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 and NaBloPoMo are short for “National Novel Writing Month” and “National Blog Posting Month,” respectively. In the first, writers commit to writing a 50,000-word novel between November 1 and November 30; in the second, to posting every single day in November.

310,095 participants started the month of November as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

- NaNoWriMo 2013 at a Glance

Although the two events are separate, they share a history: NaBloPoMo started in response to NaNoWriMo, when a group of bloggers who lacked the time or inclination to write a book, but loved the idea of a communal blogging challenge, coalesced. Both challenges now have their own vibrant communities of writers and bloggers who inspire and support one another.

If you wait until the Muse shows up and inspires you to write, you may end up writing nothing at all. Whereas if you’re sitting there every day in November churning out your thoughts and photos and shaping them all into something readable, if even 33% of what you’ve posted veers toward greatness, that’s 10 great posts you came up with that you might not have otherwise.

- NaBloPoMo founder Eden Kennedy

Hundreds of thousands of writers and bloggers participate each year, making new friends and writing things they never thought they would.

How do I get involved?

Easy! Just decide to do it. All you need is an idea, some commitment, and a place to write.

Take the NaNoWriMo challenge, and proudly display the Viking crest!

Getting involved with the larger communities is almost as easy:

• To be listed on the official blogroll of NaBloPoMo participants, head to BlogHer’s NaBloPoMo headquarters at the beginning of November — there’ll be a sign-up post where you can add your blog, along with a list of suggested blogging prompts for the month. You can also grab the official badge for your blog.
• For NaNoWriMo, mosey over to the project’s official website to sign up and access features like word count tools and forums where you can connect with other budding novelists.

On WordPress.com, you can also tag your posts with “NaNoWriMo” or “NaBloPoMo” to help other participants find you.

I’m not sure I can blog every day for a month, help!

Sure you can, and we can help. Along with the prompts NaBloPoMo provides, we’ve got our own daily prompts and weekly writing and photo challenges to get the creative juices flowing. For those of you who prefer to blog with images, we’re also kicking off a new Blogging U. challenge in November, Photography 101, to help you snap and post every day.

If prompts aren’t for you, try creating your own manageable posting strategy for the month. Posting every day doesn’t have to mean writing 1,000 words a day — it can be as simple as:

• A photo a day
• A list a day
• A sketch a day
• A haiku a day
• An observation a day
• A thank you a day

For more help making it through, check out our blog event survival guide or our roundtable with seasoned NaNoWriMo authors. And there’s no better motivation than encouragement and engagement, so visit one another’s blogs and leave a comment when you do.

You’ve got a week to prepare. Get ready to get writing!

Blogs are incredible vehicles for exploring our passions and finding our voices. They can also be powerful tools for healing in the face of trauma; for many of us, the act of writing is a cathartic one.

These brave moms are blogging their way through one of life’s more traumatic losses: the loss of a child. Calling themselves babyloss blogs, they provide insight for those of us who have never experienced this unique pain and support for other parents starting to navigate the same grief — along with hope that life does go on, and happiness is still possible.

C is for Crocodile

2014 BlogHer Voices of the Year winner Timaree started C is for Crocodile to chronicle her pregnancy, never imagining that after three years and five months, she would instead be chronicling her son’s fight with juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia — an incredibly rare form of cancer. She blogged through his treatment and now writes her way through the aftermath, as in this piece published during the recent BlogHer conference:

I grabbed a glass of champagne, tucked myself up on a set of stairs, and I watched from Planet I Miss My Son as people strolled by, stopped, read, dug around in their bags for tissues, and moved on.

She shares the blog with wife Jodi, and together they’re documenting the journey to their new normal with honesty and eloquence.

Expecting the Unexpected

Connecticut midwife Meghan was pregnant in March 2014 when she learned first that her daughter had down syndrome, and then a potentially fatal kidney defect. On Expecting the Unexpected, she does not blunt the edge of what happened next:

The story of my daughter began with a positive pregnancy test and ended as I held her in my arms as she died six hours after birth.

Her blog gives her a space to mourn and process the loss as she works not only to heal, but to re-enter what became a painful profession.

The Mourning After Natasha

Natasha was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age seven, and passed away five years later. Like Timaree and Meghan, mom Suzanne turned to words to help deal with the pain of a devastating loss. In her latest post, she explains why she’d prefer that you didn’t call her child a “hero”:

To those she loved and trusted, she didn’t soldier on with a smile on her face as the hero-philes would have it. She mourned the injustice of the good health that she had irrevocably lost, noting that her friends who had morphed into gangly preteens got to play a brisk game of basketball.

Along with her blog, Suzanne helps other grieving parents feel less alone with regular pieces on The Huffington Post, Mothering, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many more.

Hang Your Hopes from Trees

The blogger behind Hang Your Hopes from Trees began writing in the aftermath of a traumatic miscarriage:

This is not a goldfish! My head raged. This is your baby! Pick it up! Hold it, you will NEVER get another chance! Another voice rang in, steady and calm. Don’t touch the baby, it said. The baby is gone, has been gone a long time. If you pick it up, what will you do with it? Will you ever be able to let it go? Will you be scarred, more deeply than you already are?

At, Hang Your Hopes from Trees she writes to forgive herself — and her body. This month, she opens a new chapter, learning to reconcile her joy at the birth of a daughter with the lingering pain of her loss.

