We’re excited to introduce Radcliffe, a crisp new free theme.
Radcliffe is a contemporary responsive theme with beautiful typography. It puts your content in the forefront, featuring gorgeous full-width header images.
Learn more about Radcliffe at the Theme Showcase, or preview it by going to Appearance → Themes.
Our editors dove into the archives to resurface top posts published on WordPress.com this year, from personal essays to comics, and photography to fiction. Here’s a glimpse of what you published — and what the community especially loved — in 2014.
“Bill Watterson is the Bigfoot of cartooning,” writes comic artist Stephan Pastis of the legendary Calvin and Hobbes creator. This summer, Pastis collaborated — in secret — with Watterson. Their awesome idea: Watterson would silently step in and draw Pastis’ comic strip, Pearls Before Swine, for a few days, pretending to be a second grader. Pastis recounts the experience, offering a rare glimpse of Bigfoot.
Pearls Before Swine; Stephan Pastis; June 4, 2014.
I will apologize for ISIS when every single white American apologizes for the mass incarceration of black and brown people in the United States. I will post an 8,000 word apology when English people email me individual apologies for what the British Empire did to the subcontinent. I won’t limit this to whiteness only; I will apologize when every single ethnic, religious group apologizes for whatever someone did simply because, under this debauched logic, they owe the world an apology for sharing an identity. When I start seeing these apologies, I will apologize too.
Until then, no apology.
In “No Apology,” Brooklyn-based writer Mehreen Kasana pulls no punches in a bluntly powerful post explaining why she refuses to apologize for Muslim extremists. Her post forces all readers to take a hard look at identity, nationalism, and how we pick and choose who we hold responsible for violence — and who we absolve.
Life goes on, even when there’s chaos.
While much has happened in Ferguson, Missouri, since the August 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, this Don of All Trades post, published not long after the shooting, remains an intimate, resonant read. Don, a St. Louis police officer, recounts just another day on the job, in a town right outside of Ferguson, where life continues as usual and everyone — cops included — is invested in making the community better, safer, and more just.
So before you hold up your anti-Feminist placard proudly and smile at your own sense of empowerment, think not what Feminism can do for you, but what it can do for that one girl.
In a response to the #womenagainstfeminism movement, Hannah Collins says why she is a feminist and explains, especially to those who feel they don’t need feminism, that many people around the world still need it.
During a visit to Myanmar, freelance travel photographer Tony Burns documented Buddhist monks playing football on the grounds of their monastery, after a day of classes. His photo essay, “Football, the religion,” is a standout in our photography archives this year.
Tony Burns, “Football, the religion,” Shooting the World
When I look around, I see the culture we’ve built turning from a liberating revolution into a repressive incumbency. We’ve built magical devices, but we don’t care enough about protecting ordinary people from harm when they use them. . . . We don’t care about the people who lose out when we disrupt the world, just the winners (who tend to look a lot like us).
Pete Warden, the CTO of Jetpac, says that nerd culture, once outside the cultural mainstream, now runs the world. And in this post from October, he explains why it must die.
This emotional attachment and personification of machines seems disingenuine to some people; spacecraft aren’t people, they are collections of wires and circuits and nuts and bolts — they don’t have souls to become attached to. I dunno. I think they do have souls. They are the embodiment of every one who ever imagined them, worked on them, or stared at the data and pictures they returned. These little robots, in a way, are us. They are our dreams.
On the collaborative blog Write Science, astrophysicist Shane L. Larson pens a thought-provoking piece on the spacecrafts we’ve sent into the outer solar system, including the Voyagers and Pioneers, that will eventually die. Larson celebrates our human achievements in space, explores our relationships to the machines we build, and reminds us of the beauty and mystery of the cosmos.
You cannot answer prayers with miracles involving direct deliverance of suffering. However, you can bring joy. Lottery wins are usually the most simple. The miracolati will later dream of you, which will all go to the glory of our kind. They don’t have to be big wins, we actually encourage little ones, as it keeps them hoping.
In this earthly guide to sainthood, Giovanni De Feo, a speculative fiction writer living in Genova, Italy, offers a glimpse into the rules of an afterlife and the responsibilities of a saint. Published at Cease, Cows, a journal of short fiction and prose poetry, De Feo’s piece encapsulates the writing you’ll find here: strange and exploratory.
