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More Widgets For Your Blog
Published on 2012-07-17 11:07:21
Everyone loves widgets right? They allow you to add neat features to your blog and really make it your own. They are universal, because you can use them on all different themes, so no matter which theme you’ve used to represent your own personal style, widgets can help you round out the features that make [...]
Around the Carousel Again
Published on 2012-07-12 15:15:03
You might recall the photo carousel feature we launched a few months ago. It has been incredibly popular with both bloggers and visitors, racking up over three quarters of a billion views since then. Today, we’re happy to announce we’re launching v2 of Carousel with significant improvements: Images are served double-resolution (Retina!) for visitors on capable [...]
New Theme: Soundcheck
Published on 2012-07-12 09:46:10
Today I’m totally jazzed up to announce the launch of a feature-rich audio theme perfect for any band, artist, or musician on WordPress.com. Designed by Luke McDonald of Press75, Soundcheck ships with a custom MP3 player that allows your visitors to browse, select, play, and skip through tracks right on your website. Also included in [...]
Go Ahead—Add a Splash of Color
Published on 2012-07-11 00:13:39
Adding Custom Colors to your blog just got simpler than ever! Now you can change your entire color scheme with the single click of a button. Color has impact: it sets context and should complement your message. You’ll find the most popular palettes and patterns from COLOURlovers are sure to delight whether you want to [...]
New Theme: Petite Melodies
Published on 2012-06-28 11:05:38
If you’re seeking a fun, playful look for your blog or website, we have the theme for you! Petite Melodies is a beautiful new premium theme designed by Sol Linero. Choose from three quirky illustrated styles: Want a sweet design for your baby blog? My Petite Melodies is playful and childlike. Or maybe you need a [...]
Spotlight on Street Photography Blogs
Published on 2012-06-26 13:47:21
Public places, candid snapshots, fleeting moments captured. That’s what street photography is all about, and the following eight blogs do it beautifully: Jimmy on the Run 365 From the Archive Über die Webbographie Sami Alramyan Without an H Perpetuum Mobile A Walk with My Camera Bones, Mugs & Harmony Feeling inspired? Create your own photoblog with [...]
With WordAds, My Nintendo News Turns Hobby Into Budding Business
Published on 2012-06-21 14:28:18
Last November WordPress.com announced the launch of our WordAds program, whereby WordPress.com sites can partner and share revenues on ads sold and managed by WordPress.com. Since its beta launch, WordAds has grown to over ten thousand sites. WordAds has been a success because bloggers can focus on content and building their audiences while handing off [...]
New Themes: Mixfolio and Yoko
Published on 2012-06-21 12:33:48
I’m pleased to announce the latest two additions to the ever-growing collection of free themes here at WordPress.com. First up is Mixfolio, a responsive, post format-packed, photographer-loving portfolio theme. Designed by Graph Paper Press, Mixfolio looks great on all screens, large and small, and comes delivered with a Theme Options panel that will give your [...]
New Themes: Blog Simple and Skylark
Published on 2012-06-14 11:10:54
In the mood to simply showcase your words or your work? The two newest themes in our collection allow you to do just that! First, let’s say hello to Blog Simple, an inventive premium theme for bloggers designed by Mike Kus. Its vibrant, two-tone color scheme and bold typography will definitely set your blog apart [...]
To Infinity and Beyond
Published on 2012-06-12 13:26:38
Say hello to the future of reading on the web. We’re happy to introduce a new feature for WordPress.com home pages: infinite scrolling. Speed and performance are key on the modern web: new content loads in quickly without a full page reload. Instead of the old way of navigating down a page by scrolling and then [...]
New Themes: Portfolio and Grisaille
Published on 2012-06-07 11:18:37
Feeling creative? You’ve come to the right place–we have two new, fantastically artsy themes for your viewing pleasure! First up is Portfolio, a clean, sophisticated premium theme by The Theme Foundry. Catalog all your creative efforts–photography, illustration, sculpture, poetry, and more–with a flexible and easy-to-use interface. Drag-and-drop simplicity coupled with a generous featured post slider [...]
Instantly share posts on Tumblr
Published on 2012-06-06 13:51:45
The second you publish a new post on WordPress.com, you can instantly share it on Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn, and now Tumblr with a feature called Publicize. This helps you get exposure to multiple audiences without having to manually share your content on all your favorite social sites. With Publicize, you can make WordPress.com your [...]
New Theme: Ideation & Intent
Published on 2012-05-31 12:35:51
It’s almost June and warm weather is spreading across many parts of the world like wildfire! What better time to get out of the house and explore new places? Before you leave, though, it would be a great idea to take your camera along to document the experience. When you return and get the urge [...]
