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Chrome Users: Try the WordPress.com Extension
Want to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com?

Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser:

Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications:

Start following new blogs without visiting WordPress.com

The Chrome extension also makes it easy to follow sites from your WordPress.com account by displaying a Follow button whenever you’re browsing a site that has an RSS feed.

Clicking the Follow button will add new posts from the website to your reader, and send you an email each time an update is published. (You can change your default email settings if you like.)

When you visit a WordPress.com site, you’ll notice that the extension icon will turn blue, but keep in mind that you can follow blogs on Blogger, Tumblr, and other services, too.

Quickly post cool stuff you find while browsing the web

Press This is a lightning-fast way to publish content on your blog without ever visiting WordPress.com. Click the WordPress.com extension, then select Press This whenever you find something on the web that you’d like to share on your blog, and a pop-up editor will appear:

Select the blog you’d like to post to, then hit publish to share a link to the site. Your blog will be updated, and you can continue browsing the web from wherever you left off.

If you’d like to publish an excerpt of text along with the link to the site, simply highlight the material with your cursor before clicking Press This:

And it will appear in the editor for you to publish along with the link:

We hope this makes it easier for you to share cool stuff on your blog quickly! If there’s anything you’d like to see in future versions of the extension, be sure to let us know.

~8 hrs on
WordPress.com News
Your Stats Have a New Home
Are you addicted to checking your site stats? You are not alone. The stats dashboard has always been one of the most popular admin screens. It’s gratifying to know that people are visiting your place online.

With the WordPress.com front page evolving into a one-stop shop for posting, exploring, following and reading blogs, it seemed natural to put your blog stats there, too.

You’ll still find your stats in the dashboard for a while, but the My Stats tab on the WordPress.com home page will soon be their permanent home. We hope this makes it easier for you to keep tabs on your traffic!

If you’d like to attract more visitors to your site, check out these great resources on boosting your blog readership:
- Learn WordPress.com: Get Famous
- WordPress.com Support: Getting More Traffic
(Note to Jetpack users: Your stats will still be available in your wp-admin dashboard. However, you may still enjoy viewing your stats on WordPress.com.)
1 day on
WordPress.com News
New Theme: Newsy
It’s been an extra big week in the news ’round these parts, so much so that the launch announcement of our latest premium theme seems like an extra extra good way to headline our Friday.

Newsy is a versatile business and news-friendly theme that offers up to ten different layouts, four footer columns, custom link and accent colors, and a custom site header. Brand and content-focused editorial teams will love publishing with this theme.

Newsy: Home Page

Designed by Themify, Newsy comes with an impressive set of Theme Options that afford you a great deal of flexibility with how you choose to display your website. Easily control your site’s sidebar positions, home page and archive page post layouts, and navigation bar search box visibility.

You also have the ability to change your site-wide link and accent colors. A few quick adjustments via the options panel will truly have the effect of individualizing your site and making it stand out from the crowd.

Newsy: Accent and Link Color Examples

Up to ten different layouts in Newsy can be achieved by simply altering your widgets and Theme Options. A wide sidebar, narrow sidebar, and two mini sidebars come rolled into Newsy, as well as additional post display and sidebar alignment options.

Newsy: Wide Sidebar Left, Narrow Sidebar Right Option

All of this is controlled either from within Appearance → Widgets or Appearance → Theme Options. The goal with Newsy is maximum flexibility without the headache of manually configuring a thousand theme options. In this case we really can say that less—well, fewer (options)—is more.

Newsy is a premium upgrade for your blog at $85 for a lifetime subscription. Read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

7 days on
WordPress.com News
Even more Space in 2012
To celebrate the New Year we decided to offer you more space for your precious media.

Our previous space upgrade levels have been increased without any additional cost for you as follows:
- 5GB → 10GB
- 15GB → 25GB
- 25GB → 50GB
- 50GB → 100GB
- 100GB → 200GB
If you already subscribed to one or more of these upgrades ( yes, they are cumulative ), your total available space has been automatically updated as you can see in your Media Library.

If you don’t have a Space Upgrade yet, or need to add more, the new levels have been implemented in the Store section of your dashboard.

The Space Upgrade of course gives you more space to store your photos, and docs, but it also enables you to upload audio files, which makes it perfect for podcasts, MP3s, or any audio format.

We don’t even limit your bandwidth, and we’ll keep your files as long as your blog exists.

If you want to learn more about these upgrades, feel free to visit our space upgrades support page.

