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New Themes: iTheme 2 and Bold News
2011-10-18 18:18:00
If you are doing a great job on your blog and posting regularly, sometimes important posts fade away from the home page. Sound familiar? Today, we’re excited about introducing two new themes that come with a featured section for prominently displaying some of these posts. The first theme is iTheme 2 designed by Themify, is a free theme inspired by the instantly recognizable Apple style design that is perfect for your Mac related tech blog. By activating it, iTheme 2 immediately revamps your blog to a stylish, Apple themed cool blog. What’s great about iTheme 2 is not only the look but also its features. It offers three color schemes and a cool featured posts carousel on the home page. Go find more about the theme on its showcase page. The second entry is Bold News , a premium theme from WooThemes . Same as other fantastic themes from them, Bold News is also packed with customizing features as well as a featured posts carousel on the home page. Get the full details on th...

New Themes: Modern News and Dusk to Dawn
2011-10-13 18:45:00
Today, our ever-growing collection of themes grows by not one, but two with the addition of Modern News and Dusk To Dawn . If your blog is news-oriented (or if you’re ripe to start a news blog), then Modern News, a new premium theme from StudioPress, is a great choice. Bright and stylish, Modern News offers six layout options, seven color schemes, a tabbed sidebar, and many more features. Get the full scoop on the Theme Showcase and purchase it as an upgrade for your blog. Before I introduce our second new theme, it is important to mention that we are fond of all of our themes, even those that have been part of our collection since the beginning. However, there comes a time when themes retire after all their years in service. Today marks the arrival of that sunset period for two of our beloved classics: Dusk and Solipsus. Their successor, Dusk To Dawn, is a lovely free theme that captures the best qualities of both while introducing a unique new design that supports the latest...
More About: Themes

Baseball Fans: Show Your Pride This Postseason with Our MLB Themes
2011-10-11 14:00:00
Earlier this year we announced our partnership with Major League Baseball to bring their Fan, Modern, and Retro blog themes to WordPress.com. Well, it’s playoff time, and we think there’s no better way to show pride in the Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals (go Cards!), Texas Rangers, or Detroit Tigers than by donning their colors and logo on your WordPress.com blog. It’s like a digital rally cap — no true fan should be caught without one! Head over to the theme showcase to activate an MLB theme on your blog, or start a new blog just for this occasion, and get root, root, rooting for your favorite team!
More About: Fans , Show , Themes , Pride

3 Ways to Make Your Site More Visually Appealing
2011-10-10 20:20:00
You guys use WordPress.com in all sorts of creative ways, documenting the adventures you take… mikeslagter.wordpress.com …the people you meet… paolonovelli.wordpress.com …the characters you create… legomyphoto.wordpress.com …the meals you prepare… whenharrymetsalad.com …and the places you live. mcalisterium.wordpress.com And you share a ton of amazing photographs. So be sure to show them off! Here are three tips on using photos to make your site more visually appealing: Upload your very own custom header image to give your site a unique look and feel. Some themes even allow you to use featured images to display different header images on specific posts and pages. For a design that’s 100% unique to you, try out the Custom Design upgrade. Don’t make readers squint to view your photos. Generally speaking, bigger photos are better, as long as they’re properly aligned. Check out the Get Flashy tutorial on Learn.WordPress.com for tips on a...
More About: Site , Make

Retro Mac Theme
2011-10-07 04:01:00
It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Steve Jobs on technologists, particularly his passion for beautiful, usable products. We work harder and have higher standards because of the bar set by Apple’s experiences, and I don’t know what WordPress would look like today if not for the inspiration he gave all of us. As the shock at his premature loss has given way to a celebration of his life it’s been amazing to read all of the personal anecdotes of those lucky enough to have known him. Yesterday one of the tributes I noticed was the website Boing Boing switched their theme to one reminiscent of the original Macintosh interface, one of the several times Jobs would make a ding in the universe through his work. It seemed fitting, and we wanted to make it available to all of you, so our theme team worked through the night and here it is: Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics and evoke some serious computer nostalgia. This theme is a...
More About: Retro , Theme