This is what privilege is about. Like drivers, nice, non-aggressive white people can move in the world without thinking about the ‘potholes’ or the ‘gravel’ that people of color have to navigate, or how things that they do — not intending to hurt or endanger anyone — might actually be making life more difficult or more dangerous for a person of color.
In his popular summer post, Michigan-based pastor Jeremy Dowsett explains how riding his bike has helped him to understand privilege. At once personal and accessible, the piece resonated with a wide audience (and was later republished on Quartz).
This isn’t my home,
I am a temporary resident
and my family ties are
blessedly recentbut things are soaked
in history here,
you can’t take a step
without stepping in it
In 1963, Medgar Evars, a black civil rights activist, was assassinated in the driveway of his home at 2332 Guynes Street in Jackson, Mississippi. Catherine’s poem, set at the Evars family home, is a subtle but powerful tribute to Evars and his important work with NAACP — and an indictment of a society that is still struggling to realize the dreams and promises of the civil rights movement.
At Greek Myth Comix, artist and classic civilization teacher Laura Jenkinson brings the classics to life through comics and infographics. In “Deaths in the Illiad,” she presents an impressive illustrated infographic of Trojan and Greek deaths, battle stats by hero, notable battle performances, and more.
Section of “Deaths in the Illiad,” Laura Jenkinson, Greek Myth Comix
But in shadowing, throughout the day, you start to feel sorry for the students who are told over and over again to pay attention because you understand part of what they are reacting to is sitting and listening all day. It’s really hard to do, and not something we ask adults to do day in and out. Think back to a multi-day conference or long PD day you had and remember that feeling by the end of the day — that need to just disconnect, break free, go for a run, chat with a friend, or surf the web and catch up on emails. That is how students often feel in our classes, not because we are boring per se but because they have been sitting and listening most of the day already. They have had enough.
This fall, education writer Grant Wiggins shared an account from a veteran high school teacher who shadowed tenth and twelfth grade students for two days. The experience was eye-opening, while the post generated an overwhelming response via comments and emails.
Those who choose to remain placeless find that next to us lays either an empty pillow or a body that we feel little affection for, merely a vessel for countenancing this intentional loneliness. Eroticism is not an antidote; it is a Band-Aid.
Cody C. Delistraty, a writer and researcher based in Paris and Oxford, writes about culture, psychology, and the human condition. In “The Eroticism of Placelessness,” he muses on placelessness — inhabiting in-between spaces — and its connections to freedom and romance, but also loneliness. We appreciate Delistraty’s blend of essay, research, and commentary and eloquent discussions to bigger questions.
We’re proud of the global community of bloggers that publish on this platform each day. You’re welcome to browse recent editors’ picks on discover.wordpress.com.
We look forward to reading you in 2015!
Automatticians, the people who build WordPress.com, participate in events and projects around the world every day. Periodically, they report back on the exciting things they do when not in front of a computer — from talking about making great products to using design to tackle social challenges.
Recently, Story Wrangler Cheri Lucas Rowlands and Happiness Engineers Carolyn Sonnek, Deborah Beckett, and Jen Hooks attended the third annual BlogHer PRO ’14 conference, an event for professionally minded bloggers looking to take their blogs, brands, and businesses to the next level.
A conference is a great way to dive deeper into your passion of blogging. You invest in specific skills you want to hone and get inspired by big ideas, and also take a break from that glowing screen. It’s fun to immerse yourself in an inspiring setting where avatars become faces and Twitter handles become real people.
Image by Jen Hooks
BlogHer PRO ’14 was a relatively intimate conference — about 200 attendees met in Redwood Shores, California, just south of San Francisco, to talk about how to grow their platforms and products into successful brands, identify their strengths and effectively tell their unique stories, and reach their audience and potential partners. Over two days, bloggers attended info-packed talks and presentations — from a chat with entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki and Simply Recipes blogger Elise Bauer to a keynote conversation between BlogHer’s Elisa Camahort Page and Findery CEO Caterina Fake.
Bloggers engaged in sessions on monetization and video trends, high-impact advertising and alternate revenue streams, mobile site optimization, and putting together a comprehensive marketing plan. Hands-on workshops on building media kits and tackling book proposals, among other topics, helped attendees get up and running.