But wait, there’s more…

For those of you with a private blog, we lifted the previous limit of 35 users allowed to access it. From now on, you can add as many authorized users as you wish, from the Settings → Privacy section of the dashboard.

We hope you’ll enjoy these new features, and we wish you and your WordPress.com site all the best for 2012!
21 days on
WordPress.com News
New Themes: Duet and ThemeMin
I’m excited to announce we’ve added two great new premium themes to our ever-growing collection of themes today.

First up is Duet – a responsive, minimal, and sophisticated design from The Theme Foundry.

Duet is tailored for writers, journalists, and business bloggers. Meticulously crafted and refined options provide you with the power to effortlessly customize your theme. Choose and mix from ten accent fonts, and five body fonts to discover the perfect typographic style for your website. You can also upload a custom logo image to put your own personal stamp on your blog.

With a flexible featured slider, your readers have no chance to miss your important posts. Duet comes with more great features, so be sure to read about it on the showcase page.

Next up is ThemeMin, designed by Themify.

ThemeMin is a minimal, light-weight, and fast-loading theme that focuses on typography. Together, all of these elements help to provide a comfortable reading experience. ThemeMin comes with a featured posts carousel on the front page. Plus, you can mix and match between five color schemes, three site layout options, and two post layout options until you find a combination that hits the spot for your blog. Go find more about the theme on its showcase page.

22 days on
WordPress.com News
New Theme: Nuntius
If you’ve been itching to turn your blog into an online newspaper or magazine, Nuntius could be your perfect companion. Based on the highly-popular News theme designed by Justin Tadlock, Nuntius contains many smart features that help your readers to stay on top of all your latest scoop.

Upon activation, Nuntius displays your posts in a traditional blog format on the front page. If you’re happy with this, you can use it as is. If you’d like to showcase your content newspaper-style, then you can use the special News template. The News template includes a slider for your sticky posts, a featured widget area, and featured categories that display posts in nifty blocks.

That’s not all — Nuntius lets you customize the link color and the background color of the header and main menu from the theme options page, in addition to the Custom Background and Custom Header features.

I’ll stop raving long enough so that you can head on over to the Theme Showcase to get all of the details on Nuntius and its features. We look forward to seeing what you do with this one.

~1 month on
WordPress.com News
Get Instant Feedback When You Publish
For months we’ve been studying how, when and why people publish their posts, and what the common tasks are people perform afterwards. We know many of you immediately want to see what your post looks like, check for typos, and then share your post to social networks.

Starting today you’ll see a much improved design for giving you feedback and supporting how you work.

The first thing you’ll see, after your browser finishes telling WordPress.com you have a new post, is positive feedback your post was successful. We now notify you as soon as possible that everything went smoothly. At the same time, we’re loading your actual post to show you.

Once the post loads, which can take a few seconds, you can confirm it looks as you expected. If you find a typo in your post (which can be easier to spot in the published post, than on the edit screen), you can quickly click Edit and switch back into edit mode to fix it.

If everything in your post looks good, you’ll notice some smart things we’ve done to both help improve your post, and to inspire you for the future.

The progress bar: we now show a simple progress indicator that helps direct your efforts at a specific target. The goal is automatically set to increments of 5 posts (yes, we are considering allowing this to be customized). An inspiring quote appears under the bar, as a reward and as motivation for next time. When you reach the goal, you get a nice surprise, and the bar will be reset for next time. Of course posting quality matters as much, or more, than quantity, but research shows having clear goals helps both.

Sharing: if you have the Publicize feature turned on, we show how many people were notified through social networks like Twitter and Facebook, with some of their Gravatars so you can learn more about them. If you don’t have Publicize active, you’ll see easy to use buttons for manually sharing your post on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Tagging: we also know adding tags to your post can make it easier for people to find your work. Based on the content of your post, we use an algorithm to recommend a few tags to add, which you can do with a single click.

We’ll continue to study how you post and improve what we do to support how you work. Happy posting.

If you’d prefer the classic experience, you can turn Instant Post Feedback off from your Dashboard, at Settings, Users, Personal Settings.

~1 month on
WordPress.com News
The Long and Short of It
Would you like some more Twitter in your WordPress? We got ya. As an update to our ever-popular Tweet embedding functionality we’re supporting _Twitter’s new embed API_ to enable richer, better looking, and more functional Tweets inside your blog posts. To embed a Tweet just put a permalink to it on its own line or use our new shortcode that allows for extra formatting.