Sadly, these four women are not alone; there are countless other bloggers using babyloss blogs to write through their grief, including:

• Jo-Anne, who mourns her stillborn daughter in prose and poetry at This Little Light of Mine.
• Writing the Roads of Grief, a blogger whose son took his own life.
• Carla of Loving Luca: Life Without Him Here and the blogger at following my sun, both of whom only shared a single day with their newborn sons.

These women tell their painful truths to help themselves heal and to keep the memories of their children alive — and in doing so, they help countless other parents who find themselves crushed and bewildered after the loss of a child.

Last month, more than 4,000 bloggers joined us for Writing 101: Building a Blogging Habit, where they challenged themselves to carve out time to write regularly, and to experiment with new forms and styles. The result? Thousands of posts, comments, and follows, and countless new friendships.

We’re excited to announce Blogging U.’s next offering, which begins next Monday, July 21st. Writing 201: Finding Your Story will invite participants to take their craft to the next level by focusing on more advanced storytelling and self-editing tools, from finding the right angle from which to narrate your story, to coming up with strong opening sentences.

Good writing is essentially rewriting.

— Roald Dahl

Writing 201 is a self-directed course on the art of revision: four weeks dedicated to self-editing and rewriting, looking at our work with a magnifying glass, and improving it. If you have existing posts that you’d like to work on, expand, or refocus, whether as a result of Writing 101 or not, this course will be ideal for you.

The nitty gritty

Over four weeks, we’ll present four different workshops, each published on a Monday. You’re free to read each workshop at your own pace — absorb it all in one day, or tackle parts of it throughout the week.

There is no assignment or posting requirement at the end of each workshop, but we’ll offer a series of questions and discussions to reflect on every week. In your own time, you’ll experiment with these techniques in the specific pieces you’re working on. You’ll decide how much time and effort you’d like to spend each day.

Just like in Writing 101, you’ll be invited to join the Commons, a private forum for conversation, support, and feedback. Given the emphasis on editing, the Commons is a key component of this course: it will be the space to workshop your material. Workshopping is all about collaborative brainstorming: you’ll offer specific, constructive feedback to others, and they’ll do the same for you.

If you’re a self-motivated blogger and think your writing can benefit from intensive feedback and greater focus, then Writing 201 might just be the perfect next step for your blog and for your craft. You’ll find the signup form (and more details) here.

Here’s the first official edition of Longreads’ Best of WordPress! We’ve scoured 22% of the internet to create a reading list of great storytelling — from publishers you already know and love, to some that you may be discovering for the first time.

We’ll be doing more of these reading lists in the weeks and months to come. If you read or publish a story on WordPress that’s over 1,500 words, share it with us: just tag it #longreads on Twitter, or use the longreads tag on WordPress.com.

***

Tickets for Restaurants (Nick Kokonas, Alinea)

How the owners of world-class restaurants including Alinea created their own custom ticketing system:

Though I hadn’t the faintest idea how we would sell tickets, Grant and I included the line: “Tickets, yes tickets, go on sale soon…” in the announcement ‘trailer’ for Next. That was meant to do three things: 1) gauge the reaction from potential customers; 2) create interest and controversy; 3) force us to actually follow through.

Read the story

‘How I Came to Kill Your Brother’: A Confederate Reveals an Irish-American’s Final Moments (Damian Shiels)

“There are only two conflicts in Irish history which have seen close to 200,000 Irishmen in uniform. One is the First World War… the other is the American Civil War.” Historian Damian Shiels tells the true story of a soldier’s death, and a first-person account from the man who killed him.

Read the story

No Country for Old Pervs (Molly Lambert, Grantland)

Lambert looks at the sex scandals involving photographer Terry Richardson and American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, and asks: how did they stick around for so long anyway?

I remember thinking in 1999 that we were finally on the brink of the future. I saw how wrong I was about that repeatedly. After 9/11, the culture became demonstrably more conservative. Gender essentialism returned, and the ’90s were suddenly considered a failed experiment, like the ’60s, in pushing the boundaries for sex roles too far.

Read the story

Insuring The Dead (Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, The New Inquiry)

Inside the business of corpse-repatriation insurance:

It is said, by people who would know, that at its peak, Colombia’s infamous Medellín drug cartel was spending $2,500 a month on rubber bands to wrap around bricks of cash. The arithmetic of human excess begins to acquire mythic status when money becomes nearly impossible to count and we are left to communicate chiefly through estimates and legends, like the one in which Pablo Escobar set fire to $2 million in cash to create a fire for his daughter when they were on the run and she got cold. During Colombia’s dark and bloody 1980s, the cartels’ pecuniary abundance was not only the stuff of legendary proportion. Death, too, became grimly innumerable—and at the intersection of cartel, guerrilla, and paramilitary violence was the question of how to respond to the ubiquity of death.

Read the story

Inside the Barista Class (Molly Osberg, The Awl)

A former barista examines service work and the difficult transition into the creative class:

My kind of service work is part of the same logic that indiscriminately razes neighborhoods. It outsources the emotional and practical needs of the oft-fetishized, urban-renewing “creative” workforce to a downwardly mobile middle class, reducing workers’ personality traits and educations to a series of plot points intended to telegraph a zombified bohemianism for the benefit of the rich.