A Little Boost to Your Photos and Galleries
Published on 2012-05-30 15:12:55
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a digital photo is worth even more. All digital cameras embed extra information in each photo — things like camera make and model, date and time the photo was taken, focal length of the lens, shutter speed, etc. We’re happy to announce two new features on [...]
Get Push Notifications on Your iPhone and iPad
Published on 2012-05-29 10:30:32
Following the recent notifications refresh, we’re super excited to announce that you can now get comment Push Notifications on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Stay connected to your blog and moderate incoming comments wherever you happen to be at the time. Push Notifications WordPress.com contributes to many Open Source WordPress apps, and we recently [...]
Photo Blogging 101, Part 3
Published on 2012-05-28 08:00:36
Beyond developing your photo blog and cultivating devoted followers, how can you take your phlog to the next level? Here’s a few extra resources that can help you along the way. Stay Organized Using categories to divide your photographs by type is a great way to make it easier for visitors to navigate your site, [...]
Notifications, Refreshed
Published on 2012-05-25 09:43:30
Stuff happens all the time on WordPress.com. You’re blogging, commenting, liking, and following like never before. Every hour a record is broken and someone’s day is made. We’ve always known about your love affair with stats. We like watching numbers grow, too. And we also like to see the events that the numbers represent. We [...]
7 Food Blogs to Follow This Summer
Published on 2012-05-23 15:54:59
With the official first day of summer right around the corner, now is a great time to start collecting recipes for your favorite warm-weather treats. You’ll find endless inspiration by browsing through topics like recipe, grilling, and summer in the WordPress.com Reader, and discover tons of great ideas by exploring our collection of recommended food [...]
Photo Blogging 101, Part 2
Published on 2012-05-21 08:00:30
Now that you’ve been snapping away, you’ll want to build your photographic following. WordPress.com has an excellent photo blogging community, which you can tap into by following these tips and tricks. Tags, topics, and phloggers, oh my! Tags work to connect your blog to the larger WordPress.com community, so you can see others who are [...]
Look Before You Leap
Published on 2012-05-18 14:31:42
Trying out new themes is fun, isn’t it? I think so! The thing about changing my blog’s theme that has traditionally bugged me, though, is the 10-15 minutes right after you click “Activate” when you have to rush through uploading a new custom header, maybe resetting the background, fiddling with a new sidebar configuration, and [...]
New Theme: A Simpler Time
Published on 2012-05-17 09:48:38
There’s something about this time of year that always makes me wistful for the good old days—the simpler times, if you will—when all that mattered were family, friends, and a whole lotta blogging about everything under the sun. I miss those days, don’t you? Fear not, my fellow blogging friends. We’ve got you all covered [...]
Stay In The Conversation
Published on 2012-05-15 18:01:22
It’s now much easier for you and your commenters to keep track of the conversations you’re involved in across WordPress.com. Some recent tests have shown that by subscribing commenters to new comments by default, they are more likely to stay engaged and come back and comment more on your blog. With that knowledge, we’ve changed [...]
Look at These Gorgeous Blogs
Published on 2012-05-15 13:05:28
We’ve added a user showcase where you can view stunning customizations made by people just like you. From complete redesigns with CSS to adding pizzazz with Custom Fonts to clever use of options like background and header, this showcase will spark your imagination and inspire creativity. Discover details about what each showcase blog is doing [...]
Photo Blogging 101, Part 1
Published on 2012-05-14 10:00:41
Spring is in the air. With the weather warming up, now is a great time to get started on a photo blog. Creating a photo blog is a wonderful introduction to blogging on WordPress.com or an opportunity to refresh your current site. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a new blog right [...]
New Themes: Just Desserts and Oxygen
Published on 2012-05-10 08:11:01
Happy Thursday! We’ve added some exciting new themes to our ever-growing collection, and we’re happy to tell you all about them. First out of the oven is…Just Desserts. Yep, that’s a theme! Designed by Andy Rutledge, Just Desserts is a deliciously stylish premium theme that’s perfect for blogs centered on food. With its responsive, single-column [...]
Find Friends Who Use WordPress
Published on 2012-05-01 14:32:50
Are you curious to see how your friends are using WordPress? Give the new and improved Friend Finder a try to connect with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google contacts who have WordPress sites! After authorizing WordPress.com to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to find your friends (don’t worry — none of this account [...]
New Themes: Everyday and Origin
Published on 2012-04-26 15:35:04
In our quest to help you find the perfect look for your blog, we’ve added two brand new themes to our collection! First up is Everyday, a beautifully designed premium theme by James Goode. Everyday has been precisely calibrated to be pleasurably readable on almost any screen. Attention and care has especially been given to [...]
More Likes in More Places
Published on 2012-04-26 15:28:31
Back in 2010 we introduced the exciting new ability to Like the individual posts you’ve read all around WordPress.com. It’s been one of our most popular features since then, as evidenced by the chart below that goes up-and-to-the-right as an indication of great success and achievement. Today I’m happy to announce a few enhancements to the [...]
