Wordpress. It keeps getting cooler and cooler doesn’t it? The premiere blogging platform has recently one-upped itself with the release of ‘Thelonious’ (WP 3.0). As updates go it is mostly free of glitches and bugs. However, there have been some compatibility issues with certain themes. As the geniuses over at Wordpress work that out, we decided to scour the web and collate twenty-five amazing(and free) themes that are sure to work with the new update.

For newbies, a theme is a general feel or aesthetic of a particular blog or website. They take the hard work out of making your blog look snazzy and cool. Without further adieu, here are the top 25 free Wordpress themes that are guaranteed to work with WP 3.0. Enjoy and happy e-decorating.

The Morning After by WooThemes

This could be the most popular theme of all time. It has over 100,000 users and climbing. Thankfully, those users who have moved on to WP 3.0 will continue to live a worry free e-life.

Structure by Organic Themes

This theme is available in four variants and a variety of color schemes for the discerning blogger. It integrates easily and fits just about any blog type.

Mansion by GraphPaperPress

This is the perfect theme for you photo bloggers out there. It has a slew of functionality, including the ability to use a flexible-width thumbnail grid for both images and photo journal entries. Perfect for those who adhere to the “a picture is worth 1,000 words” mantra.

Twenty Ten by The WordPress Crew

This is the default Wordpress 3.0 theme. That’s right. It comes with the update. Don’t worry. You won’t looked down upon if you use it. It’s great!

Magazeen by WeFunction & Smashing Magazine

This theme has both style and substance to spare. It’s called Magazeen because, well, it is meant for users who intend their blog to capture the feel of a print magazine. It does so in spades.

Mystique by Digital Nature

This is the perfect choice for CMS publishers and tech-savvy bloggers. The options here are almost limitless. Widgets, an intuitive interface, tons of color choices. You name it. The perfect theme for someone who likes to switch things up every once in a while.

AutoFocus+ by Fthrwght (Allan Cole)

This is another theme designed primarily for photographers. Showcase your favorite images on a  800px, 8 column grid. The typographs out there will also be happy with the theme’s 22px baseline grid. Classy and functional.

Gadget by ThemeJam

This theme is sharp and sleek. Consider it the iPad of Wordpress 3.0 themes, or at the very least, the Lexus. Perfect for tech-blogs.

Suffusion by Aquoid

Suffusion is known for it’s supreme versatility. You can see from the photo above just all of the options that are available to users of this high-quality theme. It features 10 widget areas, one-column, two-column and three-column fixed-width formats, 10 pre-defined templates, 17 pre-defined color schemes, two customizable multi-level drop-down menus, featured posts, a magazine layout, tabbed sidebars, widgets for Twitter, Social Networks and Google Translator, translations in many languages and RTL language support. Wow!

Titan by The Theme Foundry

This theme sure is handsome aint it? It doesn’t rely on it’s looks, however. Titan allows you to integrate Twitter, Facebook, Feedburner and Flickr with ease. And they say hotties aren’t smart.

Magnifolio – The Gallery/Blog WordPress Theme

As the text reads, this theme is ready, willing and able to be integrated into Wordpress 3.0.

Genova – Minimalistic WordPress Theme

This elegant theme features 12 color schemes and, most importantly, is browser-safe.

Expose Gallery WordPress Theme

The Expose Gallery theme has three skins to choose from and comes with full video support and a suite of widgets and plugins. Not bad guys. Not bad.

Asylum – Premium WordPress Theme

This theme is so stylish it gives classic Frank Sinatra a run for his money. Five skins, three fonts and a shortcodes. It should be asked to join the ratpack.

Vision – Corporate and Portfolio WP Theme

This is the perfect theme for the large corporation in your life. It features five different themes so a multi-branch company can separate each limb by style.

UniSphere Minim Corporate and Portfolio

As the tag-line goes, awesome. This theme comes in a variety of flavors. Perfect for any blogger and their varied tastes.

Evolutionary Theme

The “evolution” in Wordpress 3.o themes. This theme comes in four color schemes and offers a ton of customization options, including the ability to both widgets and animations.

