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The beginning of a new year is an opportunity to start things afresh — why should your blog not benefit as well? Here are six things you can do to start your blogging in 2015 energized, recharged, and focused.
Explore your new dashboard
We introduced several major upgrades to the WordPress.com dashboard right before the end of last year, including updated Stats and navigation and the ability to manage and edit all your content across sites from one central hub.
Now is the perfect time to get familiar with some of these new features for a smoother blogging experience. Whether it’s from your computer, tablet, or smartphone, you can check out which posts generated the most likes and comments (and much more) on your Stats page, browse through all your posts and pages, and easily tweak your account settings, review your billing history, and visit your trophy case from My Profile.
Sign up for a blogging course
Our free Blogging U. courses are a great way to get you closer to meeting your blogging goals — whatever those might be — while being part of a supportive, engaged community.
Our next Blogging 101 course starts January 5, and is geared toward new bloggers (you can read more about it, and sign up for it, here), but throughout the year we’ll be offering courses that target different levels, and focus on topics like writing, photoblogging, and more. Be sure to follow announcements from The Daily Post to stay up to date on upcoming courses.
Spruce up your site
Bloggers who love their site’s design publish more. Make sure your site’s look matches the quality of your posts with a few easy tweaks, like switching themes (there are some gorgeous new ones in our Showcase, from our annual default theme, Twenty Fifteen, to recent favorites Editor and Plane). Or just customize your current theme to meet your needs — a few simple touches, like a custom header image or personalized image widgets, can give your site a distinct look with very little work. (Need inspiration? Check out our customization and Early Theme Adopters posts.)
Join a blogging event
Becoming active in the blogging community (or at least in a blogging community) can make all the difference between posting sporadically on a near-dormant blog and keeping yourself energized and your audience engaged. There’s so much to choose from: browse our searchable event listings to find one that’s up your alley, or share your work on our weekly photo challenges and Community Pool posts.
Feeling more adventurous? Consider attending a blogging confernece or creating your own blogging workshop.
Create an editorial calendar
Whether your vision for your blog is to publish once a month or twice a day, your chances of sticking with a regular publication pace increase if you make concrete, sustainable plans. Devoting a little time every few weeks to sketch out an editorial calendar for your blog will help you allocate time, decide on your priorities, and give you the flexibility you need in case unexpected developments keep you away from your blog for a while.
Download our mobile app
Being on the move should never prevent you from publishing a post, engaging in conversations and moderating comments, or keeping up with the latest from your favorite bloggers. With our mobile apps — available for iOS and Android — you can do all of those things wherever you are. You no longer need to wait to get back home to make your voice heard.
Happy 2015 from the entire WordPress.com team! May it be a wonderful year for you and your sites.
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New to blogging? A new session of our introductory blogging course starts on Monday, January 5 — and all bloggers are welcome, whether you blog on WordPress.com, a self-hosted WordPress blog, or somewhere else entirely.
Blogging 101 is four weeks of daily bite-size assignments that take you from “Blog?” to “Blog!” — along with a supportive community to encourage you all the way through. At the end of the course, you’ll have a blog you’re proud and excited to publish, and that others are excited to read.
Here’s how it works:
- Assignments fall into three broad categories — publishing posts and pages, customizing your blog, and engaging with the community — and are designed to build on one another.
- We’ll post a new assignment here on The Daily Post each weekday at 12AM GMT. Each assignment will contain all the inspiration and instructions you need to complete it. Weekends are free (but we’ll suggest some ways you might want to spend them).
- Participants will have a private community site, the Commons, for chatting, connecting, and seeking feedback and support. Daily Post staff and Happiness Engineers will be on hand to answer your questions and offer guidance and resources.
You’ll walk away with six (or more!) published posts and a handful of drafts, a customized theme that reflects your personality, a small but growing audience, a good grasp of blogging etiquette — and a bunch of new online friends.
My blog has gone from being dull and plain to having widgets and all this shmancy tech stuff, and from having almost no followers to having a loyal following now!
