Jamie Lynn Spears Fan Site

New Theme: A Simpler Time

Thu, 17 May 2012 19:17:18 +0000

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 today with a theme that will make you want to stop time and write about everything in your lives until you can’t write anymore.

A Simpler Time, designed by Denise Chandler, is a theme that’s beautiful, bold, and memorable—pretty much exactly like the types of stories you’ll be writing alongside it on your WordPress.com blog:

A Simpler Time: Single Post

It’s a traditional blog theme in the sense that it offers everything you’ve come to expect from a WordPress theme—widgets, custom menus, and custom headers, and more—and it also looks incredible. If you’d also like to mix it up with different colors and fonts, try the Custom Design upgrade. You can do all of that and more.

A Simpler Time is a premium upgrade for your blog; read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance ? Themes.

Stay In The Conversation

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:13:09 +0000

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 the default comment following behavior to help you get more conversations going on your blog.

We made the initial changes last week and after great feedback from you we just launched an update. Here’s how it works:

By default, posting a comment will now subscribe you to receive follow-up comments via email for that specific post, keeping you updated on the conversation. This is indicated by the checked box in the comment form.
If you have a WordPress.com account, you now have a global setting to change this so that by default you will not be subscribed. If you don’t have an account, then you can create one over here.
If you don’t want email notifications for a thread, just uncheck the box when you post your comment. If you’ve disabled the feature, you can also subscribe to a specific thread by checking the box in the comment form.
There is also a link at the bottom of every notification email that will allow you to change your subscription options.

If you’d like to find out all of the details about how this works, we’ve also updated our support documentation about following comments.

Stay In The Conversation

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:13:08 +0000

We made the initial changes last week and after great feedback from you we just launched an update. Here’s how it works:

By default, posting a comment will now subscribe you to receive follow-up comments via email for that specific post, keeping you updated on the conversation. This is indicated by the checked box in the comment form.
If you have a WordPress.com account, you now have a global setting to change this so that by default you will not be subscribed. If you don’t have an account, then you can create one over here.
If you don’t want email notifications for a thread, just uncheck the box when you post your comment. If you’ve disabled the feature, you can also subscribe to a specific thread by checking the box in the comment form.
There is also a link at the bottom of every notification email that will allow you to change your subscription options.

If you’d like to find out all of the details about how this works, we’ve also updated our support documentation about following comments.

Look at These Gorgeous Blogs

Wed, 16 May 2012 04:13:08 +0000

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 with WordPress.com themes and customizations by clicking a thumbnail to see a colophon-style list of credits on the left.

We’ve also updated footer links so blog owners can show off the types of customizations they’ve made and visitors can learn more by clicking the “Customized” link in WordPress.com footers. A “Customized” link will appear next to the theme name for blogs that are using Custom Design tools like fonts or CSS.

Things we like to see when looking for showcase-worthy customizations are blogs with good traffic, beautiful design, well-written articles or stunning images, recent content updates, and involvement helping out in our CSS Customization forum.

Be inspired, customize your blog and make it that perfect place for your creations.

Photo Blogging 101, Part 1

Tue, 15 May 2012 02:02:50 +0000

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 over here.

Getting started

Photo blogs, sometimes called phlogs, use pictures instead of words. While many photo bloggers choose a type of photo that they want to focus on, such as portraits, others use their photo blog to document their life’s events. Photo blogs come in a variety of styles, including those that focus on vacation photos or even snapshots of friends. With images, we can capture moments in our life in a way that sometimes words cannot.

When starting a photo blog, you’ll want to choose a theme with a wider content area to help to showcase your photos at full size. Similarly, choosing a theme that is minimalistic helps to reduce any noise that may detract from the focus on your photography. Popular photo blogging themes on WordPress.com include Nishita, Duotone, and Modularity Lite. Looking for some inspiration? Be sure to check out the photo blogs below or more of our recommended photo blogging sites for examples of photo-friendly layouts.

The Unknown Project, a WordPress.com photo blog using Anthem.

Tracey Capone Photography, a WordPress.com photo blog using Twenty Eleven.

Tomorrow Never Knows, a WordPress.com photo blog using Comet.

Want to add photo flair to your site without starting a whole new blog? Adding a photo blogging category to an existing blog is a great way to revamp your site. In fact, you may consider doing “Friday Phlogs” or a similar weekly special to help incorporate these tips consistently into your current site.

Tools of the Trade

What do you need to get started? Nothing but a camera and an internet connection. Photo blogging with a smart phone is growing increasingly simple, particularly with the Quick Photo button in the WordPress for iOS and Android apps where you can point, shoot, and publish. If you’re already a pro at the WordPress apps, you may be interested in taking a look at Camera+ and Flickr, which allow you to automatically share your photos to your WordPress.com blog.

On the left, QuickPhoto in WordPress for Android and on the right, QuickPhoto in WordPress for iOS.