But wait, there’s more! Have you ever wished that when you’re on Twitter and come across a link to someone’s blog post, like this one, you could see a preview of the post without having to click on the link? Now you can, our friends at Twitter have made it so that all wp.me links can be previewed, including snippets of posts and photos, directly on Twitter.com. In addition to this being something I’ve personally wanted for a while, we think it’ll get a lot more people visiting your blog.

Finally, if you link your Twitter account on your Gravatar profile we’ve made it so it’s easy to follow you right from that page.

Now go forth and tweetify.

P.S. You can follow me on Twitter here, and WordPress.com here.

Bring Tweets To Your Content: http://wp.me/pf2B5-1r4
—
WordPress.com (@wordpressdotcom) November 05, 2010

~1 month on
WordPress.com News
WordPress.com Bloggers Who Covered the Biggest News Stories of 2011
As 2011 comes to end, we thought it’d be interesting to look back at the events that made headlines this year, and a few of the bloggers who were there in person (or closely connected to the events) to document history in the making. Here’s a recap of some of the biggest news stories of the year, as blogged by WordPress.com users.

January 25: Tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities to demand an end to the rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

Cairo-based journalist Max Strasser reported on the events from Istanbul. Marilyn Gardner posted updates on the situation after speaking with her daughter, who was living in Egypt for school.

flickr.com/photos/sarahcarr

March 11: Japan is hit with an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in its history.

The author of amblerangel.wordpress.com was at a grocery store in Shibuya-ku when it happened. She recounted the experience in We’re Being Shaken and Stirred in Japan. According to Liz Tagami, who was at Narita International Airport when the quake hit, “It started as a silent rolling wave.“

amblerangel.wordpress.com

June 24: New York legalizes same-sex marriage, becoming the largest state in the U.S. to pass the law. It goes into effect thirty days later on July 24, 2011.

Talkaboutequality.wordpress.com was on site at the New York City Clerk’s office to chat with the couples who lined up for marriage licenses, as documented in the post Thousands of New Yorkers Put a Ring on It. In August, Jacob Murphy shared photographs of a pop-up chapel ceremony in New York City’s Columbus Circle.

talkaboutequality.wordpress.com

July 9: South Sudan becomes the world’s newest nation after seceding from Sudan.

Uganda-based photographer Will Boase was there to capture the celebration, which he blogged about in Happy Birthday South Sudan.

themzungudiaries.wordpress.com

July 20: WordPress.com blogger discovers a fake Apple store in Kunming, China.

The author of birdabroad.wordpress.com published pictures of the store in a post titled Are You Listening, Steve Jobs?, which quickly caught the attention of major news outlets around the world.

birdabroad.wordpress.com

September 11: Americans remember 9/11, ten years later.

In the post 3,652 Days Later, Dale Roe of Project 2,996 declared, “Take this day, not to remember mass murder, but to remember the 2,996 people who are loved and missed.” The project uses WordPress.com to organize tributes to the victims of 9/11. Amalie Flynn was just blocks away from the Twin Towers on 9/11. She started septembereleventh.wordpress.com on 9/11/2010 and posted every day last year.

project2996.wordpress.com

October: The Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum.

Terrell Starr visited New York’s Financial District to document the demonstration. Many Occupy movements like Occupy Oakland, Occupy London, Occupy Albany, and Occupy Together use the WordPress open source software or WordPress.com to power their web sites.

hiddennewyorkers.com

November 18: UC Davis campus police pepper spray nonviolent protestors, sparking outrage.

The next day, Nathan Brown, an Assistant Professor at UC Davis, wrote an Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, demanding that the school’s chancellor resign.

bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com

Will you be the next blogger to break or cover news live from the field?

Download WordPress for your mobile device and you’ll always be prepared to share your perspective with the world! To make your posts easy for others to find, be sure to include relevant tags that indicate the city, venue, or event that you blog about.

~1 month on
WordPress.com News
It’s getting cold in here
Oh the weather outside is frightful,
but this blog is sooo delightful
Until the internet gets slow,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

That’s right, it’s that special time of year where you can show off your holiday cheer with a little special blog flare — falling snow. To get it started:
1. Go to your dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings » General.
3. Check the box next to “Show falling snow on this blog.”
4. Roast some chestnuts.
Even Texas boys like me who only saw snow a handful of times growing up can enjoy it all month long, until we turn it off on January 2^nd.

