Jamie Lynn Spears Fan Site

Today’s latest theme is as clean and fresh as you’d expect a theme named Linen to be. It’s also an impressively adaptable theme with an array of options that make personalizing it simple and easy. If you’re publishing articles in a magazine, pages for a business site, or your own personal blog, you’ll find Linen’s elegant style perfect for you. And it’s yours for the lifetime of your blog for only $68.

The Linen Theme

Just like the other premium themes from The Theme Foundry Linen is packed with features. Linen beautifully highlights posts with featured images by sliding them across the home page. You can add thumbnails to each post and upload your own logo or custom background. You can even customize the typography with a selection of seven accent fonts and eight different body fonts!

Read more about Linen’s features on the Theme Showcase and preview it right now, live on your blog, from Appearance → Themes.

We know the hardest part of blogging is actually writing posts. And most blogging software,  and even word processors, do little to help writers write. Today at WordPress.com we’re  proud to announce a new kind of feature, aimed at helping the writing process, called Writing Helper. It’s a new box that appears underneath the edit box on the Add a Post Screen (the entire box can be dragged to the right side if you want it next to the edit box, instead of underneath).

First up is Copy A Post. You can now reuse the hard work of previous posts as the basis for the next one. Simply hit the Copy A Post button, pick a post, and we copy the title, content, tags and categories for you, saving you steps. If you often have similarly tagged or formatted posts, this will save much time. We will always show your most recent posts in the list, but you can search by title too.

Next is Request Feedback. You can now share a private draft of a post with a friend before it is published. They can help you find typos, suggest improvements and give advice to make the post amazing before your publish it to the world.

When you click on Request Feedback, you can enter email addresses of friends who are willing to help. They’ll receive a special private link to see your draft, where they can leave feedback on your post (see image above). Their feedback will appear in your post’s Request Feedback area when it arrives, so you can make changes to your draft accordingly.

For more about how Writing Helper works, read the support pages for Copy a Post and Request Feedback.

And if you have ideas for other Writing Helper features you’d like to see, leave us a comment.

We’re always amazed with the way you continually push the scope and depth of your blogs on WordPress.com. It only makes sense that you’d also want themes that can take that work and organize it in easily readable, neat layouts. Like our newest theme addition, Fresh News! For the one time price of $45, Fresh News offers a solid design that can accommodate many different websites. From its feature post slider to the 18 color schemes, this magazine style theme is an elegant and feature rich way to display your content.

The looks of Fresh News

Developed by WooThemes, Fresh News also makes use of two fully customizable navigational menus as well as several widget areas and layout options. If you love customization in your themes, you can’t go wrong with Fresh News. Of course, there is much more for you to explore and discover on the Theme Showcase.

Example of Mystique’s single page view.

I think you’ll agree this theme has a certain mystique to it. This fun, colorful theme is flexible enough to fit any type of site — it’s simply loaded with options. A long-time favorite for self-hosted sites designed by digitalnature, Mystique is now available in your WordPress.com dashboard.

What doesn’t this theme do? It offers layout choices of one, two, or three columns, six color schemes, four footer widget areas, and support for four post formats. Not to mention built-in links to your favorite social networks in the header, a unique custom widget with quick-switching tabs, and special treatment for a “featured” post at the top of the site.

Read all about Mystique on the Theme Showcase — I think you’re going to really love this one.

We love blogging, and we know you do too, but we also have a special interest in making blogging lovely for your readers as well. It’s for that reason that we’ve taken a shine to Post Formats and themes that make good use of them. Themes like today’s new premium theme, Tapestry, available for a one time price of $75.

The Tapestry Theme

The Tapestry theme accounts for all 10 Post Formats available. How? Tapestry designers, StudioPress describe it this way: “You take pictures, you write stories and opinions, you make videos, you link to cool stuff all the time. Tapestry takes everything you make online, and makes perfect, beautiful sense of it.” With 10 unique icons and a compact layout Tapestry lets you blog your heart out while keeping everything neatly organized.

But that’s not all. Tapestry has options for selecting your layout, custom Widgets, a Custom Header, and a Custom Background. You can even control what content is shown in your blog archive pages. Interested? You can find more information on the Tapestry theme in our Theme Showcase or preview it live on your site from Appearance ? Themes under the Premium tab.