– Microgalactic
Ready to kick start your blog? Sign up by filling out this simple form:
Registration is closed, but Blogging 101 will be back in February!
Note: you won’t receive an automated confirmation email immediately, but you will get a welcome email with complete instructions prior to the start of the course.
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By:
Mark Armstrong,
on 12/12/2014
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Here’s more great reading for you: five stories we love from across all of WordPress.
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 group with a foreigner (yours truly) in their midst, we had to be reasonably inconspicuous when we stepped out of the car and onto the street. As soon as we stepped over the threshold of the house, however, we were no longer in the Islamic Republic.
Alex French and Howie Kahn, Grantland
The full story of how Paul Thomas Anderson created his first masterpiece—and turned Mark Wahlberg into a movie star.
Marketplace
An examination of how the neighborhood of Highland Park in Los Angeles is quickly gentrifying. The team at Marketplace interviewed current and former residents, business owners, and investors and developers to paint a full picture of what’s occurring.
Jia Tolentino, Adult magazine
“I tell people all the time I never really drank the water, but of course that’s not totally true.” Recollections of a former cheerleader at a Texas private school attached to a Baptist megachurch.
Michael Rubino, Indianapolis Monthly
How basketball great Larry Bird almost walked away from the game.
You can find our past collections here—and you can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations.
Publishers, writers, share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.
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We’re happy to introduce two brand new free themes today!
Designed by Mel Choyce, Minnow is a light, simple theme that puts your social presence front and center. A social links menu is displayed prominently below the site title and logo, so readers can easily find you on your favorite social networks.
When activated, the optional Custom Menu or Widget area appear in a slide-out sidebar, making secondary content accessible while keeping the focus on your content.
Learn more about the free Minnow theme at the Theme Showcase, or preview it by going to Appearance → Themes.
This theme is designed by yours truly: Cols is a novel theme that lets you tell your stories without the layout getting in the way.
Standard-format posts are displayed in a newspaper-like layout, with three columns on large monitors, two columns on medium-sized displays, and a one-column layout on small screens like phones. Other supported post formats — Aside, Image, Video, Quote, Link, and Chat — are displayed in a simple single-column layout.
Learn more about the free Cols theme at the Theme Showcase, or preview it by going to Appearance → Themes.
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By:
Mark Armstrong,
on 10/22/2014
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Here it is! A new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.
As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.
Publishers, writers, you can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.
Grant Wiggins
“I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day.” A high school teacher learns some sobering lessons about how kids experience a typical day — and the amount of sitting required.
Mehreen Kasana
The truth about being Muslim in America:
In the eyes of those perpetually seeking an apology from Muslims, I am a Bad Muslim. I don’t put hashtag-suffixed apologies online for what someone else of my faith does. When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and terrified as anyone else was. We scary-looking Muslims experience human emotions, too. … We Muslims react to unexpected loss of life like any non-Muslim would. We cry, we mourn.
Richard Price, Guernica
A “subjective overview” of the history of public housing in New York City from the novelist Richard Price, framed through the lens of his own upbringing in the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses.
Kat Hagan, This Is Not a Pattern
How our behavior and language can have a harmful impact — and how we can fix it. “Small, simple changes will build the foundation for a better tech culture.”
Mike Kessler, Los Angeles Magazine
Kessler talks to survivors of child prostitution, as well as law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, and advocates working to prevent the sex trafficking of minors.
Linda Vaccariello, Cincinnati Magazine
A community comes together to help a family after a tragedy:
“The reality hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced,” McDonald says. “She had no one. I couldn’t imagine what that was like.” McDonald went to Ao, threw her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, and said, “We’ll help you.”
Carl Schreck, Grantland
The story of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet swimming champion who dove into Armenia’s Lake Yerevan and saved dozens of lives from a sinking trolleybus.
Caitlin Roper, Wired
A profile of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, whose intense focus on storytelling helped revive Disney’s animation studio with hits like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.
Sarah Kendzior & Umar Lee, Quartz
St. Louis is a city long on the run from itself. White flight has spread from suburbia to exurbia, while decades of black demands — for better jobs, better schools, better treatment—go unheeded. This is a region deprived of resources, forcing residents to scrounge for more fertile terrain.