If you choose to use a more traditional camera, there are few tips to keep in mind when uploading your photos to ensure they represent the full quality of your original picture.

Don’t resize your photos after uploading them to WordPress.com. Instead, leave your images at full size so we can see your work in all of it’s glory. WordPress.com will automatically generate the appropriate dimensions for you.
Make edits to your photos before uploading them.
Save your photos as JPEGs. JPEGs are the best format for photos online. You can also use PNG if you’re looking to add a transparent image to your site.

Welcome to our series on photo blogging! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks over the next few weeks.

New Themes: Just Desserts and Oxygen

Fri, 11 May 2012 06:57:02 +0000

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 layout and unique presentation of images and posts on the front page, Just Desserts gives you a delectable canvas on which your mouthwatering photos and text can really shine — even when viewed on smaller mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

There’s much more to be said about Just Desserts, and we’ve provided all of the tasty details on the Theme Showcase.

If all of the dessert goodness left you breathless, we can supply you with some…Oxygen. Yep, that’s also a theme. Although, it may also leave you breathless because it’s simply stunning.

Designed by DevPress, Oxygen is a minimal yet beautifully crafted free magazine theme. With the help of your amazing images, the crisp and well-balanced design will transform your blog into an online magazine that looks sharp and professional.

Oxygen contains many features and customization options, including a showcase page template with a featured slider, featured images, seven widget areas, and a carefully tailored responsive layout. To read about these features and more, you know where to head — the Theme Showcase.

Happy blogging! We look forward to seeing what you bake, photograph, and write, armed with these great new themes.

Find Friends Who Use WordPress

Wed, 02 May 2012 01:44:34 +0000

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 information is saved!) you’ll see a list of people you know who have WordPress sites.

Click Follow and each time your friend publishes a new post it will show up in your Reader under Blogs I Follow.

If you have multiple blogs, make sure to set the Primary Blog in your Settings so the correct blog is shown to friends when they find you.

If you’re interested in finding more cool blogs to follow, browse our collection of Recommended Blogs and try adding some topics to follow in your reader using the box in the bottom left.

New Themes: Everyday and Origin

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:34:22 +0000

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 provide a robust and versatile layout to suit your writing needs. From short quips to lengthier bits of prose, Everyday will rise to the challenge and shine with every post you publish. Read more about it in the Theme Showcase or take it for a test spin in the demo site.

Next is a wonderful free theme named Origin by Galin Simeonov.

Origin is a light, elegant theme with a minimalist look and feel, perfect for a blog or journal. Your photos are the focus thanks to featured images and stylized Sticky posts, and the responsive design makes it a great fit for mobile devices and small screen sizes. A full list of features is available in the Theme Showcase and a demo site has been set up so that you can see it in action.

More Likes in More Places

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 04:34:22 +0000

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.

Likes per week since the beginning

Today I’m happy to announce a few enhancements to the way Likes work that we think you’ll really like.

Show Likes on Pages

In the past, we’ve always restricted Likes to individual blog posts. Given the success of Likes, we want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to Like what they are reading, wherever they are reading it. Likes now share the same display settings as your sharing buttons (which you can change from Settings -> Sharing in your dashboard). In addition to showing Likes on single posts, you can now show Likes on all of your site’s content:

Here’s an example of Likes displayed on a blog’s front page:

Do you like naps and puppies? I think I do!

Show Likes on Gallery Images

In addition to making Liking posts easier, we wanted everyone to be able to Like all of the things you publish on your blog, including media. So, we’ve also added the ability to Like photos directly from inside image galleries, like this:

Who can resist liking Paul the Puppy?

What You’ve Liked

Now that it’s super easy to Like everything you see, you need a place to see what you’ve Liked. To make this as convenient as possible, we’ve added a link in the Reader that lists all of the posts you’ve liked across all of WordPress.com. You also have instant access to your favorite posts through the official mobile WordPress apps for all your favorite mobile gadgets.

We think these tweaks really improve the Liking experience, and we hope that you enjoy them!

Did you think I was going to say “like” again? :)

8 Gorgeous Nature Blogs for Earth Day

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:22:49 +0000

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 on WordPress.com:

Birdlightwind.com

70degreeswest-explore.com

Leahyetter.WordPress.com

Drawandshoot.me

Beingmark.com

Beetlesinthebush.WordPress.com

Theblondecoyote.com

Lookingatthewest.com

So, how will you celebrate Earth Day 2012? Maybe Picnic for the Planet, or plant a tree? Whatever you do, be sure to share it on your blog! And don’t forget to tag your post with Earth Day to make it easier for others to find.

For more cool nature blogs, check out our collection of Recommended Blogs, and add topics like Nature and Earth Day to follow in your Reader.