If you are a terrible Grinch or if the snow just slows down your computer or confuses your cat, you can go to your personal settings page and hide the snow everywhere you go.
~1 month on
WordPress.com News
Introducing WordAds
Over the years one of the most frequent requests on WordPress.com has been to allow bloggers to earn money from their blog through ads. We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s Adsense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than Adsense.

Well we think we’ve cracked it, and we’re calling it WordAds.

Blogs are unique and they shouldn’t be treated like every other page on the internet. There are more than 50,000 WordPress-powered blogs coming online every day, and every time I explore them randomly I’m always surprised and delighted by how people are using the platform to express themselves.

As a WordPress user you’re breathing rarefied air on the internet: the Creators, the Independents. Creative minds aren’t satisfied being digital sharecroppers on someone else’s domain, and you want to carve out your own piece of the internet and have a space that you’re proud of because it’s so… you.

If you’re going to have advertising on your site, it darn well better be good, and beginning with our partnership with Federated Media we’re ready to start rolling out WordAds here on WordPress.com.

If the above is something you’d be interested in, fill out this form to let us know a bit about yourself.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
Black Friday sale: free Custom Design with any Premium theme
It’s that time of the year again, and we decided to take care of all our users whether they feel like lining up in the cold to take advantage of today’s bargains or not.

This year’s offer is about two upgrades that first saw the light of day during the past twelve months: Custom Design and Premium Themes.

For the next 24 hours if you pick up any of our Premium Themes we’ll throw in a totally free one year subscription to the Custom Design Upgrade, which would usually cost you $30. Depending on the theme you choose, that’s between 30% and 60% of the Premium Theme’s value.

Don’t miss this great occasion to stand out from the crowd, by adding a great Premium Theme to your site, and customizing its fonts and CSS to make it truly yours.

If you already have a Custom Design subscription, no problem, we’ll add an extra year to it for free.

If you’re not sure on what Premium Themes and the Custom Design upgrade actually do:

Premium Themes: feature detailed designs, exciting options for customization, and exclusive support directly from the theme authors themselves.

Custom Design: easily customize the fonts in your theme, and dive into CSS to make all the presentational changes you desire.

It’s only one day, it happens today, but the gift is yours for one year.

Don’t wait anymore to browse our Premium Themes collection.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
Google Knols Move to WordPress: The Annotum Platform
Today, we’d like to give a warm welcome to Google Knol users who are migrating to WordPress.com. Begun in 2007, the Google Knol project has provided people in many fields with a place to share their knowledge and expertise with the world using a platform designed for scholarly authoring and publishing.

Starting today, those same authors can move their articles and collaborative journals to WordPress—and they have the power to choose whether to move to a self-hosted WordPress installation powered by the freely-available, open-source Annotum themes, or to have their Annotum-powered site hosted for free here on WordPress.com. Knol will slowly shut down over the next year, and we’ve worked closely with Google and Solvitor LLC to make this transition as simple as possible.

We here at WordPress.com are thrilled to provide an easy, fast way for Knol authors to move to their new homes without the need for configuring their own installation. And WordPress.com users who would like to start new sites powered by the Annotum platform can activate one of the two new Annotum-enabled themes on new blogs and get started right away. It’s yet another way the WordPress platform and WordPress.com are enabling the democratization of publishing and sharing of information with the world.

For more detailed information on the Annotum Project, please visit the official site. If you’re moving to WordPress.com and have questions about the process, please see our step-by-step guide and our list of frequently asked questions.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
More Custom Headers, Color Schemes, & Theme Improvements
We want everyone on WordPress.com to be able to find the best theme possible for their blog. Something beautiful, amazing, and cool. A theme that makes you want to jump up, run your laptop next door, and show your neighbor your awesome blog. That’s why we love bringing you so many new themes, why we have over 150 themes for you to choose from, and why we have even more on the way. It’s also why every day you let us know different ways we could make all our existing themes just a little bit better. You contact us in support, add your suggestions in the forums, comment here, and — of course! — blog about it.

Because of all that we took as many of those little bits as we could and made our incredible collection of 150-plus themes even better for you.

More Custom Headers and More Color Schemes

We know how much you love customizing your themes and making them your own so we made sure that our best, our most popular, and our most beautiful themes let you do just that. The Custom Header Image feature lets you quickly add your own personal stamp on a theme. We went and added it to themes missing it that could really use it and use it well. You’ll now find that it’s available in themes like Notepad, Titan, Simpla, Grid Focus, and Chaos Theory.

And if you’re using the Modularity Lite theme, Inuit Types, Spectrum, Bouquet, or Vigilance you have new bonus color schemes to choose from. Coraline alone got five brand new color schemes!