8 Gorgeous Nature Blogs for Earth Day
Published on 2012-04-19 13:29:06
This Sunday, April 22nd will mark the 42nd observance of Earth Day. According to Earth Day Network, “More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.” To inspire you to get in on this year’s celebration, here are eight amazing nature-related blogs [...]
Add Spotify, Rdio, and GitHub’s Gist Embeds To Your Site
Published on 2012-04-18 18:14:40
We’re happy to announce three new things that you can embed into your site! Spotify Embed music from Spotify by right-clicking any song, album, or artist in Spotify and selecting “Copy HTTP Link” or “Copy Spotify URI”: Then paste that into your post editor, making sure that it’s located on its own line all by [...]
How to get more page views for your blog
Published on 2012-04-17 11:16:35
This is a guest post by Kristina Chang, Evan Moore, Tony Xu, and Omer Rabin; students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “What makes a blog popular? What drives page views?” These are the questions that we’ve been trying to answer over the last few weeks. We were on a mission to dig into the [...]
Integrate Cool Applications with WordPress.com
Published on 2012-04-12 14:00:05
We are happy to announce our new REST Application Programming Interface (API) that lets developers explore, interact, and create great new content with the vast community of sites on the WordPress.com network and, in the near future, Jetpack-enabled sites. The API gives developers access to posts and comments, as well as the ability to Follow, Like, [...]
How to get more comments
Published on 2012-04-12 09:24:26
People blog for different reasons, but many post with hopes of seeing feedback from readers. Here at WordPress.com we’ve studied why some posts and blogs get more comments than others, and want to share our advice with you. You need visitors before you’ll get comments. You won’t get comments until people visit your blog. Start [...]
Custom CSS gets an upgrade
Published on 2012-04-05 15:26:54
Heads up, Custom Design users! The Custom CSS feature on WordPress.com now supports all of the new features of CSS3. This means that you can use gradients, animation, multiple backgrounds, @media queries, and many more new features in your custom CSS. If you want to make your images pop and tilt, give your post titles [...]
New Themes: Mimbo Pro, Blaskan, and Vintage Kitchen
Published on 2012-04-05 10:27:58
We have three awesome new themes for you today that I think you’ll love. A news-oriented magazine theme, a theme for just about everybody, and a food-oriented theme. Here they are! Mimbo Pro is a sharp-looking, premium magazine theme from Pro Theme Design. It takes your content and formats it in a structured way grouped [...]
How to turn your blog into a book
Published on 2012-04-04 10:40:12
We know many of you love your blogs, and gleefully publish photos and posts without thoughts to reuse your work in other forms. But we know some wonder: could this be a book? Recently we wrote about how a WordPress.com blogger scored a book deal for You Are Not So Smart. But what if you [...]
New Themes: Standard and Chalk
Published on 2012-03-22 15:18:14
Today I’m happy to announce two great new additions to our collection of premium themes. First, we have Standard, a sleek, exacting theme designed by 8BIT for professional blogging with an emphasis on contextual display of your content. Your content, in each of its various forms, deserves to be presented with unique distinction. Thanks to [...]
Celebrate Your Milestones
Published on 2012-03-21 12:01:15
Once in a while, it’s important to stop, catch your breath, and look at your accomplishments before you move on to the next thing — to put a stake in the ground that says, “I made it this far!” Today, we’re rolling out a couple of notifications to help you celebrate your blog activity milestones. From [...]
New Themes: Ari and San Kloud
Published on 2012-03-20 11:46:45
Today, I’m excited to introduce the latest additions to our ever-growing collection of free themes. First up is Ari—a responsive and minimal blog theme designed by Elmastudio. This theme is beautiful out of the box but it’s also packed with cool features including two color schemes, three custom color options, a custom header image, a [...]
Bestselling Author Shares 3 Tips for Building Your Blog Audience
Published on 2012-03-15 18:02:20
After moving from New York City to Chicago and getting married, Rachel Bertsche realized that her new life was missing one crucially important thing: a local best friend. So she decided to go on one friend date every week for a year, and she documented her quest on a WordPress.com blog at MWFseekingBFF.com. But before [...]
Posterous Joins Twitter
Published on 2012-03-13 12:40:56
It’s been just over two years since we first launched our Posterous importer and I never could have predicted how the blogging space would evolve so quickly in that time. As you may have seen in the news today, the Posterous team is joining Twitter, which we know will be exciting for our friends at [...]
Where in the World?
Published on 2012-03-09 08:58:50
If you’ve ever wondered where on Earth all the visitors to your site are coming from, this feature is for you! Mosey on over to your My Stats tab on the WordPress.com homepage: …and check out the brand new “Views by Country” panel. Now, you can see at a glance exactly which countries comprise your audience: When [...]