Add Spotify, Rdio, and GitHub’s Gist Embeds To Your Site

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 01:20:53 +0000

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 itself. You’ll end up with something like this when you view your post:

Rdio

If you’re an Rdio user, you can embed music from them too. Copy the URL from your address bar when looking at a track, artist, or playlist and paste that into your post editor. Here are a few examples:

If you use the Mac application for Rdio you can copy URLs from there as well. If you click the “Share” button you’ll see a URL to copy right at the top. Paste that in to your post editor and you’re all set.

GitHub’s Gist

We’re big fans of the code repository website GitHub here at Automattic and many of us use their Gist code snippets website. While we already have a cool way to embed code into your site, we realize many of you want to post Gist-hosted snippets too so starting today you can. Again, just copy/paste the URL out of your address bar onto it’s own line in the post editor.

How to get more page views for your blog

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:18:07 +0000

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 data and analyze the strongest parameters that influence the flow of visitors to WordPress.com blogs.

Out of the 30+ million blogs on WordPress.com, we randomly selected a sample of almost 100,000 blogs to perform a regression analysis. Here are our findings, together with a few recommendations. We hope that this provides some new information, and kudos to you in case you’ve already incorporated these tips into your blog – the data suggests that you’re on the right track. Keep it up!

Make your blog easy to follow – It almost sounds obvious, but the simplest way to build more awareness is to make it easier to do so. Make sure that you have the follow widget as visible as possible. If your readers receive a notification every time you post, or see your post in their reader, there is a much higher chance that they will revisit your blog.

Comments, Comments, Comments – The most successful blogs, we found, created and encouraged a dialogue with their readers. The best way to make people more engaged with your writing is for you to engage back and start a conversation. In your posts, encourage people to comment. Also, make sure that you reply to people’s comments and continue the dialogue. This back and forth conversation is a significant driver of page views; holding all else equal, every additional comment can potentially drive up to 18 incremental page views! You can start by simply asking follow-up questions at the end of each post: ”have you ever done X?”; “do you think Y is acceptable?”. You can read some more thoughts on building a relationship with your audience in this post.

Post Frequently and Regularly – Your readers want to know that you are there for them and that you are “on it”. If you post frequently and regularly and have enabled the follow feature as we mentioned above, checking your blog could become a daily routine for your readers. Even if it’s a short post, write something new as frequently as possible, and at regular intervals. (The Daily Post can help with ideas for this.)

While these three tips were shown to be the most important drivers of page views in our analysis, you might consider other parameters, which we found as having a partially significant effect: syndicating your post to Twitter and Facebook (using Publicize), for example, could lead to additional page views.

Happy blogging!

Integrate Cool Applications with WordPress.com

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:08:10 +0000

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, or Reblog content for users. Other features from WordPress.com, like the daily handpicked content on Freshly Pressed, are also available through the API.

An excellent example of an application that uses the new API is the Windows 8 WordPress.com app, available now.

Our goal with the new API is to simplify the experience of using and adding to the data available on WordPress.com. To do this, we now use the OAuth2 protocol to authenticate requests for data. To retrieve public data, you can make unauthenticated requests. To perform actions, such as making new posts or comments, you would need to make authenticated requests. When the API returns data, we now return a standardized JSON object for ease-of-use.

The REST API also self-documents itself; as we add new endpoints, the documentation on our Developer Resources blog will auto-update to provide you with the latest information. In addition, you’ll also have access to a Developer Console, which will allow you to run real REST API queries and see real JSON data directly in your web browser. You can read more about the Console here.

Ready to build an app and integrate it with WordPress.com? Great! You can now sign up for and manage your OAuth2 tokens without waiting through an approval cycle. If you have any questions or feedback on the API, please get in touch with us. Make sure to follow the Developer Resources blog for news, updates, and documentation about the REST API and other awesome services we are making available to developers seeking to integrate with WordPress.com.