New Theme: Funki
2011-10-06 21:56:00
It’s funky time in theme land and we are welcoming our newest addition, available for you today. Funki is a very versatile premium theme, with an artsy flare, offering customization and flexibility. It begins with four different layouts, from one column to three columns, all based on where you drag your widgets so you don’t have to set any special options, it just works. Funki, designed by Themify, comes with different background patterns and motifs to choose from, and allows you to set a primary color which is used for links and other visual elements. Lastly, it comes with a featured post area which is easy to use: just add big featured images to your sticky posts and you are good to go. Click to view slideshow. There is still more to find about Funki, so go ahead and explore its showcase entry. You can then preview it for your blog in Appearance → Theme s or purchase a lifetime subscription right away from the Theme Showcase itself.

Prepare for National Novel Writing Month with the Post a Day Challenge
2011-09-30 18:23:00
November marks the beginning of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a project in which thousands of writers around the world work toward completing a 50,000-word novel by November 30th. Sound like something you want to get in on? Whoa. That’s 1,667 words per day. I’m not ready for that! We hear you — writing a whole novel is a pretty big undertaking. So why not gear up for the project by starting the WordPress.com Post a Day Challenge this October? It’s a great way to meet others in the WordPress.com community, including writers who have completed NaNoWriMo in the past. At The Daily Post, home of the Post a Day Challenge, we provide creative inspiration each and every day. You can also find tons of writing prompts at Plinky.com, so you never have to worry about running out of ideas. Participating in Post a Day is also a great opportunity to prepare outlines, character sketches, and research before starting your novel in November. How am I supposed to c...

New Themes: Eight, Bold Life, and Elemin
2011-09-29 17:23:00
If you score three goals in one hockey game you’ve made what’s called a hat trick. I think that should totally count for themes too. If you’re reading this post you’ve just scored a chance to check out three brand new themes for your blog. Hat trick! The first up is Eight by renowned designer, Elliot Jay Stocks. Its unique layout means your blog will be almost completely transformed just by activating it. Thanks to the custom background feature and its custom highlight color feature, transforming the look of your blog even further takes only a few clicks. Eight is a premium upgrade for your blog at $75 for a lifetime subscription. We have another brand new free theme for you too. It’s called Bold Life by Jay Hafling and just like Eight it has its own unique grunge-elegant look. Finally, we have another premium theme for you and there’s nothing grungy about this one. The beautiful and elegant Elemin, designed by Themify, is just packed with featu...
More About: Themes

New Domains for You and .me
2011-09-23 18:22:00
Today we are adding .me (to .com, .org and .net) as a new option for upgrading to your own, custom domain name on WordPress.com. All of our domain mapping options cost just a couple dollars per month for your domain name and hosting. You don’t have to deal with web servers or configuration, we take care of everything for you. Get your own .me domain on WordPress.com. As Sara mentioned a couple months ago, one of the most common questions we get is whether you can use your own domain for WordPress.com blogs. Incidentally, Add a Domain is our most popular upgrade, so we know you love customizing your digital address and we are always looking for ways to make it better and easier. Rather than adding numbers or dropping vowels for a .com you don’t really want, check out .me and find the perfect fit for your business, your name, or just a pun you can’t stop laughing at. We’ve seen lots of creative domain-names-as-sentences using .me, like about.me and connect....
More About: Domains