Read the story

The Near-Death of Grand Central Terminal (Kevin Baker, Harper’s)

How we almost lost a New York landmark:

Many consider the destruction of New York’s original Pennsylvania Station in 1963 to have been the architectural crime of the twentieth century. But few know how close we came to also losing its counterpart, Grand Central Terminal, a hub every bit as irreplaceable. Grand Central’s salvation has generally been told as a tale of aroused civic virtue, which it was. Yet it was, as well, an affirming episode for those of us convinced that our political culture has become an endless clown-car act with the same fools always leaping out.

Read the story

Matt Power: An Appreciation (Maria Dahvana Headley)

A eulogy for the journalist Matthew Power, by his friend, writer Maria Dahvana Headley, following his death in March at age 39:

I can’t believe Matt Power died on the river. I can’t believe Matt Power isn’t still trekking and toasting the joy he always had, for everything he did, for his amazing wife, for his amazing life. So many people are grieving him right now, and grieving the words he won’t write, too. There are a lot of broken hearts all over the world. He was loved.

Read the story

Opportunity’s Knocks (Eli Saslow, Washington Post)

The fastest growing job in America — working as a nurse aide — is also among the hardest. The reporter follows a single mother hoping to find a stable job and build a better life for her family:

“I’m getting desperate, to be honest,” she told her classmates. “I need something good to happen. I’m hoping this might be it.”

Read the story

Greet the Enemy (Kent Russell, Tin House)

Russell recounts his experience with night terrors, which he associates with his love of horror films and the work of Tom Savini, a special-effects artist known for working with director George Romero on zombie films.

Read the story

What’s In a Name? (Kat Haché)

A transgender writer on changing her name:

I’m a woman with a pretty amazing namesake – two fantastic women. And my name is just as valid as any nickname adopted by any individual at any point in their lives. My name is just as valid as that of any Hollywood star. My name is just as valid as any woman married or divorced who chooses to adopt or discard her lover’s family name. Those names are not up for debate, however. Somehow, transgender names are.

Read the story

Photos: wallyg, Flickr
banditob, Flickr
coffeegeek, Flickr

Today, we have two great themes for you. Chronicle is a premium magazine theme and Sidespied is a portfolio-focused free theme.

In case you missed it, a quick recap of the past week on WordPress.com, from new features to great blogs to discover.

First off, welcome to the 1,321,980 new sites and blogs that decided to fly with WordPress.com this month! We’re glad to have you aboard, and beverage service will begin shortly.

Wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into? Here are some January highlights:

Taking the 35,000-foot view

All across WordPress.com, your blogs racked up over four billion pageviews, representing 9,510,203,530,649,226 bytes of data.

(If that number is too big to make much sense, think of it this way: that’s a whole lot of bytes — 1.3MB for every single person on the planet.)

Those bytes represent the 39,705,625 posts you published this month. You shared 15,711,317 with your Publicize connections, and we featured 190 of them on Freshly Pressed, which intrigued you enough to click on them 174,650 times.

You were equally forthcoming with your feedback, leaving 49,931,074 comments on those posts. Something was in the air on January 22nd, your most prolific commenting day — you left 1,806,114.

Please make sure your carry-on bags are stowed

Along with your words, you put a whole lot of other content and media into your posts, to the tune of:

• 33,275,362 embedded tweets,
• 7,162,761 Google docs,
• 23,373,755 Flickr images,
• 17,600,757 YouTube videos, and
• 83,764 SlideShare presentations.

You traveled anywhere and everywhere

One of the things we love most about skimming the Reader is the infinite variety of topics and perspectives — there’s no subject you don’t take on, and no angle you don’t explore.

In January, you published 82,849 posts about music. The most popular day for music posts was January 27th, the day after the Grammys, when you wrote 5,838 posts on the awards.

The rhymesters among you also had a big month, publishing 57,712 posts on poetry. Some forms…

• 5,581 haiku
• 1,265 pieces of free verse
• 407 sonnets

were more popular than others…

• 58 cinquains
• 7 roundels

(Sadly, there were no palinodes or elegiac couplets. You’re on notice for February, poets!)

As ever, humor was popular, with 23,810 posts. Satire accounted for 2,999 of those, while knock-knock jokes brought up the rear with 28.

Look out kittens: we’re coming for you. (Photo by Tom Doeppner, CC BY-SA 2.0.)

Not surprisingly, new year’s resolutions were a popular topic for January — 21,925 of you put yours out there for the world to read. The freakish temperature changes caused by the polar vortex also got some love, with posts from 2,137 of you.

And because we know some of you are keeping score, dogs once again got the best of cats, with 9,195 and 6,111 posts, respectively. Look out in February, though — the 192 posts on turtles suggest that there might be a new internet animal darling in town.

Your mechanics were also hard at work

Behind the scenes, 239 Automatticians worked to make your blogging experience as good as possible. (Want to be #240? We’re hiring!)

Our Theme Team announced twelve new additions to the Theme Showcase — our in-house team built the free themes Motif, Suits, Bushwick, Syntax, Sorbet, and McKinley, and we added the premium Poly, Moka, Ampersand, Studio, Outspoken, and Gallery themes thanks to our awesome partner theme shops.

The hardworking Happiness team posted 12,766 responses to your questions in the support forums, helping you understand the inner workings of your blogs and shape your themes to your whims. They also helped figure out where things could be improved, which our engineers did with the 9,082 fixes, big and small, that they made.

On the VIP side of WordPress.com, we welcomed new VIPs The Bloggess, Grantland, and Consequences of Sound (among others).