How to get more comments

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 02:08:10 +0000

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 by reviewing our famous post on How to Get More Traffic to understand the basics of building an audience. Posting on a regular schedule is an important part of building traffic, which will lead to more comments.
Have a clear and strong position in your posts. Clarity in writing helps readers form their own opinion to share. A post titled “I’m not sure if I like bananas” is less likely to compel a response than “How I learned to love bananas” or “Why I will never eat a banana again”. Writing well and having interesting thoughts is by far the best way to encourage more comments (and follow The Daily Post for regular advice on writing better). Being provocative, or picking polarizing topics, can help attract comments too, but be careful: the more intentionally provocative you are, the more polarized and uncivil the comments you receive are likely to be.
Reply to every comment you receive. This rewards people for leaving a comment, and also shows new readers that you care about comments, encouraging them to leave one too. Be a good host: be more polite and forgiving than your visitors. WordPress.com allows you to reply to comments via email, a convenient way to keep conversations moving along.
Ask your friends. If you are writing about a topic your friends are interested in, send them a link and ask them to comment. If you pick friends with blogs you can offer to return the favor. This ensures every post you make will get at least one comment, provided you’re willing to give one in return.
Start conversations. In real life, most conversations start by reciprocation. “How is your day going?” “Fine. And you?”. In your post, don’t just offer an opinion. Supplement your point of view with invitations for other people to offer theirs. At minimum, end posts with a question inviting people to answer.
Customize the comment prompt. The text that appears above the comment area is customizable. It says “Leave a Reply” by default but you can make it say whatever you like. We strongly recommend asking a question like “What do you think?” or “What is your opinion?” as questions are requests for people to respond. Go to Settings-Discussions to make the change.
Write a response to another blogger’s post on your blog. By excerpting a small paragraph from another blogger’s post, and writing a response on your blog with a link back to their post, you invite them to visit your blog. WordPress.com automatically tries to contact their blog for you, letting them know you have linked to them. If what you say is interesting, they’re likely to comment, or at minimum, respond in a kind with a post on their blog. In both cases you’ll be starting a conversation which leads to more comments.
Use WordPress.com’s discussion features. We’ve built in lots of goodness to help you start and grow conversations. If you go to Settings->Discussions you can find them all. Make sure you have it set to send you an email when you get a comment, so you can reply quickly. If you don’t get many comments, consider turning comment moderation off so comments appear immediately (if you have it set to email you when a new comment is left, you can always remove questionable comments quickly).
Run a contest. Create ways to encourage first time commenters. After someone has left a first comment on your blog, it’s psychologically easier for them to leave a second one: they’ve broken the ice. Running a competition where you give a prize away, say a $25 amazon gift certificate, to a randomly chosen comment on a post, can encourage many first time commenters, as well as new readers to your blog
Create interesting polls. It takes less effort for readers to make a choice in a poll than to write a comment. Use this to your advantage. The more people you get to participate in your polls, the more who will want to return to see the final results and have comments about them. Read about creating polls here.
Tell relatable stories. A post where you offer a story that your readers can relate to invites participation. For example, if your blog is about baking cakes, and you share a story about how you messed up a recipe with disastrous yet entertaining consequences, it’s easy to ask readers to share their stories of similar disasters.
Make a post out of the best comments from your readers. If you see a fantastic comment on your blog, create a post where you quote what they said (and link to their blog if they have one). Show your readers that you value and read their contributions, and more people will be motivated to comment in the future.

Also See The Daily Post’s advice on Comment Community, and our previous post on Comment Etiquette.

Automattic’s Worldwide WP 5k

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:04:39 +0000

It wasn’t just a one-time event! The Automattic Worldwide WP 5k is back again in 2012!

Set your timers for April 29th! At Automattic we work from all over the world, and we use internal blogs for socializing and exchanging non-work ideas in addition to making WordPress.com and our other products more awesome. One of the things we’re really concerned about is staying healthy – we even have an entire internal blog dedicated to fitness.

We had a great idea: Get all Automatticians from 79 cities & 24 countries to run/walk a 5k on the same day! This way we can get some exercise together as a company even though we’re apart (though we won’t rule out a softball or Texas scramble at our next meetup).

A year later, and there are now 105 Automatticians we hope will take part in the 5k all around the world in 2012.

We want to invite you to join us, WordPress.com users (and self-hosted WP users, too!), in the Worldwide WP 5k – the 5k blogged around the world! The date is approaching, so read on to find out how to participate.

WHAT IT IS: A 5k run/walk (approximately 3.1 miles). You can run, walk, or skip. It’s up to you. There’s no time limit and there’s just one requirement: that you participate! You can do it inside or outside, on a treadmill or on a track, or even do a swim or a bike ride instead of running/walking – just get moving!

A 5k is roughly equal to:

3.1 miles
12 laps around a track
approximately 6000-7500 steps
approximately 50-60 minutes of brisk walking

If you ran/walked last year’s Worldwide WP 5k, why not try to shave a few minutes off your time and set a personal record (PR)?

WHEN: We’re all busy, but we want you to participate, so we’re giving you some flexibility, too. The WWWP5k is set for Sunday, April 29th, but you can do your run/walk anytime from April 23rd-29th (you’ve got a week to fit it in).

WHO: Anyone who’s ever used or loved WordPress (and your families and friends, too). Heck, the entire Internet is invited!

HOW: Post about it on your site and tag the post “wwwp5k” so we can find you (and for a chance to be Freshly Pressed). If you’re not on WordPress.com, link back to this announcement post so others can find it and participate, too.

You’re welcome to blog your entire route and your preparation (videoblog, perhaps?) but above all we’d love to see where you are and how you’re completing your 5k. Give us a picture of you and what you see when you cross the finish line and tell us your location as you complete your 5k with the rest of the world. Some tools & suggestions:

Get a pedometer
Use mapmywalk.com or RunKeeper.com to chart your course
Set your car’s odometer to 0, leave your house and drive along a safe course with sidewalks for walking/running, until you reach 1.55 miles (you can loop back the same way), or chart out a 3.1 mile course

If you’re not up to running this year, never fear, you can get started with the Couch to 5k method which several Automatticians like – 9 weeks from couch potato to running a 5k, and be ready to run for next year. But make sure to walk this year – no excuses! Will you be joining us for the Automattic Worldwide WP 5k on April 29th?