Imperial

This tech-friendly theme comes in two colors, black and white. It also has many useful columns for bloggers who like to keep many information conduits open on their front page.

Dimenzion

This is the perfect theme for blogs about celebrities, movies or other cultural ephemera. Cute colors too.

Channel Theme

This is an extremely useful theme that can help turn your blog into a media megasite like Slate or Huffington Post. Media friendly to the max.

Magazine Basic Theme

Here is another useful theme for bloggers who want to resemble an online magazine.

Yieldon

This is a great and simple Wordpress theme for bloggers who take a no frills approach to their information dispensing.

deStyle Theme

This is a simple yet classy Wordpress 3.0 theme that is perfect for music or fashion bloggers.

Designora

This functional theme could be used for just about any blog imaginable. It comes with RSS buttons and the ability to include widgets. Great for beginners.

Enertia

This is the perfect theme for the blogging arm of a small business or enterprise. It’s elegant, unobtrusive and functional.

So there you have it. Have any favorites that didn’t make the list? Drop us a line. Also, keep an eye out as more themes become 3.0-ready every day.

WordPress is a very popular open source platform. While the team works on the the 2.9 release, there are few upgrades that remedy some current security faults.  It is impressive that an open source solutions takes such an aggressive stand toward security.

Changes:

• two tag importer plugin support has ended
• more secure file upload rights
• suppresses vulnerable PHP code areas
• solves trackback DOS attack problem

This is not the end all be all of security.  You hosting environment is also important.  Also evaluate your hosting provider to ensure that you site is safe and secure.

Here is a round up of 8 useful WordPress Plugins for Rating and Polls.

POLLS

PollDaddy

Overview: PollDaddy is a easy to use poll manager. The plugin works right into the install WordPress backend.

Democracy AJAX Poll

Overview: This AJAX based plugin is quick to set up and easy to use. Using {democracy:*id*} to address the polls and the id as the poll id.

PoWPoll

Overview: This fully AJAX based plugin is great for smaller blogs. It has IP-logging ; permissions ; user options ; inline/static polls ; poll archive page.

SodaHead Polls

Overview: This easy to use plugin has many skins and modifications to match any needs you need.

WP-Polls

Overview: This is also an AJAX based poll plugin that is template and CSS customizable.

Ratings

Post Star Rating

Overview: Post Star Rating is a plugin that allows blog users to rate posts in a classic five stars way.

Xavin’s Review Ratings

Overview: Input ratings as a fraction (4/5) or a percentage (80%) ; Use any amount of stars from 2 to 100 ; Set the minimal star fraction allowed, whole, half or quarter ; Split multiple ratings in one post/page into groups, and have a separate overall rating calculated for each ; Display the rating as image stars, text stars, a percentage, a fraction, or any combination ; Multiple star image sets included, others can be easily added ; Fully templatized output, use whatever tags you want ; Optionally group ratings in a table or other structure ; Settings page for global settings and tag defaults.

GD Star Rating

As we all know, WordPress is a popular blog/CMS choice. One of the great things about WordPress can also be the worst. Dynamic is a great way to describe the platform. This is great most of the time, except when you are getting a ton of page views. Every time a page is accessed, its pulls a dynamically created page. That can be very taxing on your server. Thankfully WordPress has great plugin expandability.

The Plugin of the hour is WPSuperCache. This fantastic plugin creates static HTML pages from the WordPress dynamic pages. This allows the server to serve the pages faster and with less load. When matched with a professional heavy duty server, this plugin can serve millions of pages an hour.

It is great when you realize all this stuff, minus the hosting is free! Got to love open source.

Here are 10 really nice Free Gallery Themes for WordPress. Due to the popularity of WordPress, many people may find these templates very helpful.

CSS Gallery | Demo Site | Download Here

Sharpfolio | Demo Site | Download Here

Hyku Gallery | Demo Site | Download Here

Nautilus | Download Here

The Unstandard | Demo Site | Download Here

CSS Gallery | Demo Site | Download Here

Autofocus | Demo Site | Download Here

Gallery | Demo Site | Download Here

Snapshot | Demo Site | Download Here

Cw2 Personal Gallery | Demo Site | Download Here