Monkey business for the geek in you!
The last few weeks of the year are the perfect time to look back and reflect on our most memorable work, so we asked a few bloggers to tell us about one blog post they put together in 2015 that they especially liked. Here are their responses. Myfanwy, myf draws apparently Favorite post: “How I…
You may not bother with resolutions for the new year, but setting goals for your blog helps you to (re)focus and shape your online home. We asked a diverse mix of bloggers: What’s the most important goal you have for your site in 2016? Lisa Jakub Lisa Jakub, lisajakub.net Read moreHow To Create a Multilingual Online…
What if WordPress.com helped you… … update your pages and respond to comments from a desktop app? … manage all your WordPress blogs and sites in one spot, on any device? … spend less time on administration and uploading and more time creating? … find the best content people publish with WordPress every day? What if we rebuilt…
What makes a great blog post? We all have our pet criteria: sharp prose. Enlightening content. Stunning photos. (“Lots of GIFs?” Sure, why not?) Beyond its style or tone, a standout post invites us to take a peek into another person’s home or field of expertise, and offers a glimpse of that individual’s mind at work. The five recent…
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…
Our websites are our online homes. It makes sense that we want to give them personality and warmth, just like we do with our physical homes. One of the simplest updates with the biggest impact is a custom header, a completely free feature that’s available to the majority of themes on WordPress.com. A header instantly sets your blog…
On this Theme Thursday, we’re happy to announce the latest addition to our collection of free themes. Independent Publisher Independent Publisher is a clean and elegant theme by Raam Dev, with a clean and responsive layout ideal for personal bloggers and writers alike. Featuring clean and readable posts, the theme can be enhanced with Featured…
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…
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…
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…
First, I should note: I am not related to Jennifer Armstrong. But! I have followed her writing closely over the years — first during her years at Entertainment Weekly, and more recently as the author of books like Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted (Simon & Schuster), which offered a definitive history of the…
Happy Theme Thursday, ladies and gentlemen! Let’s take a look at our two newest free themes, Saga and Satellite: Saga Saga, designed by the talented Justin Tadlock, is a theme tailor-made for writers, by a writer. The theme’s impeccable typography and attention to detail make for an enjoyable reading experience, and with support for large…
Happy Theme Thursday, all! Today I’m pleased to present two new free themes designed especially for longform writing. Resonar Designed by yours truly, Resonar is an elegant blog theme with full-screen Featured Images. It’s perfect for blogs about fashion, food, or design, and the layout works especially well for longform features with large images. The…
Over at The Daily Post, our first poetry-focused Blogging U. course, Writing 201: Poetry, has just entered its second week. It’s been a blast, with hundreds of poets sharing their work, experimenting with new forms, and commenting on their peers’ poems. After working hard on polishing their elegies, haiku, and ballads, most writers want to make sure their readers can enjoy their…
In the past, we’ve highlighted some of our favorite themes for longform enthusiasts and bloggers who just want to write. Today, let’s take a look at five free themes, launched in the past several months, that offer a distraction-free writing and reading experience. Radcliffe Radcliffe combines bold typography with a clutter-free post layout, as shown…
Millions of new sites created and posts published later, 2014 is in the books. We could regale you with big numbers, like these… Total New Blogs 18,300,771 That’s 49,997 new blogs per day! Total Posts 555,782,547 Or more than 1.5 million per day — not too shabby. 47 million were published from mobile devices, because you’re on the go….
Here’s more great reading for you: five stories we love from across all of WordPress. 1. Spaces of Freedom in Iran Jake Threadgould An account of one traveler’s stay in Iran: On my second night in Iran I was invited to a party in a middle-class area of Tehran. Since we were a mixed gendered…
November is one week away, and that means NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo are, too! If you’ve been thinking about reinvigorating your blogging or are finally ready to stop procrastinating on that book you’ve always wanted to write, these two great events (and communities) can give you the jolt of motivation you need. NaMo what now? NaNoWriMo…
Carving out your very own corner on the web is important to you. You may be a brand-new user on WordPress.com — if so, welcome! — or a veteran blogger returning to an old habit. Recently on the Verge, Lockhart Steele, the editorial director of Vox Media, talked about getting back to blogging. On a noisy…
Christine Hyung-Oak Lee suffered a stroke when she was 33, and she has written about her experience in an inspiring personal essay for BuzzFeed. Before that, she was using a pseudonym on WordPress.com to blog about her experiences, share details about her life, and practice her writing. In 2007, shortly after New Year’s Day, Lee wrote…