Custom CSS gets an upgrade

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:56:01 +0000

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 a polished letterpress embossed look, or add high-dpi graphics for retina displays—you can do that. If you’ve just got to have a Machu Picchu color palette complete with linear gradients to show off your lovely llama, you can do that too. CSS3 opens the doors to all the latest cutting edge things going on in the web design world today. If you can dream it, you can do it.^TM

The CSS editor itself has been upgraded too! Now that we’re using Ace, it’s just like having a desktop code editor in the browser: syntax coloring, auto-indentation, and immediate feedback on the validity of the CSS you’re writing are just a few of its features.

If you don’t have the Custom Design upgrade and you want to use these awesome new features, including fabulous Custom Fonts which are included with the upgrade, you can add it to your blog from the Store link in your dashboard.

New Themes: Mimbo Pro, Blaskan, and Vintage Kitchen

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:56:00 +0000

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!

The Mimbo Pro Theme

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 by category. Using all of the standard WordPress functionality, custom headers, custom backgrounds, post thumbnails, custom navigation and more – Mimbo Pro makes your content look awesome. You can get a better idea of just how awesome on the theme showcase.

Example of Blaskan in action.

Blaskan is a minimal free theme focused on blogging, designed to present your text, photos, and videos in a clean, contemporary interface. Your readers will love that its responsive layout means your content looks attractive—and readable—on devices of all sizes. The classically simple design sports crisp typography, three layout options, and post thumbnails support. Designed by Per Sandström, Blaskan is a perfect fit for a journal or photoblog. Learn more on the Theme Showcase.

Vintage Kitchen Theme

Vintage Kitchen is a food- and kitchen-oriented premium theme designed by Caroline Moore. What’s so special about this theme is, as you can see, the brilliant look of it! It has fun and colorful—yet balanced—illustrations, a script typeface, and subtle textures. Together, all of these design features can set your food blog apart from others. Take a closer look on the Theme Showcase.

Have fun checking out these themes! We’re looking forward to seeing how you use them on your blog.

How to turn your blog into a book

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 22:54:07 +0000

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 want to do it all yourself?

As a blogger who has authored several successful books with publishers, and who works on WordPress.com, I recently self-published a book based entirely on posts from my blog. I wanted to see what I could learn, and I’m here to share it all with you.

The book I self-published is called Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds. It’s a collection of my best essays from my WordPress blog at scottberkun.com, where I write about ideas, creativity and leadership. The book has done well, and has often been in the top 100 books on philosophy and other categories on amazon since it was published.

There are four questions I often get asked by other bloggers.

1. How do you shape a blog into a book?

This is the wrong way to start. A book is a different reading experience than a blog, and to “shape” a blog into a book assumes words are like clay, where you can shove them into any shape you like. A book is a longer reading experience, and every chapter, or every page, needs to line up in a readable way with the others. It will take some effort to rework material written for a blog to fit well together as a book. Don’t start with the assumption you’ll include every single post on your blog, or keep them in the chronological order they were written.

The first step is to make two lists: possible posts and possible concepts. You might discover a book concept that’s strong, but you only have 10 or 12 posts that fit. That’s ok. You can always choose to write more. Of course the theme of your entire blog could be the theme for a book, but consider other concepts too.

I went back to the beginning and made a list of posts that might be good enough to include. I made a separate list of possible book concepts. One concept I saw in some of my posts was intelligent provocation: asking big questions and offering intelligent and entertaining answers. I filtered the list based on that concept, and arrived at 45 possible posts. Then I hired an editor to help refine the list, and the result was 30 posts that, while all written independently, fit together into an excellent read.

There are services like Blurb or Blog2print that will take your WordPress.com blog and build a book from it. If your WordPress blog is self-hosted, and not on WordPress.com, you might take a look at Anthologize, a plugin that automates the process of converting your blog into an e-book. But these services do nothing to shape your work into a great read. No software can do this for you. There is an enormous distance between a ‘book’ and a ‘book someone will enjoy reading’ and that distance is closed only by your hard work.

Plan to take a draft version of your book and ask people to read it. Ask for feedback on improving the order of posts, or which posts don’t fit. You’ll notice people expect tighter and more careful writing in a book, compared to reading posts online. It’s acting on this feedback that makes the difference between a book that feels like a book, and a book that feels like a bunch of random posts thrown together. Revise posts, or write new material, to develop the book into a singular strong narrative. I asked for volunteers on my blog for people to give feedback on the drafts and their input was a key part of making the book so strong.