Enjoy A Shiny New, Simplified Admin Bar
2011-09-23 03:42:00
Remember your old admin bar (displayed at the top of your screen while you’re logged in to WordPress.com)? Up until today, it’s looked something like this while viewing an individual post: But we wanted to make it easier for your visitors to interact with you via Likes and Follows, so we’ve cleaned it up a bit. Now it looks like this: Better, right!? Now on the right hand side of the admin bar where your Gravatar is displayed, you have easy access to your user profile, all the blogs you can contribute to, and all the comments you’ve made across WordPress.com: In the blog menu on the left side of the admin bar, you’ll see all the stuff related to the blog you’re currently viewing. If you’re looking at a post on your own blog, the menu will display links to your dashboard, post editor, comment moderation panel, custom menus, and widgets. Next to the blog menu are the Follow and Like buttons, along with a sparkline, which reflects the last 4...
More About: Enjoy , Admin

New Themes: Magazine and Parament
2011-09-22 17:05:00
Isn’t it nice to have a brand new theme, or two, on a Thursday? Maybe you’ll remember, this day in September—because today it’s double the fun with Magazine and Parament now available in your WordPress.com dashboard. Magazine is a sleek and stylish theme from StudioPress that’s perfect for showcasing your carefully crafted content. Choose from ten color schemes and six layout options and customize it to your taste. Make it yours for a lifetime subscription of $75, and discover all its features on the Theme Showcase. Parament is a beautiful, all-purpose theme featuring a dark color scheme with bright orange highlights and a textured background. Its clean, colorful, and curved lines will help your content stand out from the crowd. Learn all about it on the Theme Showcase. Enjoy.
More About: Themes

More traffic for your blog with the follow button
2011-09-21 15:26:00
We’ve written before about our efforts at WordPress.com to help you get more attention for your work. And we’re here again with a new feature: follow. After weeks of experimentation with different designs, locations and names, we’ve determined the addition of a small, cute, little button at the bottom of your blog will dramatically help pageviews and retention. Starting today, on all blogs, whenever someone who is not logged into WordPress.com visits, they’ll see this small little button in the bottom right corner. The button is mostly out of the way, but just noticeable enough before people leave. And when a visitor clicks on the button, it smoothly slides open, revealing a simple way to follow the blog without having the burden of checking back on their own to see if there’s anything new. They can put their email address in, and will be notified whenever your blog has a new post. Questions we expect to be frequently asked: 1. Why is it called Follow...
More About: Traffic , Blog , Button

Coming to a WordCamp Near You
2011-09-16 17:06:00
Every now and then I like to remind people about upcoming WordCamps. WordCamps are locally-organized, casual conferences held all over the world that focus on WordPress. Bloggers, developers, and every other kind of WordPress fan get together to show off cool things they’ve done with WordPress, teach and learn from each other, meet new co-conspirators, and generally have a crazy fun day or weekend with other people who share their love of WordPress. Often, members of the WordPress.com team from Automattic are in attendance, and would love to meet more of you! There are WordCamps this weekend in Albuquerque and Portland, so if you’re anywhere near these cities, you should try to attend (we’ll be there!). In Portland, the WordPress Foundation also will be sponsoring some special activities around Software Freedom Day (I’ll be at this one, testing and giving a sneak peek to attendees of some new features in the works). Is there a WordCamp coming up near you? ...

Looking for tips on better blogging?
2011-09-16 16:58:00
Whether you’re a WordPress.com veteran or blogging newbie, the updated version of Learn WordPress.com is sure to teach you something that you don’t already know. The tutorial contains ten short sections on popular topics such as: Personalizing your site’s appearance Meeting others in the WordPress.com community Blogging from your mobile device Getting more readers We’ve also added a section called 10 Super Awesome Insider Tips . It contains pointers on how to use some of our coolest (but easily overlooked) features like Distraction Free Writing, which expands the text editor and hides the modules on the publishing screen, to help you stay focused while you create content. So have a look and tell us what you learned! And if there’s anything you want to know more about, be sure to let us know.

