Monkey business for the geek in you!
Last week we asked the WordPress.com community to join us for 5 km of walking, jogging, running, or hiking as part of our annual Automattic Worldwide WordPress 5K. The response was fabulous — check out some stories and photos from bloggers who participated around the world. Surprises on the trail With a bald eagle rumoured…
Every day, people from all around the world start a site on WordPress.com to share everything from photos from their latest adventures to deeply personal stories from their lives. What motivates them to do so? We asked seven bloggers from the WordPress.com community to tell us what inspires them to blog. Here are their responses:…
The 2015 edition of the Automattic Worldwide WP 5k (#WWWP5k) is around the corner! Automatticians already hit the trail at our company meetup last week. It was early — the sun was barely peeking behind the mountains in Park City, Utah — but the air was crisp and the morning was perfect for running a 5k. (Staying fit…
Launching a magazine? At WordPress.com, you can choose from an ever-growing collection of themes. Here are four free and four premium themes to promote a wide variety of content. Canard Launched earlier this year, Canard showcases writing and photography in a nicely balanced layout. You can display up to five posts in a grid on your homepage, and if you publish…
Automatticians, the people who build WordPress.com, participate in events and projects around the world every day. Periodically, they report back on the exciting things they do when not in front of a computer. Earlier this month, Happiness Engineers Kathryn Presner and David Cole, Theme Wrangler Michelle Langston, and Community Organizer Jen Mylo attended the inaugural Tech…
Karen Arnold and Erica Varlese work on the Happiness Hiring team at Automattic, where they hire new Happiness Engineers who support users on WordPress.com and Automattic products. They met with the Brazilian WordPress community last week and wanted to share their experiences. On August 29th, 2015, we traveled to Brazil to attend WordCamp Rio de…
People all over the world were horrified last week when they saw the picture of a dead Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, being picked up from the beach in Turkey. His family’s attempt to escape the brutal civil war in their country had ended in tragedy. From Calais to Kos to Lampedusa, the blogging community has been following the…
The blogging community is huge and diverse, with thousands of smaller clusters of sites built around shared interests, causes, and passions. It might seem daunting at first — like walking into a party where everyone already seems to know each other — but there are a number of ways to ease your entry into the community, from participating in…
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is committed to diversity: providing a platform for everyone to publish on the web and building a diverse, distributed workforce around the world. A collaborative effort between Accelerate with Google and Automattic, the Accelerate.LGBT conference series is designed to help diverse businesses and nonprofits optimize their web presence, empowering professionals through focused…
Actor Heather Matarazzo has only published a few posts on her new blog, but each one has stirred up an incredible response from inside and outside the WordPress.com community. Her first essay in February, “What the F— Is F—able,” took direct aim at what it’s like to be a woman in Hollywood — an industry she’s…
From colorful journal pages to creatures made of salvaged materials, here’s a glimpse at the imaginative worlds of textile and multimedia artists on WordPress.com. The Pale Rook We discovered Glasgow-based textile artist Johanna Flanagan after stumbling upon her post, “Artist’s Statement: Part Two,” and were immediately pulled into her curious world of dolls that are hand-drawn, sewn,…
We read hundreds of blogs and websites every day, from up-and-coming voices and established pros alike. We love visiting those sites on WordPress.com, but it’s just as rewarding to see other platforms embrace the work of writers, journalists, and artists who regularly publish here, introducing it to new audiences. Here’s a selection of WordPress.com bloggers who recently made a splash. A…
From sweet to savory, these four fantastic food blogs will satisfy your appetite. If you enjoy eating (and who doesn’t?!), check them out and follow them in your Reader so you won’t miss a dish. The Dinner Party Collective The Dinner Party Collective is a collaborative blog dedicated to “reinvigorating the delicious lost art of…
Some of the best photographers and professional photo organizations maintain their homes on WordPress.com. See the world through their eyes. Paul Zizka at Paul Zizka Photography Paul Zizka is a professional mountain landscape and adventure photographer based in Banff, Alberta. His photographs celebrate the power and beauty of the outdoors, from the sprawling backcountry of Canada…
Today, we’re announcing a complete overhaul of VideoPress, the service that has powered more than 3,000,000,000 video plays on WordPress.com and Jetpack-connected self-hosted WordPress sites around the world. We’ve made the next-generation VideoPress dynamic, responsive, and lightning fast to support the ever-evolving needs of content creators everywhere. Take a peek at what’s under the hood!…
You might have noticed the rainbow banner across the top of WordPress.com over the weekend — our way of marking Pride month, celebrated by cities across the globe in June, as well as the US Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing same-sex marriage across all states. (The United States now joins 20 other countries, including my own, Portugal, in fully recognizing same-sex…
Looking for summer reading suggestions? Or perhaps winter reading suggestions, should your hemisphere be the Southern one? Look no further than these three authors who — like you — make their online home at WordPress.com. Claire Fuller Claire Fuller‘s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, has been called “impossible to put down” by Amy Gentry…
Publishing tools for everyone Roughly half of the content and traffic on the internet is in English1, yet English is the mother tongue of only about a quarter of internet users2, and less than 5% of the world’s population.3 We believe that WordPress.com should be for everyone, not just English speakers — it’s why we…
It’s no secret that I love to pore through the street photography tag in the WordPress.com Reader and share images that catch my attention. Join me on another trip around the world as seen through the eyes (and lenses!) of these seven skilled photographers. This arresting image of a bird in a car — juxtaposed…
Today, Google released a change to its algorithm that gives higher search scores to sites it deems “mobile-friendly.” Curious WordPressers might be asking: How can I be sure my site is mobile-friendly? What can I do if my site is not mobile-friendly? 1. See if your site is mobile-friendly Visit Google’s mobile-friendly test link and…