You’ve set the bar high for 2014! We can’t wait to see where you take things in February.

Publishing a blog can be tons of fun, and a great way to make friends and create opportunities. Starting one couldn’t be easier: sign up, pick a theme, and off you go. But maintaining one and building an audience? That takes a little more work — publishing regularly and engaging with the rest of the blogging community.

To make sticking to your 2014 blogging resolution easy and fun, we’re introducing a way to stay on top of your blogging goals. Whether you’re a brand-new blogger looking to make a splash, hope to return to a tumbleweed-strewn site you started long ago, or just want to introduce a little regularity to your blog, we’re here to help you get there.

Now, when you register a new blog, you’ll be able to pick a posting goal of weekly or monthly:

If you’ve already got a blog, you can head to your account settings page to pick a goal.

We’ll send you weekly or monthly emails with the tools and inspiration you need to meet the mark: great posts from other WordPress.com bloggers to get you motivated, writing prompts to push you past writers’ block, and tips for making the most of WordPress.com. We’ll congratulate you when you’ve met your goals, and give you a gentle nudge if you’re falling off the pace.

(You can also opt out of the emails or update your goals at any time — they’re designed to help you meet your goals, not to clutter your inbox.)

What do you do? Just blog! If you’ve got something to say without our suggestions or want to post more frequently than the goal you’ve selected, go for it! But if you need a little extra push, we’re there for you. Set a goal for yourself today, and get your blog off to a great start.

If you’d like something a little more intensive, visit The Daily Post tomorrow, when we kick off our first Zero to Hero 30-Day Blogging Challenge to give your new or flagging blog a serious jump-start. You can also visit The Daily Post for daily writing prompts and weekly writing and photography challenges.

Parenting blogs flourish on WordPress.com, and today, we’re pleased to introduce you to Gendermom, whose site tagline, A chronicle of fun and fear, or, daily life with my young trans daughter, says it all. Gendermom’s daughter M. was born a boy. He knew early on that he should have been born a girl. Gendermom writes anonymously about the challenges and joys of raising M. Her site is a great example of how bloggers can educate, inspire, and build supportive communities.

Gendermom and M.

Your son approached you at age three to tell you he believed that he should have been born a girl. How did you come to terms with him as a transgender person?

Well, it’s taken time. As far as I knew, I’d never met a transgender person before my child came onto the scene, announcing shortly after his third birthday that he was actually a she. I spent many months resisting, offering alternatives (“Couldn’t you just be a boy who likes girl stuff?”). No dice. The idea of remaining a boy was intolerable to her, and she never once wavered in her insistence that she was a girl who had been born into the wrong body.

My ex-husband and most of my family, friends, and neighbors accepted it before I finally did. I dragged my feet for the better part of a year. Some of this resistance was born of grief — I had fallen in love with my baby boy and I didn’t want to let him go. But most of my reticence had another source: the knowledge that I was facing perhaps the most important decision of my life. I am the last word for this kid. I’m Mom. What I decide now will impact the entire course of his (her?) life. I can’t afford to get this wrong.

How did you embrace raising your son as a daughter?

I hedged and resisted for months and months. While my child went ahead and transformed into the girl she knew herself to be, I read books and consulted experts and found a support group and second-guessed myself a thousand times, until I was finally as sure as I was ever going to be that this was the right thing to do. When she was four years old, I got fully on board and I haven’t looked back.

It’s been almost two years since then. She is happy and confident and thriving, so I believe that we are on the right path. But it has been a long and difficult journey so far, and I know we are not out of the woods yet. She just started kindergarten at a new school where only her teachers and one other family “know.” I wonder every day when this will change, and what’s in store for us when it does. Life remains extremely interesting.

How have readers responded to your blog? How would you describe the support you’ve received?


The anonymity provided by the internet can be a dangerous thing (cyber-bullying comes to mind). But in my case, it has been such a gift. Through my anonymous blog, I’ve been able to connect (without exposing my child’s identity) with people around the country (and around the world) who understand me and my child in a way none of my cisgender friends (with their cisgender children) ever will (cisgender = not transgender).

Through the safety of our mutual anonymity, I’ve connected with transgender people I could never otherwise have found. This is particularly true in the case of older generations, who transitioned in an era when trans folks were required to hide their status completely, burying their pasts like participants in a witness protection program. One woman wrote to me:

When my age group transitioned more than 40 years ago, we were told…to blend into the woodwork. We were not to identify ourselves as transsexuals. I have only revealed myself to my family and a very few very close friends. Everyone else I know considers me as just like every other woman.

No questions asked. I admire the young transgender girls and women (and boys and men) of today who are bold and in your face and let the world know their situation. I admire that because that is really the only way things will ever change for the better.

Earlier generations of trans folks also lived in a time when a transgender childhood was simply not an option. Their stories frequently leave me humbled and heartbroken, as well as keenly aware of my child’s good fortune to have been born when she was:

I was born in 1960 and I was first spanked for wearing female clothes when I was four years old. All throughout my childhood I was beaten and humiliated for trying to dress or act female — because I was born with a male body. None of the beatings or humiliation tactics did any good — you ARE who you ARE and that cannot be changed!

Like most transsexual people born when I was, I transitioned late in life — at the age of 48. At this point, my transition is complete. Since I was NOT on hormone blockers as a child my body developed with male features.

