I love roasted mushrooms.  My friend, Rachel, at Rachel Cooks has a great post today at http://www.rachelcooks.com/2013/04/04/roasted-mushrooms-with-balsamic-thyme-and-dijon/

StudioPress introduced the new Modern Portfolio theme. Rae Hoffman redesigned her site with Genesis and gave the theme a 5-star review, WPKube published an extensive WP resource that gave StudioPress a nod, and Brian Gardner dropped a fun tutorial on how to add custom sticky menus to SP themes. Finally, Brian Clark debuted Site Sensor to the world, an important website monitoring tool to help content marketers stay on track.

Here’s a little more on these news items:

- Modern Portfolio Theme is Released: Brian Gardner and the team did it again! Take a spin through our Theme of the Month below.

- Another High Profile Blog Moves to Genesis: After 5 years, Rae Hoffman aka “Sugarrae”, affiliate marketing veteran and CEO of PushFire search marketing agency, switched teams. She dug into the StudioPress theme’s finer points in this in-depth review/tutorial.

- The WordPress Handbook — 55 Resources (for First Time WP Users): WPKube published an extensive list of resources that is quite useful, even if you’re a well-traveled WordPresser.

- Learn How to Add a Sticky Menu to Your SP Site: Brian Gardner posted a surprisingly easy tutorial on how to customize a “sticky menu” (one that follows the page as you scroll) on your WP site.

Site Sensor: Secure Website Monitoring by Copyblogger Media
Brian Clark debuted CB’s most recent innovation for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Have you ever found out that your site has been down for extended periods from cranky customers or clients on other social sites?

Site Sensor’s real-time checks, alerts, and content monitoring ensure that you’ll never be in the dark about the status of your website.

Brian gives it the full breakdown on the blog, and you can kind learn more about Site Sensor’s features here.

Theme of the Month: Modern Portfolio
Studiopress introduces is 23rd original, mobile-responsive theme, Modern Portfolio, a sleek layout that places an emphasis on images. Photographers, developers and image hounds will love this smart, minimalist design.

The Modern Portfolio theme debuts a high-contrast, B/W frame that confidently highlights your best content.

Brian talked more about this intelligent theme over on the Copyblogger blog, so make sure you check out that post for all the details.

The Latest from the StudioPress Workbench
A big WordPress release happened and Brian Gardner shared his advice on safely updating to v3.5. In addition, Studiopress released Genesis 1.9, and some really cool new themes came off the assembly lines from the hard working team at SP and some other great developers in the Studiopress community.

What’s New in WordPress 3.5 “Elvin”?
WordPress is making it easy for all of us to look great in 2013! The team behind WP 3.5 promises a dramatic new change for uploading and organizing your media. The streamlined experience now boasts some simplified features and fast solutions for re-organizing your media galleries.

“Flexibility and streamlining” was the goal, making it easy for both beginners and expert developers to take full advantage of the redesign. It’s a “leaner, cleaner way to publish your content in style.” Brian G. reminded us that there is a cool new Tumblr importer too.

Definitely check out the news and the short video they put together in honor of drummer Elvin Jones, for whom the release is named. It’s more than a little cool…

StudioPress Theme of the Month – Metro Theme

Visual learners everywhere can rejoice! By popular request, step-by-step video tutorials for a number of Genesis Framework-related activities are now available on StudioPress.TV. Offering both public and subscriber-only content, from the basics to more advanced topics, StudioPress.TV is the educational library you’ve been waiting for.

Click here to go to StudioPress.TV

• Do you understand what a child theme is?
• Are you confused by the industry-leading SEO settings available?
• Do you need help understanding hooks?

The Introductory Guide to the Genesis Design Framework for WordPress is a fantastic resource. The guide is a 44-page resource suitable for anyone who has an understanding of WordPress and covers everything—from the beginner level to expert issues. This guide can help anyone who is considering the Genesis Framework to get their site looking and performing exactly the way you want it.

Click below to download your FREE Introductory Guide.

What is a QR Code? More and more people are starting to use QR codes. QR stands for “Quick Response.”

QR codes are readable by QR scanners, mobile phones with a camera, and smartphones. They can store website URLs, plain text, phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses or any other text.

Try it. Here is a QR Code for Grits Deisgn.

There are lots of websites for you to make your own QR codes. Here are a few.

QR Stuff

Kaywa

Businesses as well as people are using QR codes for lots of different things–put a QR code on your business card so people can scan your info instead of writing it down, put a QR code on promotional items which links to your website, create a URL for an online coupon, etc.

Please share your ideas for QR codes by commenting below.