Jamie Lynn Spears Fan Site

With the launch of Apple’s iPad we have seen the future of computing and it is touch. Nothing matches the visceral feel of navigating your digital world with your hands. The past four months we’ve been working closely with Onswipe to bring your iPad visitors our vision of what a blog can look like re-imagined for a touch experience.

Our iPad-optimized view is app-like in its functionality, but pure HTML5 goodness on the backend: it supports touch interactions, swiping, rotation, and many other features of the iPad. Like when we launched our smartphone-optimized WP-Touch integration in 2009 (now responsible for over 150 million page views a month) this is immediately available and active on the over 18 million blogs on WordPress.com.

There are some fun options to play with too. If you browse to Appearance -> iPad in your Dashboard you can:

• Have the theme use an image from your recent posts as a cover.
• Upload a logo to showcase your brand or personality on the cover.
• Upload an image to be used as a loading graphic when visitors add your site to their home screen.
• Switch fonts.
• Choose from 9 different skin colors, to best match the feel of your site.
• Enable or disable the whole thing.

When you tap to view a post, you get to see the full content with a slick commenting interface and social sharing tools for Twitter, Facebook, and WordPress.com literally at your finger tips. It’s a lot of fun browsing sites with Onswipe.

Onswipe has also made the plugin available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites.

On WordPress.com we’re seeing about 750,000 page views a day from iPad visitors and it continues to rise. New tablet devices seem to be coming out every time you turn around. In the coming months we’ll be expanding to work with other popular tablet devices, but we chose to focus on the iPad first because… well it’s cool.

Add a dash of color to your site with Liquorice, a wonderful new theme now available on WordPress.com.

Gorgeous textures and smooth-as-silk typography make this a striking backdrop for your content. This theme’s design is light and airy without being too plain or minimalistic; it’s a great fit for any type of site.

Liquorice features custom subscribe icons for RSS, Twitter, and Facebook for your site header and built-in support for the bold and adventurous Lobster typeface. If you choose to enable Lobster via Appearance → Typekit Fonts you’ll add an extra touch of retro feel to your site. Lobster’s bold, calligraphic strokes make it perfect for calling out titles and headings.

Make this theme your own with the custom background feature, custom header image, and custom menu. Learn all about Liquorice on the Theme Showcase.

Designed by Nudge Design, Liquorice is also available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites via the WordPress.org Themes Directory.

1 Comment, last updated on Wednesday Mar 16 by The Heart Break Kid

When we launched Jetpack a few days ago Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg said to Techcrunch, “If you’re on WordPress you’re part of the family, it shouldn’t matter if we host you or not.”

Today we’re taking that a step further: we’ll actually help you move from WordPress.com to .org.

We’re launching a new upgrade called Guided Transfer where for a $99 one-time fee we’ll handle every detail and tech thingamajig involved in moving your content, theme, domain, and more to any one of the recommended hosts we’ve vetted. (And of course your new site will be Jetpack-powered.)

Of course we love having you here with us at WordPress.com, but we understand that there are situations where a self-hosted WordPress.org site may be a better choice.

What’s included:

• Install the WordPress software at the recommended host of your choice.
• Transfer over your entire WordPress.com site.
• Install and configure Jetpack and a few other plugins to provide features that you have been using on WordPress.com.
• Configure and test permissions so that you’ll be able to have one-click installs and upgrades.
• Switch your domain(s) over.
• Provide full support for you on your new WordPress installation for a two week period.

While we’re doing that–you can:

• Head to the beach!
• Read that novel you’ve been meaning to dig into.
• Chase antelope on the savannas of Africa.
• Work on that rocket ship that is “just a few tweaks” away from liftoff.
• …or do anything else. (Be sure to take pictures and blog it later!)

WordPress.com has grown into one of the most amazing cloud architectures in the world. This has enabled blogs hosted here to have features unavailable on self-hosted WordPress installs. This makes us sad, since here at WordPress.com we want every WordPress install everywhere to be amazing.

In this spirit, we have great news. We are now making the power of WordPress.com available to almost all WordPress blogs, regardless of where they are hosted.

With Jetpack, a new plugin from Automattic, people not on WordPress.com can now access features that depend on WordPress.com. Jetpack also provides convenience features that don’t use the cloud, but are now easier to install, or were unavailable as plugins before.

To start, go to http://jetpack.me and read the backstory from Matt on why Jetpack is so important for WordPress.

(Mozilla Jetpack is a wonderful, but entirely unrelated, open source project run by Mozilla Labs. We checked with them first and we’re mutually cool on the use of the name.)