Because of this I had to undergo years of very expensive, painful electrolysis. I have also had facial feminization surgery (FFS) where my entire face was basically removed so the doctor could reshape the bones in my face — bones that had been disfigured by testosterone.

To have parents like you and to be a trans kid today is the stuff my dreams were made of!

Self portrait by M.

There’s a vein of envy running through many of these comments. They know all too well that my child will dodge many of the horrors they have endured. Early medical intervention to stave off the wrong puberty will mean she’ll never have to worry about being perceived as “a man in a dress.”

You might expect that they’d sound bitter, a little resentful of my child. But there has never been a hint of that. Rather, their words are uniformly supportive and kind. On dark days, I can rely on my anonymous cheering squad to get me through:

A parent as yourself is GOLDEN, cherish your daughter as you both are very special.

I see great things for your brave little girl. She knows she’s loved and supported, and with that she can conquer the world.

Have you encountered any negative reactions to you blog?


No, but I suspect this is largely due to the fact that my audience has thus far been composed mostly of transgender adults and parents of trans kids — people who believe, as I do, that transgender people are a naturally occurring and ever-present branch of the human family tree, found in all cultures and time periods. It’s a friendly audience and so far I haven’t had a single heckler.

But I am well aware that much of the world still believes trans people to be psychologically damaged, or worse. I do hope to eventually reach this wider, more mainstream audience. Some of them are going to say some awful things, and that’s going to be really hard. But if their minds are even half-way open, and they “meet” my child in the pages of my blog, I think there’s a very good chance that most people will come away with a new perspective about what it means to be transgender — one that’s based on real people and real lives, rather than fear and stereotypes. A mom can dream, anyway.

Have you been able to connect with other parents facing similar issues? What influence has that had, if any, on your blogging?


I hear fairly frequently from parents with gender-nonconforming or transgender kids. Their emails often express the same relief that I feel when I encounter other parents who have kids like mine. We might be strangers, but I know them. I know they’re just as lonely and scared as I am, just as exhausted by the well-meaning questions (“What if you just made her wear pants?”), the subtle (and not so subtle) jokes and smirks at our kids’ expense, and the ever-present (and not unfounded) terror that the world is going to hurt our children.

I love receiving emails from these other parents. And they all say pretty much the same thing: “You GET me.”

I have a transgirl too, and she’s five. Reading your blog is sometimes like reading about MY life.

Most of your entries bring tears to my eyes as I think “Yes, yes, yes! I get it!” It is such a gift to have people who really understand.

What’s your advice to others who might be thinking about blogging about (potentially) sensitive/highly personal issues?

I take my anonymity seriously. I’ll never write anything or post an image that might expose my identity or that of my child. This is not because I’m ashamed of her or of us, but because the world still isn’t a very safe place for transgender folks. The statistics on violence against transgender people — especially women — are terrifying. On top of this, I feel strongly that it’s not my secret to share. Someday my child may decide to live openly as a trans person, but that will be her call, not mine.

I actually haven’t even shared my blog with any family or friends. All my readers are strangers. This allows me to feel free to write whatever I want to, without fearing I’ll upset or worry loved ones. I can openly complain about friends who, though well-intentioned, often say absolutely the wrong thing (“You should just keep things gender-neutral until he’s older.” “I’m so relieved my kid is…normal.”) When this happens, I go to my blog and tell sympathetic strangers about it. I write, without holding anything back, about how isolating and terrifying it can be to raise a child like mine. This freedom is fabulously therapeutic, and the supportive responses I receive from readers get me through the tough days.

How do you respond to the typical misconceptions about transgender people that you’ve encountered
?

I live in a very liberal area, so we’ve had a pretty easy time of it so far. People generally fall all over themselves to express their enthusiastic support, but that doesn’t mean that they have a clue about what it means to be transgender. Some people actually ask me if my kid has had a “sex change operation.” No, she has not. She’s five years old!

More often, people assume that a five year old couldn’t possibly know what gender she is. If I’m feeling sassy, I might ask them if they’re sure they’ve got their kids’ genders right. “I mean, little Ella’s only six years old. Do you really think she can know that she’s a girl at such a young age?” That generally gets them thinking.

All sassiness aside, most of the time I try hard to be patient, knowing that I was in their shoes just a few years ago and would have likely asked many of the same questions. I give a lot of little informational “Transgender 101” speeches, explaining that transgender people have always been with us, but have been hidden and marginalized. (“You know, just like gays and lesbians were a few decades ago.”) My hope is that every speech I give will change the world just a tiny bit, and that each of my victims will tell their friends, who’ll tell their friends, who’ll tell their friends… and the world will be that much safer and friendlier for kids like mine.

Which resources would you recommend for parents and families raising non-genderconforming kids?



These organizations provide invaluable advice, resources, and support for parents of gender-nonconforming kiddos:

• TYFA (TransYouth Family Allies)
• Gender Spectrum
• Gender Diversity

Party planning for the holidays? Scheming up a New Year’s Eve 2013 bash? Or, maybe you host regular gatherings, like a weekly book-swap-and-wine-tasting night, or are planning “NaNoWriMoNowWhat?” writing support sessions in November and beyond. No matter your type of event, we hope you’re using the tools available to promote it!

Here’s a rundown of features you can use, right in your dashboard:

Themes to showcase your one-time and recurring events

This fall, we launched a pair of nifty themes specifically to promote one-time or recurring events. On these Eventbrite themes, you can:

• Make a page to allow attendees to register and buy tickets.
• Create a page for blog posts to publish updates for your attendees.
• Feature your events in a carousel.
• Activate widgets for registration or message customization, which you can add to your sidebar.