2. How do you actually (self) publish a book?

To go the traditional route, you’ll need to reach out to publishers or agents and try to find one that’s interested. This takes significant effort beyond writing the book itself. In all cases, traditional or self-published, the hardest part is writing and editing an excellent book. If you’re dedicated to your book, self-publishing can allow you to focus your energy on making the book better, rather than in searching for someone to give you a chance you can give yourself.

If you already have a well edited manuscript, you are most of the way there: the technical parts of self-publishing are surprisingly easy. You take your complete manuscript, after it has been copyedited and reviewed by an editor, and convert it to a PDF. With a PDF in hand, there are many services that will convert your PDF to a print or digital book for you.

For Mindfire, I used Lightning Source for the print edition, and a service called BookBaby to manage the digital editions. These services list the book on amazon.com, and it can be purchased like any other book on amazon.com, including Kindle, iBook and other digital versions. It doesn’t cost much: maybe a few hundred dollars. If you choose to only produce a digital version, it can be much cheaper.

The more work you do, the cheaper the services are. If you are willing to hire your own editor and cover designer, or do those tasks yourself, and take care of details like getting an ISBN number, you can user services like Lightning Source or CreateSpace to simply print and distribute he book. But if you want to hire people to help you, services like CreateSpace and Lulu.com let you pay them to take care of many steps on your behalf.

3. Why would people buy a book if the content is free on the blog?

The rise of the iPad and Kindle have proven the demand for longer reading experiences, experiences longer than what the web provides. A compilation of your work offers a deeper experience than what people get through your blog alone. Blogs are fantastic for small to medium length reading experiences, but to consume 40 or 50 posts without interruption, posts that are chosen to fit together on a specific theme, you need something else. A book is a better experience for this kind of continuous reading.

A book gives you an object demonstrating your talents to potential clients, business partners or anyone in the world you wish to impress. Since a book is often perceived as being a greater accomplishment than having a blog, it can be a stronger invitation to a new reader to give your work a try. It also allows your fans and friends to buy copies of your book to give to their friends as gifts: it helps them help you spread word of your work.

4. How can I use my blog to help the book succeed with the book?

If you involve your readers as your produce the book, they will naturally help spread word when it’s done. Using polls I asked my readers to help pick the title, to give feedback on several rounds of cover designs, and many other decisions. This attracted new readers curious about how books are made, and allowed me to collaborate with my readers on the book, increasing their interest in seeing it finished and released.

It’s counterintuitive, but giving the book away for free for a time helps a new book, and your blog, tremendously.

First it rewards your regular readers – who deserves a free copy more than your regular readers? The free give-away helps enlist them to reach out to their networks to bring more people to your blog for the first time. I gave Mindfire away for free for 48 hours, and had over 10,000 people download the book. It’s true my blog is popular, but many of those downloads were by people who had never heard of me before. My great fans on my site helped spread word on twitter and Facebook of my free offer, spreading my reach for future blog posts and books. I still give 1/3rd of the book away for free as a preview for anyone who wants to give it a try.

5. What’s the first step to take?

You’re a blogger: start by blogging about it. Ask your readers if they’re interested in helping you work on a book. Post your list of book concepts and see what they think. Perhaps there’s an author, editor or designer who reads your work that can lend their expertise. Take a careful look at the work you’ve already written and start thinking about what concepts might match.

Have questions about converting your blog into a book? Leave a comment.

New Theme: On Demand

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 23:41:57 +0000

Another beautiful theme worthy of the red carpet has been added to our ever-expanding cast of premium upgrades.

Designed by Jason Schuller of Press75, On Demand was created to bring videos front and center. Adding them into posts is a snap, and you’re free to use virtually any embeddable video format from any video service. On Demand also works brilliantly with WordPress.com shortcodes.

On Demand: Home Page

Also included in On Demand is a custom Featured Posts widget that allows you to pull in any number of posts from a specified category, as well as several nice Theme Options to help you show off your site content exactly as you’d like it.

There are lots of other goodies offered by On Demand. A custom background color, custom website logo, social media links, four widget areas, and full width page template all come rolled into this video-friendly theme.

On Demand is a premium upgrade for your blog; read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Keep Your Upgrades in Order

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 17:34:01 +0000

As more and more of you take advantage of our fabulous Upgrades, we’ve been conscious of the increasing need to offer a great way to manage your purchases. What if you could track all of your upgrades, manage them, renew them and *gasp* even cancel them, all in one place?

Well, starting today you’ll see a new page in the Store section of your dashboard: My Upgrades.

On that page you’ll find the list of the upgrades purchased for the site you are managing, followed by a lists of the upgrades you have on your other sites, if any.

Domain registration, mapping, Custom Design, Space upgrade, VideoPress or Premium theme, you will find them all here, along with links allowing you to renew, enable auto renew, update credit card data, or cancel ( and get a refund within the appropriate timeframe ).