Embed Wufoo forms and surveys with a simple shortcode
2011-09-15 19:13:00
Earlier this week we released a new shortcode on WordPress.com to help you embed Wufoo forms in your WordPress.com posts, pages and even sidebars. Our friends over at Wufoo wrote about it on their blog and we wanted to let you know here as well. Wufoo forms are extremely flexible and enable you to create everything from simple contact forms to event invitations and mailing lists: On their end, Wufoo integrates with other services as well. For example, a you could build a newsletter signup form, which sends those signups to MailChimp, all starting from your WordPress.com blog. If you or your company is a 37signals fan, you can send your Wufoo form results to Highrise or Basecamp. Wufoo is a paid service and also offers a free plan that you can use for as long as you like to see if the service works for you. For more details on embedding Wufoo forms on your WordPress.com blogs, check out our new Wufoo support page. We’d like to thank Chris Coyier over at Wufoo for helping us...
More About: Surveys , Simple

New Theme: Nishita
2011-09-14 18:02:00
Nishita is a simple, minimally-styled photoblogging theme—now available for WordPress.com blogs. With a choice of dark or light color scheme, the muted design puts all the focus on your photos. Not only is this theme designed for photos, it loves big photos: the default layout is super-wide at 1024 pixels. Nishita example, dark color scheme. Theme options include two layout choices: “Photoblog” at 1024 pixels wide, or “Blog” at 768 pixels wide. For an even more reduced photoblog look, you could change your WordPress.com reading settings to show one post per page, and thus only one image will show at a time on your front page. This photo-loving theme also uses post thumbnails to show a small version of images on your archive pages. Personalize it with a custom background, header image, and menu. Learn more about this Nishita—and how to set it up for maximum photoblog awesomeness—over on the Theme Showcase. This theme is based on the original design by B...

Two New Apps for WordPress.com
2011-09-07 18:59:00
Earlier this summer we launched a few tools to make it easier for developers to create new apps for WordPress.com. Starting today, you can integrate your WordPress.com blog with Feedfabrik and Empire Avenue. Turn Your Blog Into a Book Have you ever wanted to publish your own book, or a collection of your favorite blog posts? Feedfabrik makes it easy to convert your WordPress.com blog into a book format, and even allows you to customize the cover design and book contents. You can order a hard copy of your book, or a digital PDF edition. To try it out, head over to Feedfabrik, choose Bookfabrik, then select “I’m on WordPress.com.” Receive a 10% discount on all September orders with the code “WORDPRESS-INTRO”. Grow Your Social Capital Online Empire Avenue is a Social Stock Market, where your social networking activity and engagement earn you virtual currency and determine your virtual share price. It also helps you discover new people and brands, and allows you to invest vi...
More About: Wordpress

New Site Stats Show You Who Comments Most
2011-09-07 18:22:00
Ever wanted to know who’s commenting the most on your blog and what posts they are commenting on? Now your Site Stats can tell you. The new Comments panel in your Site Stats provides three tabs: Top Commenters, Most Commented, and a Summary of comments on your blog. If your blog has fewer than 1000 total comments, your comment stats are based on all comments made since you started your blog. Comment stats for more active blogs reflect the most recent three months of comment activity. For example, a blog with 500 total comments will have the most commented post be the one that has had the most comments across the entire life of the blog. For this blog (with 87K comments) the most commented post is chosen from the posts that were posted in the past three months. The Stats Comments Panel is available now for all WordPress.com blogs. Jetpack users, please bear with us as we improve Jetpack to serve you the new comment stats in the future. Check out the comment stats on your blog b...
More About: Show , New Site

New Theme: Comet
2011-09-06 19:14:00
Comet—the latest theme addition to our growing collection—sports a lightweight, faded design with simple and classy typographic touches. Perfect for any type of blog, it works really well for showcasing your writing and photos. Comet home page example. Make it yours by choosing from seven color schemes and four different layout options. Customize it even further with a header image, background, and custom menu. Comet also includes a full-width template for dropping the sidebar on pages. See more information on the Theme Showcase. Designed by Frostpress, Comet is available now in your dashboard under Appearance → Themes and, for self-hosted blogs at the WordPress.org theme directory.