Neima Jahromi, Bklynr
From the magazine Bklynr, a profile of the street artist behind some of Brooklyn’s most recognizable murals.
Photo: dystopos, Flickr
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By:
Ben Huberman,
on 10/15/2014
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Blogging 201: Branding and Growth starts Monday, October 20. If you’re a recent alum of Blogging 101 looking to build on the skills you’ve developed so far, or a blogger looking for new ways to grow your site and its audience, this is the course for you.
What will Blogging 201 cover? We’ll introduce tools to increase your traffic within WordPress.com as well as through other platforms, discuss ways to develop a coherent, effective brand for your blog, and show how to use your archives and your site’s stats to build your readership.
During this two-week course we’ll give you a daily task and provide you with all the necessary resources and information to complete it (there will be no new tasks on weekends, to give you time to explore more on your own, or just publish a post or two). You’ll also have access to The Commons, a private, staff-moderated space where you can chat with other participants, ask questions, and give feedback.
Ending right before NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo kick off in November, Blogging 201: Branding and Growth will help you get your site ready for a new wave of viewers — as well as to keep them coming after their first visit.
Like all Blogging U. courses, there are no prerequisites for Blogging 201 (if you’d like to follow the courses in sequence, though, that’s fine: Blogging 101: Zero to Hero will be back in November!). Self-hosted blogs and blogs from other platforms are just as welcome to participate.
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in trying, sign up for Blogging 201: Branding and Growth using this form:
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Whether you’re a personal blogger, a designer, or an artist, Isola gives you a bright, clean space to showcase your work. Its minimalist design stays crisp across devices and screens of all sizes, with generous white space to keep the focus on your content.
Isola, a free theme, comes with numerous customization options, from featured images and custom header images to sleek post formats. Let’s take a look at three sites that are already using it to great effect.
Leon Scott, who writes thoughtful posts on design and technology on his aptly-named blog, makes the most of Isola‘s out-of-the-box look. He kept the layout simple and clean; all the widgets are tucked into a panel off screen.
Many of Leon’s posts — like the one shown above — include featured images, which establish their tone and also add a welcome burst of color.
The environmentally-conscious blogger who writes at Beyond the Black Mountain focuses on the intersection between fashion and eco-friendly living. Her site’s vibe echoes her approach elsewhere, with a stylish, spare look. A moody custom header image coupled with a retro serif font (Ambroise, which is available with the Custom Design upgrade) personalize Isola even further.
The blogger behind a dimpleate, based in Northern Virginia, has created a photo-heavy lifestyle blog that still maintains an airy, clean feel. She uses Isola‘s image and gallery post formats to highlight the beautiful images, linking them to her Flickr galleries for visitors who wish to explore more of her work.
Have you also customized Isola? Is there another theme you’d like to see featured here? Let us know in the comments.
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Check out Edin and Espresso — today’s spiffy new additions to our massive family of themes.
Edin is a brand-new, free business theme designed by yours truly. It’s a modern and fully responsive theme that will help you create a strong — yet beautiful — online presence for your business. Edin offers multiple theme options and supports the recently launched Site Logo feature.
Espresso is a responsive, content-centric premium theme designed by Justin Carroll that allows you to choose between two charming layouts. Go with a traditional post stream for your writing-based blog, or go grid-style for your photography blog. A fixed sidebar on the right keeps widgets, menus, and social links at the ready for visitors.
Edin is a free theme, and Espresso is a premium upgrade. Check out each theme’s showcase by clicking on its screenshot above, or preview it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.
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Themes
We're launching two new themes this week -- one free and one premium -- check them out!
Twenty Fourteen is much more than a magazine theme. From blog to small business homepage, Twenty Fourteen does it all -- as these four sites show.
Your site's front page is like the front door to your home: you want it to look and feel inviting, as well as unmistakably you. Here's a quick list of five things -- big and small -- to consider when building your front page.
