Ok, from now on, I will do my best to keep all Revolution news announcements over at the Revolution site, and use my personal site to write about other things. That being said, I wanted to run by an idea I had the other day, and see if there would be any interest from you.

Many of you know that the whole RSS/Syndication thing is now a very popular way to display content, and I had a crazy brainstorm the other day on creating a site that was made up of something similar. A lot of niche sites are scraping RSS feeds (illegally I might add) from the popular ones such as Yahoo, ESPN, CNN, etc and the likes.

Well my idea is to create a site that uses RSS feeds from the WordPress community, and will be broken down by category - somewhat of a directory, but it will show the most recent posts from those of us who love to use WordPress. The key here, is that it would be completely opt-in. Which means if you wanted to increase visibility to your website, and establish higher traffic, you could opt-in to have your RSS feeds displayed on this site.

For example, if I was interested in Football, I could visit this potential site and click on Football, (among many other categories/subcategories) and see a list recent posts written by those who use WordPress for their blogs.

It’s just a fun idea I had the other day to help promote the WordPress community - so, what do you all think of it? Feel free to comment with suggestions or concerns…

Three weeks ago, I officially announced the launching of the Revolution theme affiliate program. I am very pleased with results so I decided to run a contest with it that will last the entire month of March. See the contest prizes/rules below.

1st prize - 4 night Bahama Cruise & $500 spending cash
Sailing out of Miami, Florida, Royal Caribbean’s Majesty of the Seas will stop in Nassau, Bahamas; CocoCay, Bahamas; Key West, Florida. I will personally book the cruise with you and an official Royal Caribbean certified vacation planner to ensure that you get the best service. This is a cruise for two, and available dates to take this cruise are Oct 06, Oct 13, Oct 20, Oct 27, Nov 03, Nov 10, Nov 17, Dec 01, Dec 08 - all dates in the year 2008.

2nd prize - Samsung 19″ Flat-Panel HDTV, Revolution All-Inclusive Package or $500 cash
The Samsung HDTV, featuring a built in high definition TV tuner and a Game mode, which enhances dark areas and sharpens the picture for a lush, realistic experience from your favorite console. The Revolution All-Inclusive Package will give you lifetime access to all of the current Revolution themes, as well as any future themes. Or you can take the $500 cash prize, which will be sent to your Paypal account.

3rd prize - $250 cash or gift certificate to your favorite online retailer
Receive a $250 gift certificate to your favorite online retailer - Apple, Best Buy, Target, The Gap, Old Navy, Sports Authority, Amazon.com or any place of your choice. Or you can take the $250 cash prize, will be sent to your Paypal account.

Contest Rules:

• The contest will begin on March 1st, and run until 12:00 midnight March 31st
• The people who generate the 3 highest amount of affiliate sales (in US dollars) throughout the course of the month will be awarded 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes
• To enter the contest, you must be a Revolution affiliate - you can sign up here to become one
• You must post on your blog and linkback with the details of this contest
• Self-purchases made with your own affiliate code will NOT count
• You can use any of the affiliate banner images from the Revolution site

Feel free to be creative with promotion of the Revolution themes and this contest - you can use PPC advertising campaigns such as Google AdWords, write up a detailed blog post and submit it to Digg, have your friends write posts as well with your affiliate code and use your networking abilities to spread the word in any way possible.

If you have any questions about this contest, please feel free to contact me. I wish you all the best of luck, and look forward to the contest. Remember, the contest will begin as the clock strikes midnight on March 1st!

I am very happy to announce that I have just released the Revolution Pro Forum 1.0 template for free. Yes, you read correctly, that I am offering the forum template, which works with phpBB3, at no additional cost.

Take the Revolution Pro Forum template for a test drive to see what it looks like! The template comes equipped with a navigation bar that you can very easily customize so that it integrates with your Revolution Pro Media site, or even use it on it’s own. Visit the support forum for directions on how to download the template.

I am proud to announce that I have officially released Revolution Pro Media 1.0 theme - you can go ahead and view the live demo of the theme.

With the announcement of this new theme launch, I am happy to offer the Revolution All-Inclusive theme package for $299.95 - this offer will be available until midnight (CST) Thursday February 14th.

Some of the features of the Pro Media theme include:

• Featured homepage tabber area
• Featured photos from Flickr
• Featured YouTube video
• Other featured areas using custom fields
• Google AdSense integration in between posts and comments
• Section, Archive, Blog page templates

Feel free to drop by the announcement page to see a screenshot of a new feature, the theme options page for your WordPress dashboard.

Here’s a screenshot to see what the theme looks like:

It has been a very productive past few days for the Revolution Pro Media theme development. I just wanted to keep you all in the loop, and let you know that the theme should be available early this coming week. Ideally it will be Monday, but don’t hold me to it.

The Revolution Pro Business theme should be rolling out a week or so after that. (Possibly sooner depending on my schedule.) more on all of that…

Here are some other random things of interest that are going on:

• The Revolution Support Forums found a new home this week, while being upgraded to phpBB3.
• March is going to be the March Madness Revolution Affiliate Contest, which will run the entire month and will award a 1st place price of $1000.00.
• I came across an insanely cool rendition of Revolution Magazine theme over at 2strokebuzz.
• Other great customizations of the theme can be seen at Men with Pens, Music Heat XL and Mommies Magazine.
• I’ll be making plans to attend WordCamp in San Francisco as soon as they announce the dates
• Last but not least, it’s nice not having to drive into work - especially since a few days ago we got socked with a foot of snow!