Both of my WordPress themes, Ala Moana and Plane Jane, are now officially widgetized — bringing them to version 2.5.

It was so darn simple to do, I’d swear I missed a step or five somewhere along the way. But, according to my tests, they look pretty good and do what they’re supposed to do. You can download your favorite updated theme file directly from here:

• Ala Moana
• Plane Jane

Enjoy! Now, time to move on to the new theme, code named "Philbert"…

I found my way over to theundersigned.net yesterday by following a series of links starting from Photo Matt and was stoked to learn that Thomas is in the planning stages of kicking off a WordPress theme contest.

This one promises to be better than those that have come in the past. Not only will there be an actual cash prize, but you have to design a brand spankin’ NEW theme from scratch to enter. There will be absolutely no previously released, or k2 (et al) modified themes allowed. I think that’s a totally great idea.

You know I’ve already started sketching my next “killer” theme to enter, so keep an eye out for more news on this contest in the future.

Since Friday night is my "tick night" as my wife puts it (the keys of the iBook "tick" well into the night, hence the name…), I put aside some time to update my WordPress Ala Moana theme to v2. It incorporates all the similar changes that the recent Plane Jane update got, plus a couple other tweaks. You can go grab the new versions here if you like.

I’ve already started widgetizing both of the themes, so look for new releases that include that functionality soon.

Just a quick note to say that I updated my Plane Jane WordPress Theme to version 2 over the weekend.

Notable changes are a bug fix in the comment.php file that would break the DOM if there were comments to a post and the comments got closed later. I also cleaned up some of the CSS, tidied up other theme files, and changed the doctype from XHTML 1.1 to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The doctype change makes the theme validate correctly for both CSS and HTML (since that’s VERY important now-a-days).

Next up will be making similar changes to Ala Moana, and then producing a 3rd theme (which promises to be the best yet) in the next week or two.

I hope all had a happy, healthy, sane and (somewhat)sober 4th of July, even if you don’t celebrate the "rebellion" with the rest of us Yanks.