As a sponsor of the event, we met many people at our WordPress.com booth, and were happy to see that a majority of attendees were self-hosted WordPress users. On day two, Happiness Engineers Carolyn and Deborah took the main stage to talk about the benefits of Automattic’s products and services for self-hosted WordPress users, including super plugin Jetpack, security and backup service VaultPress, anti-spam service Akismet, and poll and survey tool Polldaddy. These products provide self-hosted WordPress users the power, security, and functionalities available to our WordPress.com bloggers.
We were on hand to answer technical questions, offer tailored advice to attendees (from tips to improve site performance to choosing the right themes), and connect with existing and potential users.
If you’re serious about the business and marketing side of blogging and are interested in learning more about BlogHer, visit the BlogHer network. There, you’ll also find wrapup posts about this conference, as well as information on BlogHer’s other conferences. (Our very own Michelle Weber recapped this year’s BlogHer ’14 as well — check it out!)
For more updates from the WordPress.com and Automattic team, follow us on Twitter (@WordPressdotcom and @Automattic) and Facebook (WordPress.com and Automattic). We’ve got many events and conferences lined up in 2015 — stay tuned.
Gabrielle Bell, a cartoonist based in Brooklyn, New York, has published a new book, Truth Is Fragmentary: Travelogues & Diaries. Raw, revealing, and sometimes surreal, this comic diary serves up what Gabrielle is known for — her humor and introspection — as she muses on daily life and chronicles her travels around the world, from France to Sweden to Colombia.
Gabrielle is a WordPress.com blogger to watch: in the past, her work has been selected for numerous notable anthologies (such as the Best American Comics series) and her last book, The Voyeurs, was named a best graphic memoir of 2012.
In addition to Truth is Fragmentary, check out her multi-part series, Siberia, and other cool projects — from panels to posters — on her blog.
* * *
Marilyn R. Gardner, the blogger at Communicating Across Boundaries, also has a new book released this month: a collection of essays, based on her blog posts, titled Between Worlds: Essays on Culture and Belonging.
Marilyn started her blog in 2011 after returning from a relief trip to Pakistan — with the hope of finding her voice.
Three years later, Marilyn has grown her blog into a space for thoughtful writing on cross-cultural communication, faith, third culture kids, travel, and the Middle East.
Between Worlds, which weaves these themes into one compilation, is tangible proof that Marilyn indeed found the voice she had been looking for.
Are you an author on WordPress.com? Have you recently published a book? Leave a comment and let us know.
If you’re interested in previous book releases from WordPress.com authors, check out our May and April 2014 editions. For a glimpse of how authors use their blogs to promote their books, take a look at this post on author websites.
Running a website on WordPress.com? Here are three ideas to help you ensure your homepage is doing all the heavy lifting. 
WordPress.com has taken steps to deal with the Heartbleed vulnerability. Here's what you need to know. 
Today we’re excited to announce that we are acquiring Longreads, the pioneering service that helps readers find and share the best longform storytelling around the world, for reading on mobile devices. Over the last five years, Longreads and its community have created a new ecosystem for readers to find great …
From images and animation clips to recipes, savvy bloggers know that adding media to posts makes them much more engaging. Get inspired today with three embed options that add pop to your site.
Young women with high cancer risk and early-onset breast cancer blog their way through diagnosis and treatment with humor, strength, and grace.
Tumblelog-style themes need not be completely minimalist. Learn how you can put your own custom touches on Hum, Reddle, and Twenty Ten without spending any money. 
We’re thrilled to announce that, starting today, WordPress.com Business users can connect their sites to their online stores. With three leading ecommerce partners to choose from — Ecwid, Shopify, and ShopLocket — you can showcase, promote, and sell products to your customers directly from your site.
If you’re already a WordPress.com Business user, or are thinking of becoming one, here’s how the ecommerce feature will power your WordPress.com site.
Users with the WordPress.com Business upgrade already enjoy great features like live-chat support, unlimited storage, and free access to all our premium themes. Now, you can turn your site into a sleek online storefront, and let visitors shop from any post or page. The partners we’ve teamed up with — Ecwid, Shopify, and ShopLocket — all provide a smooth and secure ecommerce experience for you and your customers.
Connecting to your store is quick and easy — you initiate the process on your Dashboard, by going to eCommerce Plugins, where you can select the desired service:
After activating the service you’d like to use, you can go to the service’s Settings page to complete any necessary account details — from your Dashboard, go to Settings → Service Name (i.e. Ecwid Store, Shopify, or ShopLocket). In case you don’t already have an online store, you’ll be able to create one from the Settings page. (If you’ve ever used Publicize to connect your site to any social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, this process, which is very similar, will be a breeze).