Group blogs like Long Awkward Pause shine on WordPress.com -- and now you can say you knew this comedic confab before they hit the big time.
With millions of users around the world, we're an international community of writers, photographers, and more. Enjoy these recent snapshots and soundbites, from Moscow to Cairo.
Have some featured content that desperately needs saving? Have no fear, our new theme Hero is here!
Hero’s featured content-rich Front Page template
Designed by antthemes, Hero is a dark and minimal theme that features the content you care about most with a Front Page template that’s packed with the promotional power of our Featured Post Slider, a custom tagline, and three featured post callouts. Hero also comes packed with sidebar and footer widget areas galore, and a full width page template for those times that you just want to eliminate some of the distractions.
Read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.
Happy Themeday, all! Today we have two brand-spankin’-new themes for your visual enjoyment.
First up is Gridspace, a classic, elegant premium theme by Graph Paper Press.
Gridspace lets you show your work in style. Designed as a portfolio for photographers, its slick features include light and dark color schemes, multiple thumbnail sizes, a responsive design, and a convenient space for your logo. Your readers can easily switch between two blog layouts on the fly – grid view and list view – while large featured images and an elegant overall design make your work the focus.
Live on the grid, and check out Gridspace on the Theme Showcase!
Next up is Ascetica, a beautiful theme from AlienWP, designed by Galin Simeonov.
Get rid of the clutter and concentrate on your content. Ascetica prefers subtle details over flashy gimmicks and provides the perfect balance of minimalism, white-space, responsiveness, and customization to allow you to focus on and support what matters most – your content – while doing it in a way that is uniquely your own.
Love that minimalist look? Then make sure to visit Ascetica on the Theme Showcase.
The New York Times magazine ran an interesting article recently about kids coming out in middle school — in Oklahoma.
Lots of great quotes from the kids, but my favorite was this one:
Alison turned to me and recalled a recent “lesbian moment” of hers. “I totally had the hots for this girl in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ ” she said with a giggle. “I was, like, ‘Whoa, I’m really attracted to you right now!’ ”
“Jesus was hot in that, too,” Justin offered.
Burd, Nick. Vast Fields of Ordinary. Dial, 2009. 309 pages
Nick Burd’s first novel takes place over the summer after Dade Hamilton’s senior year in high school, as he’s biding his time, waiting to leave for his freshman year in college. He’s the only child in an affluent family living in a small city in Iowa (think Cedar Rapids), and he’s always lived just at the edges of the popular crowd, never quite fitting in.
Dade is gay, and he spends most of his senior prom avoiding his female date and proclaiming his love for Pablo Soto by painting their initials on the wall of the boys’ bathroom. Pablo is a popular jock who plays it straight by day but calls Dade at night to arrange quick and, for Dade, unsatisfying, sexual encounters.
As summer begins, Dade sees nothing but a boring job in a super market and his occasional nights with Pablo spreading out before him in an endless procession of hot, humid days. But then a few things happen that change the course of his summer. His father admits an affair and his parents’ marriage begins to unravel. His neighbor’s teenage niece, Lucy, a lesbian from Los Angeles, turns up to spend the summer next door and Dade finds a kindred spirit and confidant in her. Dade falls for Alex Kincaid, an edgy but sweet drug dealer he meets at a party. And the mysterious disappearance of a local nine-year-old girl monopolizes the headlines in his town all summer long.
Dade is oddly obsessed with the girl’s disappearance. He didn’t know her personally or know anyone who did, but he’s haunted by reports of sightings, and even believes he sees her himself one night just before passing out in a drunken haze in his own backyard. From a literary standpoint the girl stands as a metaphor for something but what that is — lost childhood? danger? escape? — is never quite clear. Her story becomes one more underdeveloped subplot in an overly ambitious story.
It’s the gay parts of the story that really take off. Dade’s complicated relationship with Pablo is painfully realistic. Dade would like more but has always settled for less, and closeted Pablo enjoys the best of both worlds. It is only when Dade dumps him for someone new that Pablo suddenly seems willing to give a bit more. But by then it’s too late.