Don’t want to use an Eventbrite theme? You can promote your event on another theme in the Theme Showcase that works for you — and set up a static home page with all the details.

Widgets to promote your events

To check out the widgets you can activate, head to Appearance → Widgets in your dashboard. If you’re using an Eventbrite theme, you can choose from several widgets to help spread the word about your events and customize your sidebar. Consider widgets to display a month-view calendar of upcoming events, a registration button, a personal message to attendees, and an area to list recently announced/upcoming dates (for recurring events):

If you’re not using an Eventbrite theme, you can still activate some widgets ideal for events. In Appearance → Widgets, look for the Eventbrite: Event Calendar/Listing Widget to display your event.

The Milestone Widget, as seen on the Twenty Thirteen theme.

You can also consider the Milestone Widget, especially if you’re hosting a single, one-time event, to call attention to a specific date.

To display dates for upcoming events, like your foodie cook-offs next month or your weekly book clubs, use the Upcoming Events Widget, which allows you to show a list of upcoming dates and events, using Google Calendar and an iCalendar feed.

And don’t underestimate the power of the Text Widget, which you can use to display a message about your upcoming gathering.

For something more colorful, use an Image Widget to attract attendees: display a photo of books on a shelf to promote your book club, or an image of your favorite dish to promote your foodie competition, then link the widget to a static page on your site dedicated to your event.

Are there other features you use to promote your events? We’d love to hear how you use the widgets and tools available to you.

For the first time ever, the yearly default theme for WordPress is ready to go before its namesake year begins. Consider it an early holiday gift from the WordPress community to you, a tradition we hope to continue for many years to come.

Say hello to the default theme for 2014, a magazine theme with a sleek, modern, and beautifully crafted responsive design.

Twenty Fourteen is a great fit for content-rich sites because of the ability to easily highlight specific articles on the home page while balancing readability with an impactful use of photography—all in a layout that works on any device.

To feature your very best content, the home page prominently displays your choice of up to 6 posts in a grid or slider… use this to make sure your very best articles get noticed.

Quickly grab a reader’s attention with your beautiful photos—they are front-and-center in both the Featured Content area as well as above post titles in normal display.

Make it yours with three widget-ready areas, two special page templates (full-width page to remove the sidebar and a Contributor page to spotlight authors), and two menu locations. An added bonus is a unique “Ephemera” widget to show off your latest videos, music, links, and more.

Twenty Fourteen is full to the brim with lovely design details from a beautiful, readable Lato typeface to a fixed header for easy menu access to distinctive pull quote styles, and more. See everything in action on the demo site and learn more on the Theme Showcase.

Designed by Takashi Irie and built by many passionate people in the WordPress community, Twenty Fourteen is now available in your WordPress.com dashboard at Appearance → Themes. Self-hosted WordPress.org users will have access to the new theme with the official 3.8 software release, coming in December 2013.

Do you ever wonder what happens when your readers reach the end of your posts? What do they click on? Where do they go next? What if you’ve piqued a reader’s interest and left them wanting more, but don’t give them the option to do so? Today, we’re so happy …

Out with the Halloween candy, in with the ballot boxes: today is election day across 50 states! All over the world, in fact, falling leaves seem to inspire the urge to cast votes. From Norway in September to Tajikistan later this week, this is the season for lively political discussions …

We started getting into the Halloween spirit yesterday, with Halloween craft and costume blogs and a look at some of the real-life witches on WordPress.com. Today we continue the Halloween Spooktacular with some less Halloween-y but no less creepy content: horror film buffs, zombie aficionados, and cemetery guides, oh my! Frightening …

Recently, Michelle offered a snapshot of WordPress.com activity in July. The verdict? You’re all busy bees and publish a lot. We’re proud of our community’s accomplishments this past month, too — August certainly sizzled. Here’s a glimpse at what’s been in the works at WordPress.com, through news and numbers. You’re in …

Today I’m thrilled to announce that another beautiful theme which offers a more personal touch has been added to our ever-expanding showcase of premium upgrades. Personal is a customizable, content-first theme tailored for writers, journalists, and bloggers. One of the cleanest and most minimal themes in the Obox Themes collection, …

Images are one of the simplest ways to inject personality into your blog. No matter what theme you’re using, you can add life with images — insert them into posts and pages, use them for headers and backgrounds, or liven up your sidebar with image widgets. Today, we’re exploring the …

At WordPress.com, we love to read. We’re delighted to announce that our partner Readmill has implemented sharing to WordPress in the latest version of their iOS app, already available in the App Store. Now you can highlight passages in books and PDFs you’re reading in Readmill and share them on …

iTheme2 was originally conceived as a tech blog theme, paying homage to the sleek design of Apple websites. The three blogs we showcase here are proof of its remarkable versatility: not one of them covers technology. Whether it’s the natural splendors on view on Yosemite Park Blog, the romance-heavy book reviews on Have …

You’ve worked hard all day drafting a post, then click Publish to send it out into the world. Then, you crash for the night.  You’ve earned it, right?

You wake up in the morning, excited to look in your dashboard to see who’s read and commented on your post. But you didn’t get the interaction you hoped for.

What else can you do?