Once your WordPress.com Business site is connected to your online store, the possibilities are endless. Each service is slightly different, but you can feature your products by simply embedding a link to your product into the editor, pasting in a shortcode from the services’ dashboard/admin, or, in some cases, just copying over the embed code into the editor. Regardless of the method you choose, we’ll automatically convert each link into a sleek, professional product image.
If you’d like more control over your site’s visuals, you can tweak your products’ appearance even further. You can modify the look and feel of the products on your page by customizing the shortcode, from image size and background color to “Buy” button text. Depending on the ecommerce service you’re using, you can add products to your sidebar with a designated widget, or even have a shopping cart on your page.
All three ecommerce options are now available to all WordPress.com Business users — we hope you give them a try!
Every so often, we sit down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who build new features, keep Automattic’s wheels turning, and make WordPress.com the best it can be. In this installment, we’re delighted to introduce you to movie buff, comics geek, and Mobile Engineer, Sendhil Panchadsaram.
Thinking about applying to work at Automattic? We’re hiring.
I’m currently a Mobile Engineer working in the Mobile Team. The vast majority of my time I work on the iOS app, but ever so rarely I end up dabbling with some stuff on the back end.
A friend of mine (and fellow Mobile Team member Dan Roundhill) had encouraged me to apply in 2012. He told me that Automattic was looking to grow their Mobile Team and he thought I’d be a good fit. At the time I politely declined because I was working at a startup. About a year later the startup came to an end and I gave him a call…
“The biggest highlight for me is that I get to work on an app that’s used by so many people out there in the world.”
The biggest highlight for me is that I get to work on an app that’s used by so many people out there in the world. One of the coolest things for me was when I was talking to someone I just met and they mentioned that they had the app on their phone and they were a user.
Another highlight is being on a team of people who are extremely talented and devoted to the app and to our users, and who also happen to produce great work. It’s fun to go back and check out the work my co-workers have done — I always learn something new from them.
I love the culture here — the fact that Automattic is a company that is incredibly flexible, and trusts its employees to get their jobs done wherever and whenever we want. I didn’t realize how much I would appreciate being able to work where I want and when I want, but now, after having done it for a year, I absolutely love it. It’s so nice to be able to schedule work around my life, rather than the other way around.
A “typical” workday for me starts by checking Skype to see if anything urgent came up or needs to be addressed right away. We don’t really use email all that much at Automattic as we’re huge fans of internal blogs we call P2s, but I’ve set up my P2s to be delivered to my inbox to make it easier to keep track of what I’ve seen.
It’s so nice to be able to schedule work around my life, rather than the other way around.
After dealing with email I’ll usually check our GitHub repo for any interesting activity. Sometimes I’ll chime in on certain issues, re-arrange issues across milestones depending on where we are in a release, or review some code. After this I’ll usually start to tackle some of the open issues for the current release myself and do that for a few hours.
During the day different things will come up that will alter my routine. Sometimes it’s a co-worker wanting to chat about an issue, or user requests for help. Other times it’s our team chat getting really interesting.
I’d have to say our meetups. Every team at Automattic will have a few meetups a year where the team will fly out to a location picked by the team to work on projects together for the week. It’s always fun to me that people who haven’t seen each other in a few months can land in a foreign destination, pick up right where they’d left off, have a blast, and enjoy each other’s company — all while at the same time being productive.
To me, it’s always been cool that Automatticians look forward to interacting with their co-workers around the globe. Whenever I travel around to different cities I always like to look up other Automatticians nearby, and will try to meet up with them — it’s fun every time.
While millions turn their eyes to the Russian resort town for today’s opening ceremony, the Sochi Olympics have been on the minds of many for months — especially those competing for a spot on a national team. We’re thrilled that so many participating athletes have chosen to share their stories — from the grueling to the inspiring — on their WordPress.com blogs.
Sochi 2014 promises to be the most social-media friendly Olympics to date, with thousands of smartphone-wielding athletes tweeting and instagramming every triple-axle jump and half-pipe trick. Many have also been blogging about their experiences, charting their path from Olympic hopefuls to bonafide Olympians.
U.S Paralympic Monoskier Andrew Kurka is among many Olympians blogging their way to the games on WordPress.com.