Make sure you try out all the new design possibilities these color schemes bring to Custom Design.

Even More Theme Improvements

There were even more theme improvements. They were slightly smaller but good things come in small packages. Things like improving the custom header feature in our most popular theme, Twenty Ten. You can now change your header text color or even hide it altogether with a visit to Appearance → Themes and just a few clicks.

Sometimes less can be more

We also added Post Format support to the Spectrum theme. There are more customization options in the Structure theme, Misty Look, and Fruit Shake. Ocean Mist has customizable Featured Images for each post’s header image. Our most popular themes now have better comment labeling when comments are turned off and better author highlighting for multiple author blogs — making them perfect for blogs that are more like small business sites or magazines. And — and there are even more theme improvements that were done. Too many to list here!

We’ll keep on bringing you new themes. Keep on letting us know what you’d like to see improved with them.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
New Themes: Anthem and Luscious
I’m happy to announce that we have added two great new premium themes to our ever-expanding Theme Showcase!

First up is Anthem – a responsive, minimal design from The Theme Foundry.

Anthem is perfect for artists, designers, and photographers who want their images to take center stage. Choose from seven different post formats to give each post a unique look and feel. Anthem provides 4 customizable widget areas in the footer as well as 3 custom menu locations. You can also upload a custom logo image which can be cropped into a circle. Want to find out more? Head on over to the Theme Showcase!

Next up we have Luscious by StudioPress.

This eye-catching design has been custom-tailored with bloggers and publishers in mind. The deep red tones of Luscious are embellished with bright red and yellow accents drawing attention to each post’s heading. Choose from 6 different layout options, 2 custom menu locations and 7 widgets areas. Read more about Luscious in the Theme Showcase.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
Drag & Drop Media Uploader & Flyout Dashboard Menus
We’re excited to share some new features that will make it even faster to create content on your WordPress.com site.

Drag & Drop Uploads

The media uploader now supports drag and drop!

You’ll be able to use the new drag and drop media uploader wherever you need to upload your media files – while writing a Post or Page, or directly in the Media Library. In fact while you’re creating a post, you’ll notice now there’s just one icon to represent all of the different media files you’ll upload called “Add Media“:

After you’ve clicked that, find those image/music/video/other files you need on your computer, drag them over and drop them into the WordPress interface, and watch the magic happen! Learn more about adding images and video with step-by-step tips on Learn.WordPress.com.

Flyout Dashboard Menus

We want you to spend the most time creating content as possible, and that’s why new flyout menus have been introduced. They’ll save you time by allowing you to access any of the dashboard menu items from wherever you are, in just one click!

Simply hover over the menu item and the submenu will fly out, allowing you to navigate directly to Add a New Post right after you activated your new theme, or Invite Users right after you finished moderating comments.

More Room for Content Creation

There’s something else you might have noticed. Your blog title is no longer at the top of the dashboard.

Since clicking on your site’s name in the toolbar will take you to your site’s front page, we reclaimed that space back so you have even more room for editing your content.

So to get to your site’s front page, just click on your site title in the toolbar!

We’re looking forward to the extra content you’ll be able to create with the time you’re saving. Happy Blogging!

For WordPress.org users, these features will be coming to you soon in the upcoming version 3.3.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
Easier Invitations Mean More Followers and Blog Contributors
We’ve made two big changes that make it easier to encourage friends, family, and colleagues to interact with your WordPress.com blog.

First, now you can invite people to follow your blog. If your blog is public, anyone can use the Follow button to sign up to receive an update each time you publish new content. But if you’d like to share your blog with specific people, we’ve made it easy to send them an invitation to check out your site.

Try it out now and invite some friends to follow your blog:

1. Head to your dashboard and click on Users → Invite New. Type the users’ email addresses or WordPress.com usernames.

2. Set the Role to Follower.

3. If you like, add your own message to personalize the invitation, then click Send Invite.

When your friend accepts the invite, they’ll start receiving email updates each time you publish a new post.

Secondly, you can also use the new invitations to add contributors to your blog. Have you ever thought that it might be fun to have a friend write a guest post? Or perhaps you want to ask a colleague to help moderate comments. Adding contributors to your blog has never been easier.

Head to Users → Invite New in the dashboard and enter the person’s WordPress.com username or email address. Then select the contributor, author, editor, or administrator role, and send the invite.

Your new user will now be able to access your blog by visiting the My Blogs section of their dashboard when they log in to WordPress.com. They’ll also receive an email notification that they’ve been added to your blog.

