Jamie Lynn Spears Fan Site

Do you love WordPress.com themes? Have you ever wished you could view all the available themes without being logged into your dashboard? Curious how other WordPress.com sites use the theme you’re using? Want to be sure you’re using your theme to its full potential?

If you answered yes to any of those questions you’ll be happy to hear this news. I’m proud to introduce the official WordPress.com Theme Showcase.

Example of the Theme Showcase landing page.

The Theme Showcase exhibits the amazing collection of themes available on WordPress.com, documents theme features, and gives you a central place to explore themes outside of your dashboard. With colorful screenshots, detailed specifications, links to sites using the theme, and a list of suggested uses, I know you’ll be inspired to learn more about your current theme or try something new.

The Theme Showcase acts as both a tool for existing site owners to learn more about their theme, such as special features and quirks, and for new owners to explore all our themes and make an informed decision before signing up and choose a theme. Large-size screenshots and links to example content will demonstrate real-world usage of WordPress.com themes.

Example of a Theme Showcase inner page showcasing one theme.

To explore our themes you can browse by subject (Photography, Lifestream, Magazine, Holiday, Single Page, …), appearance (Color, Number of columns, Width, …), features (Menus, Background, Header Image, …), or style (Outdoorsy, Techy, Grungy, Girly, Colorful, Conservative, Simple, …). Or, search for a theme that matches any combination of criteria you choose.

Theme Showcase search and browse interface example.

The Theme Showcase should be your first stop when thinking about WordPress.com themes. If you are considering starting a blog, begin here to pick the perfect theme. If you’re a WordPress.com veteran, come explore WordPress.com themes and maybe learn something new about your favorite theme. Prepare to be inspired!

Sometimes things just work out. When Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7, a complete remake of the Windows Phone platform, we all got very excited. The simplicity of the platform is unheard of, with the target being to “spend less time on your phone – and get to the things you want to do quicker”. A perfect platform for a WordPress app to enable blogging while on the move.

Today I’m very proud to introduce you to the latest addition in the WordPress app family, WordPress for Windows Phone 7:

The Actions Dashboard

In this, the first version of WordPress for Windows Phone 7, you will find most of what you’ve come to expect from WordPress apps. It’s easy to write and edit posts and pages on the move, you can upload photos, as well as check stats and moderate comments. It’s all easily accessible from an Actions dashboard. In future versions of the app we’re also hoping to implement video uploading – let us know what else you’d like to see!

To navigate through the app a Panorama view is used, something unique to the Windows Phone 7 platform that works really well for managing a blog or a website. You can get an idea of what it’s like using the app by clicking through the slideshow on the brand new WordPress for Windows Phone 7 website.

We couldn’t be more excited about this, and we’re hoping to take the app even further in the coming months. It’s a partnership between iSoftStone, Microsoft and us that’s made this possible, thank you for all your help and support!

WordPress for Windows Phone 7 is an Open Source app. To learn more and get involved, visit windowsphone.wordpress.org/development.

To get the latest news while they’re hot, be sure to subscribe to the WordPress for Windows Phone 7′s Twitter stream: @WPWindowsPhone. We’re also blogging about the app over at windowsphone.wordpress.org/blog. If you need help setting up or using the app, or if you have feedback, be sure to visit the forums.

WordPress for Windows Phone 7 is available now* for free in the Windows Mobile Marketplace.

* Available worldwide within the next few hours.

“Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.”

—Dr. Emmett Brown

The streets of the future probably won’t be filled with flying cars and hover boards but the Web will be filled with more semantic content thanks to new markup elements introduced in HTML5. Today’s new theme will let you take advantage of that future right now, right here, on WordPress.com. It’s called Toolbox.

Much like the Sandbox theme, Toolbox provides all the markup you need to build your very own theme with CSS alone–with one difference. Toolbox uses some really exciting new HTML5 elements–like <article>, <header>, and <nav>–that better describe what your content is all about.

What can you do with it? Anything you want. Since HTML and CSS go together like peanut butter and jelly we’ve put together a small demonstration. Clicking the image below will take you to a demo site where you can see—and download!—some really cool Custom CSS working in concert with the Toolbox markup.

The Toolbox Theme markup together with Custom CSS

If you need some more inspiration, take a look at a small sample of the infinite themes styles available with Custom CSS. All you need to get started is the Custom CSS upgrade and some experience with CSS.

If you’re building a WordPress theme for a self-hosted site, you can use Toolbox too! It’s available right now in the WordPress Themes Directory.

When we originally released P2 our mission was to create an awesome feature-packed group blog theme. We have stayed true to that mission with new improvements to P2 functionality that will make collaborating with others much easier.

P2 now sports a site member autocomplete tool that takes the guesswork out of tagging people in your posts. P2 will also now display the most popular tags for a blog as well as the number of times a tag has been used. These new features allow you to better identify and organize your posts.

Site Member Autocomplete

When you write posts it is now possible to bring up a list of members posting on your blog. From the front page of P2, type the @ character with part of a username and the a list of username suggestions will appear based on username and display name. You can choose the correct member name to insert and the name should be added to your post content. After tagging a member in your post, the post will be filed under a special URL (for example: http://p2demo.wordpress.com/mentions/justin/).

Tagging Improvements

We have also made some great improvements to the tag-it box. The tags that appear when you begin typing will now be ordered by popularity. P2 will also display the number of times a tag has been used. This will allow you to better decide what tags to use. To use the feature just begin typing some characters and a list of available tags should display.

Using P2

Just like other themes, you can find P2 under Appearance > Themes on your dashboard. Those who are into the self-hosted version of WordPress can keep an eye out for the updated version of P2 in the coming weeks.

The first fall of snow is not only an event, it is a magical event. You go to bed in one kind of a world and wake up in another quite different, and if this is not enchantment then where is it to be found?
J. B. Priestley

December 1st makes a lot of us think of the holidays. It’s hard not to think about snow even if your climate doesn’t bring it. Once again, we’d like to spread snow around the world through WordPress.com.

To make it snow on your site:

1. Go to your site’s dashboard.
2. Navigate to Appearance -> Extras.
3. Check the box next to “Show falling snow on this blog.”
4. Click the Update Extras button.

If you used snow last year it is automatically turned back on. If you want to turn it off, follow the steps above but uncheck the box.

Here’s a latin jazz version of Let it Snow to listen to while activating the feature:

Older computers may run slow or stop responding due to snow. Use the following links if you run into a problem (the options below only affect your user account):

Prevent Snow
Allow Snow