Our blog-keeping Olympians include biathletes like Australian Alex Almoukov and American Susan Dunklee — check out Susan’s behind-the-scenes post on getting processed by the American delegation upon arrival in Sochi.
“Just like so many athletes, I have dreamed about the Olympics for more years than I’d like to admit. [...] To finally have met the requirements and be given the opportunity which very few receive means so much.”
– Callum Watson, cross-country skier, Team Australia
Irish cross-country skier Jan Rossiter has also kept his fans up to date. He’ll soon be competing against fellow bloggers (and cross-country skiers) Callum Watson and Phillip Bellingham from Australia, and Callum Smith from Team Great Britain.
Other sports are also represented by athlete-bloggers — from Canadian speed skater Alec Janssens to New Zealand alpine skier Adam Barwood. In fact, entire teams have made their home here, including the US speed skating team, and the entire delegation of Team Canada, a WordPress.com VIP partner.
No Olympic Games are ever about sports alone — especially not this year, when the run-up to Sochi has been beset by controversy. Russia’s vehemently anti-LGBT legislation from last year has dominated the debate, with critical voices weighing the best ways to respond.
Bloggers have written reasoned pleas to boycott the games, as well as counterarguments calling for protests during the games themselves.
“I, for one, look forward to seeing the USA Hockey Team standing on the medal platform wearing both Olympic Gold and rainbow ribbons.”
– The Sports Ethicist, philosopher Shawn E. Klein
Others sought to explain the political calculations behind these laws, while one (anonymous) blogger, a gay member of the US Olympic Team, writes about his conflicted feelings now that he’s traveling in a country where his sexual orientation can put him at risk.
As a writer on the Caucasus region makes clear, last year’s discriminatory laws are but one of the issues that threaten to cast a shadow over the games. In an informative post, this blogger lists a number of human rights and environmental concerns that should also worry the international community.
As a media-dominating juggernaut, the Olympic Games attract commentary from a dizzying variety of perspectives. From a critique of Sochi-inspired advertising to breaking news on a mesmerizing, mariachi-style ski suit, bloggers are leaving no snowflake unturned. Just in the final days leading to the opening ceremony, many have chimed in on #SochiProblems — the half-bizarre, half-comic infrastructure issues encountered by visiting journalists — as well as on the brewing backlash against these complaints.
Photo-journalist Nina Zietman catches Olympians in action in Sochi.
On the ground in Sochi, too, WordPress.com bloggers are reporting around the clock. Freelance journalist Nina Zietman sends regular dispatches accompanied by gorgeous photos of the various venues, while Rachel Oakes-Ash, the blogger behind Miss Snow It All, writes about topics as varied as the snowboard slopeside event and the Australian opening ceremony uniforms.
It’s going to be an eventful few weeks — winter-sports lovers will be glued to their screens (and their blogs) through March 16, when the Paralympics draw to a close. Be sure to follow the Sochi and Olympics topic pages for the latest posts (and don’t forget specific sports’ pages, too — luge, hockey, or figure skating, anyone?).
Citius, altius, fortius!
This week we have another roundup of five new themes now available on WordPress.com. Enjoy!
Moka and Gallery are premium upgrades, while Bushwick, Syntax, and McKinley are free. Check out each theme’s showcase by clicking on their screenshot above, or preview them on your blog from Appearance → Themes.
We’re really proud that so many great writers from all genres call WordPress.com home. Last week, we welcomed one more — Jenny Lawson, AKA The Bloggess, whose site just moved on to WordPress.com’s VIP service.
An incredibly popular blogger and now a New York Times bestselling author, Jenny’s blunt, incisive writing style and willingness to lay everything bare have made her a blogging favorite. Once the dust settled on her site’s relocation, she took a few minutes to chat blogging, traditional publishing, cats, and who she wants to be when she grows up.
I’ve always loved to write, in notebooks and on napkins and now in blogs and books. The great thing about blogs, though, is that you get immediate feedback — and that’s so fabulous when you’ve always felt like an outsider. I think blogging has given many of us voices that we never heard before.
Cats make up at least 98 percent of the internet, so I feel like I’m under-representing, but I’m still trying. Ferris Mewler and Hunter S. Thomcat are great muses, but most of my blog comes from awkward conversations with my very patient but easily frustrated husband. Or from awkward conversations I have with myself.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as an unimportant story, but some are told better than others.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as an unimportant story, but some are told better than others. I only publish about one-third of the stories I write, and even then I try to always cut my posts down by 50% because it makes me cut out all the fluff.