On your WordPress.com site — your own little corner of the internet — you’ve got the power to publish. But this process doesn’t end after you click that blue Publish button! While we send your published posts to several places automatically — from the Reader to services that notify search engines of new updates — we encourage you to use the tools in your dashboard to give your posts a boost.

Promote your posts with Publicize

With Publicize, you can push out your new posts to social networking sites automatically. To set up Publicize, head over to Settings → Sharing. At the top of the page, you’ll see options to connect to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. To activate, click on the appropriate “Add new connection” link:

Here are links to the setup steps for each:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Tumblr

Once you’ve approved connections, you’ll see a Publicize section in the Publish box for each service you’ve authorized, on the right of your Post Screen, each time you create a new post:

Publish a post as usual, and it’ll appear on the services you’ve enabled. For a bit more control, you can opt out from any of the services for a specific post — click the “Edit” link and deselect a service. You can also customize the message sent out with the link in the “Custom Message” box.

Enable sharing buttons

Want another option to promote your stuff? Be sure to enable sharing buttons, too. You can display these buttons at the bottom of your posts and pages, so readers can share your stuff across a number of social networks and services:

You’ll see this option in Settings → Sharing as well, below the Publicize connection links. Just drag and drop the buttons you want to display into the “Enabled Services” section. You’ll see additional settings to tweak the buttons and adjust where you’d like them to appear on your site.

Tag your posts so users can find ‘em

WordPress.com users following your blog will see your new posts under Blogs I Follow in the Reader, but you should add appropriate tags and categories to your posts so they appear on the topics pages in the Reader, too. Let’s say that awesome post you penned last night is a response to a recent behavioral economics discussion on Dan Ariely’s blog (also on WordPress.com!). Add relevant tags so like-minded readers can find your post, even if they’re not following your blog:

Tip: Adding 5 to 15 tags (or categories, or a combination of the two) is ideal for a post. The more categories you use, the less likely your post will be included on the topics pages. 

Other tools to promote interaction and get readers

Enabling likes and comments

You’ve got simple tools to promote reader engagement on your site.  In Settings → Sharing, enable likes at the bottom of the page:

To allow your readers to leave comments, go to Settings → Discussion to adjust your default comment settings, from what a reader must fill out when they leave a comment to comment moderation details. Be sure to check the box next to Follow Comments, so readers can receive notifications when you and fellow readers respond to a post’s comment thread.

RSS subscribers

A feed (often called RSS) is a stream of posts or comments, updated when new content is published. It allows people to monitor your blog, along with other sites they follow, and aggregate them together via feed readers, like our own WordPress.com Reader. Your site has multiple feeds — its main content feed can be accessed by adding /feed/ to your blog’s URL. (For example, this blog’s feed is http://en.blog.wordpress.com/feed/.) Your feeds are automatically created, unless your blog as private.

You can make it easy for others to subscribe to your feed using the RSS Links Widget, which adds links to your site’s post and comment RSS feeds in your sidebar. To set this up, go to your widgets page in Appearance → Widgets and drag this widget to the right. The settings are simple, and you can add links to your posts and comments (or both), and display text or image links (or both).

Subscription emails

Finally, if you aren’t using it already, activate the Follow Blog Widget so your visitors can sign up to receive your posts via email. We talked about this widget recently, but it’s one of the easiest ways to ensure your readers see your new posts, so a gentle reminder won’t hurt!

Under Appearance → Widgets, drag this widget to the right. In the settings, you can customize the messages that will be displayed, the text for the “Follow” button, and decide whether you want to show your total number of followers (which is the sum of users following your blog and others connected from Publicize services, like Facebook and Twitter).

This is a sampling of the features in your dashboard that you can use to promote your new posts. Ultimately, your site isn’t just a place to create and publish — it’s a space for constantly evolving ideas and engagement with your readers. Publishing is just the first step, so we hope you’ll use these tools to share your work with as many readers as possible!

You might also enjoy these related posts:

• Get the Most Out of Widgets: Building and Showcasing Your Community
• Improved Publicize
• All About SEO on WordPress.com

Magnate Express: Narrow View

What better way to celebrate the excitement of WordCamp San Francisco this week than with a premium theme launch!

Our latest, from WooThemes, is called Magnate Express, a responsive blogging and photography theme built for publishing your creative self.

While its default look is clean and sophisticated, Magnate Express includes many features to make it truly your own. A bold and configurable slider highlights your Featured Content, while three menu locations and five widget areas allow you to place your content exactly as you like. Add your logo with the easy-to-use logo uploader in the Customizer, and Magnate Express is your perfect home on the web.

Magnate Express also features a smart, responsive layout. The header steps aside to the left on wider screens to showcase your featured content, while the entire layout lines up in one column for a top-notch mobile experience.

Magnate Express: Wide View

Magnate Express 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.

Every once in a while, we get to sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes here. These are the people who build new features, keep Automattic running, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. This week, we’re very pleased to introduce you to Mr. Dave Martin: Growth Designer, frequent mover, and family guy extraordinaire. 

We’re excited to announce the addition of .CO as a new top-level domain on WordPress.com. If you’re interested in buying a custom domain name for a new or existing site, you can now choose and register .CO from among our existing options (.ME, .COM, .NET, .ORG). The .CO domain costs $25/year.

Since launching in 2010, more than 1.5 million .CO domain names have been registered by individuals and businesses in over 200 countries worldwide. A .CO domain name is short and memorable, making it a great option for your WordPress.com website or blog.