New Themes: Sunspot and Triton Lite
Published on 2012-03-08 15:02:29
Today we’ve got two great new free themes for you: Sunspot and Triton Lite. Inspiration for Sunspot came from one of our older and beloved classics, Sunburn (and perhaps a bit from the recent solar storms). A sharp theme with subtle grid lines and sun-splashed accents, Sunspot is a great all-purpose canvas for your blog, [...]
A Faster Way to Publish Posts
Published on 2012-03-01 17:18:28
The process of publishing new posts just got simplified big time. Starting today, any time you’re logged in to WordPress.com, you can create and publish new posts without the leaving the page you’re on. So instead of having to visit your blog’s dashboard each time you want to publish a post, now you can start [...]
New Theme: Sundance
Published on 2012-03-01 10:02:11
I’m excited to introduce a brand new free video theme brought to you by the team here at Automattic. Despite its minimalist design, Sundance was crafted with clean, elegant typography and close attention to detail. The home page offers a featured video carousel where you can highlight a maximum of ten posts that are assigned [...]
WordPresser Documents Her Mission to Overcome Agoraphobia
Published on 2012-02-27 15:58:12
For nearly thirty years, ArLynn Presser avoided leaving her neighborhood in Winnetka, Illinois, as she would experience debilitating anxiety and panic attacks when visiting public places and interacting with people outside her home. But once she turned fifty, the romance writer decided that she was tired of living in isolation, and ready to face her [...]
New Theme: Retro-fitted
Published on 2012-02-14 11:34:05
I’m pleased to announce the latest addition to the ever-growing collection of free themes here at WordPress.com. Retro-fitted by Justin Tadlock mixes subtle textures with clean lines and shadows to create a beautifully balanced composition perfect for all types of blogs. Retro-fitted can be personalized in a variety of ways. Customize the look of your [...]
Comment Notifications!
Published on 2012-02-10 11:46:57
A few months ago we added Notificationsto the WordPress.com Toolbar and recently we released a Chrome extensionso that you can always keep up with the activity on your blog. Today we’re adding comment notifications, complete with comment moderation and reply functionality. When your post receives a comment, you’ll get a Notification that looks something like [...]
New Themes: Splendio and Suburbia
Published on 2012-02-07 12:00:48
Happy Tuesday! We’ve got two unique free themes for you today, and they are quite a study in contrasts. Our first theme, Splendio, dazzles with an unconventional yet stylish design from Design Disease that pops out of the box — literally. How you use this theme is limited only by your imagination! It comes loaded [...]
Post Videos from Your iPhone or iPad
Published on 2012-02-03 05:01:50
Would you like to post videos to your blog while you’re on the go? Are you interested in a photography theme that’s also video-friendly? Well, look no further, because we have some news for you. The VideoPress upgrade, which allows you to upload and embed your own videos on your blog, now comfortably handles videos [...]
New Themes: Currents and Debut
Published on 2012-02-02 14:00:10
Today, I’m excited to introduce the latest additions to our collection of premium themes. Designed by Andy Rutledge, Currents, is a responsive, minimal yet attractive premium theme from WooThemes. Currents is perfect for news driven sites. The phrase, “less is more” couldn’t be more true. This clean and minimal design maximises your reader’s focus on [...]
Import from Tumblr in 3 Easy Steps
Published on 2012-02-02 06:06:32
We’ve recently noticed that a fair number of you have been bringing your tumblelogs over from Tumblr to WordPress.com using one of the variety of Tumblr to WXR conversion tools which exist on the web. We thought you would appreciate an easier way to import your content, so we bring you 3 easy steps to [...]
Chrome Users: Try the WordPress.com Extension
Published on 2012-01-27 13:54:52
Want to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com? Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser: Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications: Start [...]
Your Stats Have a New Home
Published on 2012-01-26 10:46:11
Are you addicted to checking your site stats? You are not alone. The stats dashboard has always been one of the most popular admin screens. It’s gratifying to know that people are visiting your place online. With the WordPress.com front page evolving into a one-stop shop for posting, exploring, following and reading blogs, it seemed [...]
Reblogging is Back!
Published on 2012-01-22 13:27:46
As we mentioned last week, you can like and reblog posts directly from your reader, which displays a stream of all the updates published on all the blogs you follow from your WordPress.com account. We’ve also brought the reblog button back to the toolbar that appears at the top of the screen when you’re logged [...]
New Theme: Newsy
Published on 2012-01-20 12:18:37
It’s been an extra big week in the news ’round these parts, so much so that the launch announcement of our latest premium theme seems like an extra extra good way to headline our Friday. Newsy is a versatile business and news-friendly theme that offers up to ten different layouts, four footer columns, custom link [...]