Blogging saved me. I struggle with a lot of mental illness and I finally decided that it was creating a false history to not talk about it. I was shocked by the outpouring of people who said “Me too. I thought I was the only one.”
And then something amazing happened. People started to get help because they saw how completely not alone they were. There are people alive today simply because of the community I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of. Knowing that I’m not alone and that I can reach out for help has been a literal life-saver.
I wrote a book twelve years ago about all the ways I’ve mortified myself. I wrote it because I have an awful memory and wanted to share all our terribly wonderful family stories.
I didn’t plan for anyone else to read it, but an agent discovered my blog and insisted that people would want to read my ridiculously irreverent tales. Turns out she was right. It debuted #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. Shocked the hell out of me. I assumed I was in some sort of a coma.
A ton of people found the book because of the blog, and now a ton of people have found the blog because of the book. It’s odd, but wonderful.
I have a rare gift for crashing websites, particularly my own. It’s a talent, really. I’ve been told that if I manage to crash VIP everyone gets ponies. It’s a no-lose situation.
Drugs, probably. I can’t not write. It’s what keeps me sane.
Thanks, Jenny!
WordPress.com VIP is also excited to welcome PostSecret and Thought Catalog to the VIP family — we’re proud to be able to power funny, insightful, thought-provoking sites like theirs and Jenny’s.
Last week, we shared a few facts and figures on your prolific posting tendencies and a bit about some of the posts that recently grabbed your attention. Let’s take a look at one comedienne who’s gone viral since then and some great reading material courtesy of WordPress.com bloggers.
Stand-up comic Raquel D’Apice‘s hilarious post, “A 10-Month-Old’s Letter to Santa,” just went viral. Listing all the things every 10-month-old baby truly wants for Christmas, it got picked up by The Huffington Post and Slate and has had over 4.7 million views in only eight days. The post has also been featured on Today.com, Babble, IBN Live, and Psychology Today.
“I would love a set of house keys. To eat, obviously. Only metal house keys will do. Please do not buy me plastic ones. I am not an idiot. I know that plastic house keys are not real keys.” — Item #3, “A Ten-Month-Old’s Letter To Santa.”
Oh, and Santa? The baby forgot to ask you for one more very important thing.
Speaking of acclaim, Daniel José Older‘s recent post, “Whitewashed TV isn’t Just Racist, It’s Boring!” from critical pop culture blog, The Nerds of Color, got published over at Salon.
Congratulations and hats off to author Day’s Lee, who launched her first young adult novel, Guitar Hero, recently at Babar Books in Point Claire, Québec.
Celebration is also on the table for author Russ Crandall, the blogger over at The Domestic Man. He’s got a great new cookbook, The Ancestral Table: Traditional Recipes for a Paleo Lifestyle, coming out on February 11th, 2014. (Be sure to mark your calendar and keep your eye on WordPress.com News for an interview with Russ closer to his book launch.) In the meantime, to whet your appetite for Russ’ cuisine, check out some of his recipes. We think the recipe for Honey and Citrus Glazed Ham, which was featured in People Magazine’s Holiday and Entertaining Issue, looks especially delicious!
We know you’re out there, making amazing things with your WordPress.com sites. Did you get a mention in the press? Got a book coming out? Let us know in the comments — we’d love to help share your accomplishments with the WordPress.com community.
Do you have aspirations of publishing a book or getting famous with your blog and need a bit of help and maybe even a gentle nudge? Check out The Daily Post for writing inspiration, tips and techniques on making blogging a habit, and how to nurture your audience and grow your traffic. You can even get some friendly moral support from the blogging community.
It’s easy to get a little frazzled in December — for many of us, it’s the perfect storm of holidays, family, travel, and work. Luckily, following the sage advice of some insightful WordPress.com bloggers can pave the way for a fun, relaxing Christmas.
Here, their top five tips:
DorkDaddy’s beautiful essay pinpoints the tension — for both parent and child — of a child teetering on the edge of belief in Santa.
So she looked to me, asking for permission… permission to let either her heart or her mind win out over the other. In so doing she was asking me to choose between encouraging her intellectual integrity and selling her snake oil. In that moment I had to decide.
Do I help her grow up, or hold desperately on to her fleeting childhood for one last moment?
What did he decide? You’ll have to read.