As you can see, the status of each upgrade and its expiration date are clearly displayed there, with some handy color-coding:

One-time purchases (Premium theme in the screenshot above) or upgrades currently set to auto-renew (Domain) are displayed in green
Upgrades which need to be renewed manually are displayed in orange ( 10GB Space, Custom Design )
When these upgrades which need to be renewed manually get close to their expiration date, they are displayed in red ( VideoPress )

You’ll also find some handy dandy links to more information about each upgrade, just in case you forget why you bought it! When appropriate, we give you links to the settings page, too.

We’ve got plenty of exciting updates planned, including the ability to visualize, save, and print your own billing reports and purchase receipts – so keep an eye on the page for more!

Never forget a renewal anymore, visit the My Upgrades section of the dashboard.

New Themes: Standard and Chalk

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 22:26:17 +0000

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 Standard’s support of post formats, it can. Image, video, quote, status, and link posts all receive a beautiful visual treatment.

If your visitors are browsing on a mobile device or tablet, Standard has got you covered. Its responsive layout adapts gracefully to smaller screens. View it in action on the demo site, or head on over to the Theme Showcase to read more about Standard and its features.

Next, we have Chalk, an innovative theme designed with a strong focus on online educators by The Theme Foundry.

Posts containing to-do lists, chats, links, podcasts, photos, and video are beautifully styled. Chalk comes equipped with a responsive layout allowing your blog to look great on screens both large and small. A custom options screen is also provided enabling you to change colors, add social media links and much more. Want to discover more about Chalk? Head on over to the Theme Showcase and read all about it or take it for a test-spin in the demo site.

Celebrate Your Milestones

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:23:17 +0000

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 now on, whenever you hit a milestone for how many followers your blog has (5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and beyond), you’ll get a badge:

We also created badges to celebrate when you receive lots of likes from visitors:

In addition to celebrating your achievements, we wanted to notify you when you’ve had a particularly good day for receiving likes or new followers. From now on, we’ll let you know of your best days for such activity:

Keep in mind that we’ve only started counting your best days this March.

We all blog for different reasons. Some might chronicle their travel adventures, others might detail their culinary undertakings. If you find a post or a blog you enjoyed, like it or follow the blog — your action might send them a badge and make them smile. It’s easy to find great new blogs to follow using the Reader.

New Themes: Ari and San Kloud

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:22:04 +0000

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 custom background, and a custom menu. With all of these features, the Ari theme will be suitable for a wide range of blogs. Yes, for yours too! So be sure to read about it on the Theme Showcase page.

Ari Theme

Next up is San Kloud—a bright, colorful theme with a playful feel—perfect for a tumblelog or journal. It features three color schemes, fun post format icons, and support for a custom header image and custom background. See more details on the Theme Showcase. San Kloud is designed by Theme.fm.

San Kloud Theme

Does anyone know who sings this?

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:42:05 +0000

16 Comments, last updated on Monday Mar 19 by AWAP

Bestselling Author Shares 3 Tips for Building Your Blog Audience

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:13:32 +0000

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 Rachel even started the blog, the 27-year-old writer put together a book proposal based on her search for a local BFF, and successfully pitched it to agents, and then editors. She says, “After I sold the proposal, I decided to start a blog so that I could have a place to document my journey and some of the research I was finding. I also wanted to start building a community and to engage with readers.”

It’s now been over two years since Rachel first launched MWFseekingBFF.com. So did she accomplish her blogging goals? “Absolutely!” Rachel says, “When my book, MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend, came out, I had a whole audience for the memoir that wouldn’t have existed without my blog. And I made new friends through blogging — I’ve met some of my readers, and other bloggers, in real life. My book ended up becoming a National Bestseller and hitting the NY Times Extended Bestseller List. I continue to update the blog because I enjoy it, and also I have a lot of loyal and wonderful readers who seem to enjoy it.”

Rachel says that the discussions generated by her blog posts were a great aid to the book writing process. “Blogging also helped me uncover what issues surrounding friendship were most interesting to my readers, and brought me new ideas. Readers said things in the comments that would switch on a light bulb for me, or they often alerted me to new research on friendship. While my book is very different than my blog (it’s not a compilation of blog posts by any means), writing my posts made me feel like I had a platform to bounce book ideas off of.”

We asked Rachel to share her advice on how to grow your blog audience. Here’s what she had to say:

The first thing I did was to read and comment on other blogs that I thought had a similar audience to mine. Leaving thoughtful comments with a link back to your blog is a great strategy. But you need to actually engage, and respond to the post. Readers are smart. Comments that are clearly only self-promotion will be obvious. Don’t write, “Great post! I think you and your readers might also be interested in my blog [link here].” Instead, get into the discussion. Respond to the issue at hand.

When you go to leave a reply, don’t post your blog link in the comment. Readers understand that they can click on your name and I think leaving the link in the post reeks a bit of self-promotion. (To change the link, go Users ? Personal Settings in your dashboard and find the Website field under Account Details.) If you regularly comment on someone’s blog, that person will likely eventually stop by and read your blog, too. I’ve found the blogging community to be one of the most inclusive and generous out there.

Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help. When I started out, I emailed some of the bloggers I most admired. I told them I loved their blog and asked their advice on how to find success. They were people who had clearly cracked the nut and each had their own tips for what worked for them. Then you can pick and choose.

Finally, give credit where credit is due. When I read a blog post that I love or that spurs an idea for my own blog, I always reference the post and link back. Blogging is about community and sharing, and this sets the tone. Just recently, I wrote a blog post inspired by a post on 1000AwesomeThings.com. I linked back, and hopefully turned a bunch of new readers onto the site. Because there was a decent amount of traffic sent to his blog, or maybe because he received a pingback, Neil Pasricha then came and commented on my blog! This is the author of two #1 International Bestselling books! I was so thrilled. I emailed Neil to thank him, and that began a back and forth, where I was able to ask him his blogging tips.

The bottom of line of all these lessons is to engage. Blogging is about community. It’s most successful not as a solitary endeavor but when you enlist the help of others, and in turn help them, too.

Learn more about Rachel and her book at MWFseekingBFF.com.

Posterous Joins Twitter

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 06:09:03 +0000

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 Twitter and well-earned for Posterous co-founder Sachin Agarwal.

We’ve had an over 250% spike in the number of imports the past few hours, so it seems timely to recap how the importer works:

Sign up for a new WordPress.com blog.
In your dashboard, go to Tools ? Import and click on “Posterous.”
Enter your Posterous login details, and we’ll email you when the import completes!
Take the time while it’s running to have a sarsaparilla, then explore some of the great designs available for WordPress.com, and start following your favorite blogs from your WordPress.com account so that you can read them all in one place.

Once you’re all set up, you can easily create new posts with the New Post button at the top of your screen, and you can also publish posts by email.

If you have any trouble, don’t hesitate to contact our 24/7 support staff for help.

Where in the World?

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:59:11 +0000

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 you click on or hover over a country name, the map zooms in so you can really get a feel for all the parts of the planet your content has reached:

The Summaries page shows you country stats for the previous week, month, quarter and all time, but keep in mind this feature is new and views by country are not available prior to March 2012:

We are tremendously excited to be working on new features like this for your WordPress.com My Stats tab. Stay tuned for the next evolution!

New Themes: Sunspot and Triton Lite

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:58:33 +0000

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, especially if you prefer a dark color scheme.

Sunspot offers two arrangements for posts on the front page: single-column (default) or double-column (pictured above). Additional features include a small, logo-sized custom header for the top left corner, a custom background, two optional widget areas, and a responsive layout that adapts gracefully to smaller screen sizes. Read more about it on the Theme Showcase, or head over to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard and take it for a spin.

Next up is Triton Lite, a clean and simple—yet versatile—theme designed with photographers in mind. Its home page and archive pages offer truly dynamic layouts that snap to both the heights and widths of all available content on a page, thus creating tight and tidy post arrangements that beautifully showcase your images.

Designed by Towfiq I., Triton Lite comes bundled with three different widget areas, a featured post slider, custom accent and link color options, and a full-width page template. As usual, read more about Triton Lite and its features on the Theme Showcase, or, if you want to start using it right away, visit Appearance → Themes to activate it on your blog.

A Faster Way to Publish Posts

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:43:18 +0000

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 a new post the very second you’re inspired to create one.

Simply click the New Post button on the right side of the toolbar, and you can instantly start a new post with the editor that slides down from the top of the screen:

First, select the type of content you want to share (text, photo, video, quote, or link).

Use the Write a Post tab if you want to include multiple images in your post (or if you want to write a text-only post). If you just want to quickly share a single photo, select the Post a Photo tab.

When the post is ready, add some tags if you like, then choose the blog you want to post to (if you have more than one) using the drop-down menu below the post editor:

When you’re done, hit Publish Post, and you can go right back to whatever you were doing before you started the post.

Note that if you have a theme that supports post formats, posts published with the Post a Photo, Video, Quote, and Link tabs will be displayed on your site with a nifty, visually distinct post format:

An example of the Esquire theme's video and quote post formats.

Lastly, there’s also a New Post tab on the WordPress.com homepage for quick access to the new post editor:

Keep in mind that if you want to add categories to a post, preview it, or schedule it to publish at a later time, you can still create and edit posts with the dashboard editor by going to Posts ? All Posts.

So what do you think of this new way to publish posts? Leave your feedback in the comments below.

New Theme: Sundance

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 19:43:06 +0000

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 to the video post format. In the sidebar, you can add your social network links — Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Flickr — so that your readers can stay connected.

Sundance is designed with responsive design in mind. It provides a tailored layout depending on the device you are using. This makes your blog look good not only on desktop browsers, but also on devices with smaller screens, such as the iPad and iPhone.

Sundance supports an optional widget area in the sidebar, a custom background, and custom header image. As always, you can click on over to the Theme Showcase to read more about Sundance.