New Theme: Selecta
2011-09-01 02:44:00
Today we’ve got a treat for you — a new theme called Selecta. This might be the theme you’ve been waiting for if videos or images will be the primary focus of your blog. The design, originally created by Obox Design, fuses the modern with the retro — a bold, striking color palette (in six color schemes), rounded edges, and wider-than-usual frames around content. Click to view slideshow. Selecta is loaded with elements that highlight your images and videos.  First, there’s the featured slider that showcases your sticky posts at the top of the front page. Next, there’s the “Latest Posts” row that places your four most recent posts in fun, rounded boxes, also on the front page. That’s not all — if you create a post with the video or image Post Format, Selecta will display your content in a wide, one-column template on the single post view. This ensures that your images and videos receive your readers’ undivided attention. Talk ...
More About: Theme

New Theme: Minimum
2011-08-31 18:59:00
Minimum, a stunning execution of “less is more,” is a new premium theme developed by StudioPress and available for your WordPress.com blog today. The Minimum Theme Part of Minimum’s charm is the option for customizing the look of your site. With many layouts to choose from, optional porfolio and featured sections, custom header, and custom background, you have plenty to create with. Minimum is available for a lifetime subscription of $75. Read more about what this theme offers or preview it live on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Giving the support site a refresh
2011-08-30 20:45:00
Keeping WordPress.com’s documentation up to date and accessible is one part of what the Happiness Team works on. We’ve long had lots of documentation, but we realized that the design and flow of the support site spoke more to us Happiness Engineers. How backward is that? That all changes today. Before, you saw a long page filled with lists. Now you see eight content groupings on the homepage. Before After! We looked at a lot of data about where people run into problems with WordPress.com. Using this we redesigned the site by weeding back overgrown lists, eliminating overly complicated jargon, and putting the answers to the questions you’ve asked most front and center. If those new sections don’t have the answers you seek, we prominently placed a very effective search option at the top right that is perfect for pinpointing an answer to an obscure issue. There’s more coming too so keep an eye out. We’ll keep working hard to make it even easier to...
More About: Site , Support , Giving , Refresh

See How You Can Personalize Your Blog with Custom Fonts and CSS
2011-08-26 01:31:00
You already know that you can choose from over 130 awesome themes here at WordPress.com, but did you know that you can create a theme that’s entirely unique to you with the Custom Design upgrade? To see just how powerful Custom Design is, take a look at this diverse collection of sites that are all using the exact same theme: baramphotography.net followushere.wordpress.com   traceycaponephotography.com caveatautomattor.wordpress.com   myphotomaton.wordpress.com kojikis.wordpress.com   danroundhill.com thepracticalartworld.com   These all have a completely different look and feel because each site makes use of the many customization options that the Twenty Eleven theme offers. Adding the Custom Design upgrade, which is compatible with all WordPress.com themes, takes personalization to the next level by allowing you to choose from over 50 gorgeous Typekit fonts to use for your site’s title, headings, and body text. Addition...
More About: Blog , Fonts

New Theme: Chunk
2011-08-24 20:16:00
We are launching another theme for you which goes by the name of Chunk. It has a straightforward look, with bold typography and a well balanced layout. The theme also offers content variety with post formats. A view of Chunk Chunk was designed by Tran N. It comes with support for an optional custom header, background color, and a footer widget area that appears when you populate it with widgets. Check it out at the Theme Showcase or activate it right away in Appearance → Themes.

New Theme: Skeptical
2011-08-23 20:09:00
Today we’re pleased to introduce the latest addition to our themes, Skeptical. Originally released by WooTheme s for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs, Skeptical has seen great popularity as a blog theme. Now, it is available on WordPress.com. The Skeptical Theme The WordPress.com version is designed with Post Formats in mind. Skeptical supports nine post formats – standard, quote, aside, image, gallery, chat, audio, link, and video. Just by looking at the screenshot above, however, you can’t see all of the ingredients that make this theme sizzle. Now would be a good time to read all about Skeptical’s features on the Theme Showcase.