Lucy, Dade’s lesbian best friend, is both sarcastic and caring, like an escapee from an Ellen Wittlinger novel. She encourages Dade to explore a relationship with Alex, who at age twenty seems to have no future beyond his job at Taco Taco and dealing drugs on the side. But Alex offers things Pablo can’t: affection, sensitivity, and self pride. At first, Alex seems to be The One but as the summer progresses, it becomes clear that he’s just a summer fling who’s caught Dade on the rebound.
They are all compelling gay teens in a story that explores the end of adolescence in more depth than most YA novels do. It’s unfortunate that their stories get bogged down in unnecessary details about the missing girl and Dade’s parents’ problems. Burd is a gifted writer but, like Dade, he needs a bit more focus and direction.
Without subject headings, it’s sometimes hard to tell if a new novel has any GLBTQ content before you read it. Take Hold Still, a first novel by Nina LaCour that I just received as a pre-publication copy from Dutton. The jacket art shows an older teenage girl heavily made-up but wearing a Harriet-The-Spy-style hoodie. Both her pose and her expression spell “tortured romantic.”
And here are the first few lines of the synopsis:
That night Ingrid told Caitlin, I’ll go wherever you go. But by dawn Ingrid, and her promise, were gone, and Caitlin was alone. Ingrid’s suicide immobilizes Caitlin, leaving her unsure of her place in a new life she hardly recognizes.
Hmm, sounds like a lesbian novel to me, albeit a rather old-fashioned one.
And then there’s the note about the author: “A San Francisco Bay area native, Nina lives in Oakland, California.” Okay, a-hem, yeah, but lots of straight people are born in San Francisco. If she had been born in Lincoln, Nebraska, and then re-located to San Francisco, this piece of evidence might be a bit stronger.
A final clue comes in last bit of the author’s note in which she singles out one woman: “Thank you for reading every word of every draft, and for crying at all the right parts. Most of all, thank you for making me so happy. Without you, this would not have been possible.“
Okay, that clinches it. I’m reading it. And I’ll let you know.
Williams, David. The Boy in the Dress. Illustrated by Quentin Blake. Razorbill, 2009.
If Roald Dahl had written a book about a cross-dressing 12-year-old boy, it would probably have been like this. I’m not just saying that because of the Quentin Blake illustrations that will make the obvious connection in many readers’ minds. Like Dahl, David Williams uses slapstick humor and over-the-top characters in his novel for younger readers (8-11 year olds) about a young soccer player coming to terms with the fact that he is happiest when he’s wearing dresses, high heels, and make up.
Dennis, who lives with his rough-edged truck-driving dad and macho older brother, still misses his mother who left the family home a couple of years earlier. More than anything, he misses the feminine touch and sensibility she brought into his life. But the fashion magazines he hides under his mattress do more for him than to remind him of his mother: he finds he actually enjoys looking at the photos of women in fancy dresses much more than he enjoys his brother’s stash of magazines of women without clothes.
A crush on an older girl at school leads him to pursue a friendship with her, something that blossoms quickly into weekends spent together, poring over Italian Vogue, and trying on dresses. Lisa talks him into venturing out in public dressed as a girl to see if he can pass, and the two are equally thrilled when they find out he can. He takes on the persona of Denise, a French foreign exchange student living in Lisa’s house, and even works up the courage to go to school with her in drag. He successfully passes until his wig falls off in the midst of a school-yard soccer game he just couldn’t pass up. He becomes a laughingstock, and the evil headmaster expels him from school. But never fear — boys in dresses will save the day, and win the soccer cup final.
Did I mention the slapstick humor? Yes, it’s all very silly and completely implausible, but it’s great fun. And while the characters and plot line are goofy to the max, Williams never makes fun of Dennis or his cross dressing. In fact, it’s those who don’t accept him who are ridiculed most mercilessly. In middle-grade humor, that’s a welcome and refreshing twist.
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Another great set of longreads
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A sumptuous list, yet again!
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Once again a great collection o long reads. I love the pictures and supporting video in the York and Fig article
The Science Geek
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Nice! thanks for sharing!
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