For more details on the new invitations, check out the Support document on Inviting Contributors, Followers, and Viewers.

2 months on
WordPress.com News
New Themes: iTheme 2 and Bold News
If you are doing a great job on your blog and posting regularly, sometimes important posts fade away from the home page. Sounds familiar? Today, we’re excited about introducing two new themes that come with a featured section for prominently displaying some of these posts.

The first theme is iTheme 2 designed by Themify, is a free theme inspired by the instantly recognizable Apple style design that is perfect for your Mac related tech blog. By activating it, iTheme 2 immediately revamps your blog to a stylish, Apple themed cool blog.

What’s great about iTheme 2 is not only the look but also its features. It offers three color schemes and a cool featured posts carousel on the home page. Go find more about the theme on its showcase page.

The second entry is Bold News, a premium theme from WooThemes. Same as other fantastic themes from them, Bold News is also packed with customizing features as well as a featured posts carousel on the home page. Get the full details on the theme showcase page. You can then upgrade your blog to Bold News with a lifetime subscription for $45.

3 months on
WordPress.com News
Baseball Fans: Show Your Pride This Postseason with Our MLB Themes
Earlier this year we announced our partnership with Major League Baseball to bring their Fan, Modern, and Retro blog themes to WordPress.com.

Well, it’s playoff time, and we think there’s no better way to show pride in the Milwaukee Brewers, St. Louis Cardinals (go Cards!), Texas Rangers, or Detroit Tigers than by donning their colors and logo on your WordPress.com blog. It’s like a digital rally cap — no true fan should be caught without one!

Head over to the theme showcase to activate an MLB theme on your blog, or start a new blog just for this occasion, and get root, root, rooting for your favorite team!

3 months on
WordPress.com News
3 Ways to Make Your Site More Visually Appealing
You guys use WordPress.com in all sorts of creative ways, documenting the adventures you take…

mikeslagter.wordpress.com

…the people you meet…

paolonovelli.wordpress.com

…the characters you create…

legomyphoto.wordpress.com

…the meals you prepare…

whenharrymetsalad.com

…and the places you live.

mcalisterium.wordpress.com

And you share a ton of amazing photographs. So be sure to show them off! Here are three tips on using photos to make your site more visually appealing:
- Upload your very own custom header image to give your site a unique look and feel. Some themes even allow you to use featured images to display different header images on specific posts and pages. For a design that’s 100% unique to you, try out the Custom Design upgrade.
- Don’t make readers squint to view your photos. Generally speaking, bigger photos are better, as long as they’re properly aligned. Check out the Get Flashy tutorial on Learn.WordPress.com for tips on aligning and resizing your images.
- If the majority of your content is image-based, consider using a photography theme that will put your photos in center stage on your site. Visit the Theme Showcase to find one that’s perfect for you.
Want to browse other awesome photo blogs? Check out Freshly Pressed and the photography tag pages.
3 months on
WordPress.com News
Retro Mac Theme
It’s impossible to overstate the influence of Steve Jobs on technologists, particularly his passion for beautiful, usable products. We work harder and have higher standards because of the bar set by Apple’s experiences, and I don’t know what WordPress would look like today if not for the inspiration he gave all of us. As the shock at his premature loss has given way to a celebration of his life it’s been amazing to read all of the personal anecdotes of those lucky enough to have known him.

Yesterday one of the tributes I noticed was the website Boing Boing switched their theme to one reminiscent of the original Macintosh interface, one of the several times Jobs would make a ding in the universe through his work. It seemed fitting, and we wanted to make it available to all of you, so our theme team worked through the night and here it is:

Dress up your blog with retro, chunky-grade pixellated graphics and evoke some serious computer nostalgia. This theme is a whimsical homage to the days in black and white, celebrating the magic of Mac OS. It displays your menu items, year archives, and categories as folders and icons on the evoked desktop.

For all the memories it brings — and its throwback design — this theme has modern functionality under the hood. Create your own custom menu to replace the first set of icons in the sidebar, upload a custom header image to display below the blog title, or set a custom background. Also included are two footer widget areas and a full-width page template that drops the sidebar.

Originally created by Stuart Brown, Retro MacOS is now available in your WordPress.com dashboard. You can activate the theme there as usual, from Appearance → Themes, or directly from the Theme Showcase.

I want to leave you with two quotes:

We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build the Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build.

When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

And finally:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Do something great.

3 months on
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