Growth of WordPress
2011-08-19 19:47:00
Over on the WordPress.org blog, there’s an interesting story about the growth of WordPress, the software that powers WP.com here, and the ecosystem around it. WP.com is different from every other social platform out there because in addition to giving you ownership of your data you get ownership of the code running your data as well, you could run the same Open source software yourself, and in fact we’ll even help you do it. Open Source is like a Bill of Rights for software that protects your essential freedoms. When you bring a friend to WordPress you can do it without worry because we’re building something to be around ten, twenty, thirty years from now. If you’d like to learn more about what’s happening and coming in the wider world of WordPress, check out this presentation I made: Happy blogging.
More About: Wordpress , Growth

Watch your traffic grow with Sparklines
2011-08-18 21:52:00
We have two quick announcements about new Stats features. The first one affects everyone with a WordPress.com blog. The second is just for those who have marked their blogs Private. The WordPress.com Admin Bar (visible at the top of your screen if you are logged into WordPress.com) now shows a tiny stats chart called a sparkline. You will only see the sparkline on your own blogs. Here’s a screenshot of my admin bar: The chart consists of 48 upright bars representing the last 48 hours of page views for the current blog. Darker lines indicate nighttime according to the blog’s time zone setting. This is just to give you a rough overview of recent activity. The chart is also a link to the Site Stats page so you’re that much closer to the full picture. The sparkline has been available to self-hosted WordPress.org users through Jetpack for several months. Private blogs, which can be viewed only by users chosen by the administrator, now track the page views of all of th...
More About: Watch , Traffic

Making your posts more beautiful
2011-08-12 00:17:00
Here at WordPress.com we care about making things look good. Automattic, Inc., our parent company, invests heavily in design: every engineering team has a full-time designer. We know making things look and feel great is important  and we love making things people love to use. Over the last few weeks we’ve studied the most popular features people add to their blogs. Things like Sharing, Likes and Ratings. Previously when you turned them on it made your blog look cluttered, defeating the purpose of the features themselves. This made us sad. After much research, prototyping and testing by Beau and Hugo, we’ve released a simplified, more attractive design. These features now appear as friends, lining up in orderly columns, sharing attractive styles and working together to get you the activity from your visitors you want to have. You may notice the designs for individual buttons have changed. One specific difference is now the ‘smart button’ setting is now glo...
More About: Beautiful , Posts

New Theme: Quintus
2011-08-10 19:15:00
We have created a brand new theme meant to carry on the spirit of an old timer with kindness, and we are launching it today. The theme has an air of old-style appeal, semi-academic graciousness with elegant typography, while also offering an overall fresh look with room for customization and the power of the latest WordPress features under the hood. It’s called Quintus. The Quintus Theme Above all, whether you are creating a blog with plenty of pictures or a more text-centric blog, Quintus should suit you with elegance. It goes without saying, but it also comes with much of the newer functionality you are accustomed to, including custom backgrounds, custom menus, header images, and the option to publish short aside posts, among others. If you like the focus to be on the content, you can even turn the blog design into a one column layout by removing all widgets from the sidebar in Appearance → Widgets. To learn more about Quintus go to its page on the Theme Showcase and check...

New Theme: Pink Touch 2
2011-08-09 20:03:00
Today we’re excited to introduce the latest addition to our themes — Pink Touch 2, a nicely designed theme that has a stellar mix of color, texture, and typography. The Pink Touch 2 theme Originally designed by Kcmr, Pink Touch 2 pays close attention to detail. The individual design effects are simple and subtle but together they make your blog look very attractive. Pink Touch 2 was designed with Post Formats in mind. The theme supports nine post formats — standard, quote, aside, image, gallery, chat, audio, link, and video. Read all about Pink Touch 2’s features on the Theme Showcase.