Steps for existing WordPress.com users

• If you’re an existing WordPress.com user, you can register a .CO domain name for your site by going to Store → Domains in your dashboard. Under Add a Domain, type in the .CO domain name you’d like to register:

• Then, click the blue Add domain to blog button.
• On the following page, we’ll ask you for a few more details to get you set up, including contact information and whether you’d like to add Private Registration to your domain purchase, for an additional $8, to make this personal information private. Once the form is complete, click the Register Domain button in blue.

• On the next page, you can make your payment for $25 to finalize the registration of your new .CO domain.
• Finally, to activate your new domain, go to Store → Domains in your dashboard, select the button next to the new .CO domain you wish to activate, and click Update Primary Domain.

Steps for new WordPress.com users

• If you don’t have a WordPress.com account yet and want to register a .CO domain for a new site, get started on the WordPress.com signup page.
• On the signup page, we’ll ask you to fill out a few details on the form, including your email address, desired username, and password. In the Blog Address field, type in the web address you’d like to use.
• Click the small arrow at the right of this box to open a drop-down menu of top-level domain options: .CO, .ME, .COM, .NET, .ORG. The option you choose — ie, .CO — will compose the last part of your domain name.

• After you set your option, you’ll see a green checkmark appear at the right of the box.
• Once all of the fields on this form are correctly filled out, click Create Blog at the bottom.
• On the following page, we’ll ask you for a few more details to get you set up, including contact information and whether you’d like to add Private Registration to your domain purchase, for an additional $8, to make this personal information private. Once the form is complete, click the Register Domain button in blue.

• On the next page, you can make your payment for $25 to finalize the registration of your new .CO domain.
• Finally, to activate your new domain, go to Store → Domains in your dashboard, select the button next to the new .CO domain you wish to activate, and click Update Primary Domain.

If you need assistance, don’t hesitate to send a note to our Support team!

Want to learn more about domains?

We’ve published a few recent posts that demystify the world of domains on WordPress.com. For more information on how it all works, check out:

• Domains 101: An Introduction to Custom Domains
• Domains 101: Mapping It Out

Our Support site has more resources, too:

• Domains
• All About Domains
• Register a New Domain
• Map an Existing Domain

Last month, we highlighted some widgets and hope you’ve since activated them! Today, let’s continue our widgets tour and focus on several that put the spotlight on the readership you’ve built. Your site isn’t just about you or your organization — it’s very much enriched by the community around you.

Turn visitors into subscribers

The Follow Blog Widget lets your visitors sign up to receive your posts via email — it’s one of the easiest ways to ensure your readers see your new posts. Under Appearance → Widgets, drag this widget to the right. In the settings, you can customize the messages that will be displayed, the text for the “Follow” button, and decide whether you want to show your total number of followers (which is the sum of users following your blog and others connected from Publicize services, like Facebook and Twitter).

Here’s an example of the widget on the blog Humans Are Weird:

The Follow Blog Widget is the simplest tool you can enable to send your latest stuff to as many inboxes across the internet as possible!

Show off your readership

So, let’s say you’ve got a bunch of blog followers. Who are these fabulous people? The My Community Widget allows you to display a sampling of users who have interacted on your site, transforming a faceless mass into happy, smiling humans. You can see the widget in action on the blog Play:

The widget shows a grid of gravatars, which visually dresses up your sidebar. You can tweak it by displaying activity from a mix of likers, followers, and commenters.

Highlight your community’s favorites

The Top Posts & Pages Widget displays the most popular content on your site. You can choose to show your most viewed or most liked posts (up to 10), as well as specify the display format (a text list, an image list, or an image grid). On his blog, Boy with a Hat, Vincent Mars displays his most-liked content in an image list:

The Top Posts & Pages Widget not only gives your top posts and pages the attention they deserve — it also reveals a bit about your readers’ preferences and what topics have resonated with your audience over a long period of time.

Promote the conversation

Finally, the Recent Comments Widget shows a snippet of the engagement on your site. For many of us, comments aren’t afterthoughts — they’re essential to the discussion and the blogging experience. This widget displays the most recent comments left on your blog, as shown on Robert Bruce’s 101 Books:

You can customize the widget title, set up to 15 posts to display, adjust the size of the avatars (or show no avatars at all), and specify the background color for avatars and text. It’s similar to the My Community Widget above and connects faces to usernames and humanizes your readership, but also highlights the individuals who take the time to comment on something you’ve worked hard to publish.

Well, what are you waiting for? Enable these widgets to showcase the readership you’ve built — each one can be activated right in your dashboard under Appearance → Widgets.

You might also enjoy these related posts:

• Quick and Easy Customization: Get the Most Out of Widgets
• More Widgets For Your Blog
• Widget Visibility and You

WordPress.com users, designers, and developers: we want your feedback!

Here at WordPress.com, we enjoy working each day to bring you new features and improvements to make your sites and online publishing experiences the best they can be — and to provide a platform on which you can share your work and ideas and connect with others in the community.

We want to make sure we’re providing you with the tools and services you need and hope you’ll take several minutes to complete our 2013 survey.

Your input will be extremely helpful and will provide an overview of how people, like you, use WordPress.com. We’ll share the results at the upcoming WordCamp San Francisco (WCSF) on July 26-27, with survey respondents, and on this blog as well. All of the data will be anonymized — your personal information won’t be associated with published results.

Thanks so much — we appreciate it!