTML, PHP or CSS and would like to have a unique, customized WordPress theme of their own.

UPDATED: 4/20

A few days ago, I asked this question: Are you Looking Forward to WordPress 2.2? as the release for WordPress 2.2 was scheduled to be on Monday, April 23rd. However, Matt announced yesterday that the release would be delayed for at least a week or two as the guys from the WordPress dev team try to polish things up.

The tagging system which is one of the features that’s supposed to be included in WordPress 2.2, will be included in the next release, version 2.3. But it’s a good thing though coz the dev team is making sure that when the tagging feature is added, it would be totally compatible with the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin making it easy to import your current tags into the new tagging system. This is good news for me and everyone else who’s using UTW.

While the tagging feature has been put off, WordPress on the other hand has included several new features and improvements.

• Improved comment editing
• Multiple format comment feeds, including Atom
• phpmailer integrated for performance and maintainability
• Plugin Sandboxing to Test Drive Plugins
• Default and Classic WordPress Themes widgetized

What I’m looking forward to in this coming release is the Plugin Sandboxing feature. I believe that this would be very useful to a lot of bloggers like me, the type who likes to install and try new plugins. Anyways, all we can do for now is sit back, relax and wait for WordPress 2.2 to be released.

Dougal Campbell on his blog Geek Ramblings, talks about another feature that hopefully will be added in the WordPress 2.2 release, which is the “Deactivate All Plugins” option that can be done with a single click. This is a time saver especially when you want to upgrade your WordPress installation. No more going through the plugins one by one, all you have to do is click on the “Deactivate All Plugins” button. This was one of the things that I hoped WordPress would implement and now it’s gonna be a reality.

Btw, also check out Jhay’s post – WordPress 2.2 Delayed: Removed tagging support.

New User Features

• Tagging support
• Permalink redirection
• Improved comment editing

Developer / Power User Stuff

• Atom 1.0 support for feeds.
• Multiple format comment feeds, including Atom.
• Switched to jQuery for core JS, which is lighter and faster.
• Atom API support.
• Additional XML-RPC APIs for pages and such.
• phpmailer was integrated for performance and maintainability.

Future additions

• New permalink redirection stuff
• An additional bundled theme?
• Widgets?

Good news right? Well, not for everybody. Apparently, the tagging support that is included in WordPress 2.2 breaks the good old plugin called Ultimate Tag Warrior. The conflict is brought about by the is_tag() function that is used by both WordPress 2.2 and Ultimate Tag Warrior. That’s bad news for people including myself who are using UTW. Fortunately Moeffju has found a way of fixing the issue with a UTW hack. It involves editing the ultimate-tag-warrior.php file with your text editor and replacing all instances of the is_tag function with UTW_is_tag. After this, just activate the plugin and it’s done.

Just found out that WordPress 2.2 does provide an importer for UTW tags and so I guess it’s not that bad after all for us UTW users. But it still means that once you upgrade to 2.2, you’ll no longer be needing the UTW plugin. Too bad coz I’ve grown to love that plugin. One final word for those who plan to do the upgrade. Check for any conflicts that your existing WordPress plugins might have with WordPress 2.2 before doing the upgrade. Better safe than sorry is what I always say.