If you’ve got Elf on the Shelf and holiday decorating fatigue from too many long nights browsing Pinterest, Nicki Daniels feels your pain:
Here’s the moral to this sad holiday tale: make your own traditions. I’m an unconventional Mom with a crazy, wild kid. Something that’s mass produced and comes from a box is not going to make our season bright. I could have just as easily bought a two dollar rubber snake (Sadie loves snakes) and made up some sort of tale around him. Even better, we could do this in JULY when I don’t already have a long list to do.
If you love your elf, awesome. You are a better woman than I. It just seems like anytime I try to be the kind of mom I’m not (organized, cheerful, crafty) I lose out on being the Mom I am (awesome).
Chuckle at her tale of elf-woe, and join her in releasing yourself from the high expectations of creating a picture-perfect holiday tableau.
Sure, you could fight off the toy store crowds for the last Super Trendy Toy of the Year ™, or you could get your kids what they’ll really enjoy, like a cardboard box and some bubble wrap:
I want this laptop cord more than I have ever wanted anything. Please. I also want the power strip with the orange on/off button and the white label on the other cord (the one not connected to the laptop). I would be okay with just a bunch of electrical cords in general, but I would really love these specific ones that are located behind my mother’s desk next to the air-conditioner (whose cord I also want).
The Ugly Volvo deciphered her 10-month-old’s wish list and wrote up this helpful letter to Santa.
On Highly Irritable, Jeni has the ultimate (tongue-in-cheek) holiday survival guide.
Make your parties “BYOBAFAYNLUEICU”: Bring Your Own Booze and Food and You’re Not Leaving Until Everything is Cleaned Up. Enforce this. Take people’s coats, their keys, whatever items you can pillage from their pockets during hello hugs, and hide them under piles of crusty dishes and empty wine bottles. When guests help clean up the mess, they find their stuff! This is also a great way to keep guests entertained, and eliminates the need for additional party games.
To keep your sanity as the jingle bells get more insistent, just say no to caroling, home baking, fancy gift wrap, and lavish parties, and try her practical solutions instead.
When you need a break from creating beautiful holiday memories for others, treat yourself!
We’ll be starting with these luscious soft salted caramels from the master baker behind The Pink Rose Bakery.
At the very least, your fellow WordPress.com bloggers are here to provide inspiration and laughs! Take a few minutes to catch up with your favorite bloggers or find some new ones, and return to your gift wrapping recharged and refreshed.
If you’re interested in keeping up with what’s hot in the community — from popular reads to publishing news and interesting stories about fellow bloggers — subscribe to WordPress.com Weekend Reads, which we’ll deliver right to your inbox.
We’ve launched a number of updates, from visual enhancements to handy admin tools, to improve your overall WordPress.com experience. Here’s a rundown of what’s new:
A more visual experience: sleeker display and bigger theme screenshots.
In Appearance → Themes, you’ll find an enhanced theme preview and selection process — and a much more visual experience:
The updated widgets screen makes it even easier to select and manage your widgets.
Select a widget, then add it to your blog with one click.
In Appearance → Widgets, you’ll find nifty changes that make it easier to manage your widgets. We streamlined the widgets screen, which now emphasizes your sidebars/widget areas and activated widgets.
Now, you can select an available widget and choose which area of your blog you want it to appear — with just one click. The menu options that appear will depend on your current theme, so your widgets screen might look different from the examples above and on the left.
This click-to-add tool is especially handy if you’re on a touch or mobile device — or use a theme with multiple widget areas. And if you prefer, you can still use the drag-and-drop method to activate widgets, too.
A cleaned-up dashboard screen (with a pop of color from the Midnight scheme).
We’ve streamlined your dashboard screen and consolidated some features. Click on Dashboard and you’ll see changes, including:
Over the summer, we introduced a redesigned dashboard, featuring better contrast and the lovely and modern Open Sans, a free, open source typeface. We’ve made numerous tweaks to improve your behind-the-scenes experience, from redrawing the icons to making the design responsive and tailored for desktop computers, touch devices, and smartphones.
Last month, we also added options to personalize your dashboard with a splash of color: eight different palettes, including the classic default scheme. You’ll also find a light-grey one, which we designed for our users who are sensitive to light. If you haven’t already, pick your favorite in Users → Personal Settings.
For our self-hosted friends running WordPress.org, these changes will be available soon with the 3.8 release.
We’re constantly tinkering behind the scenes and making updates to make your dashboard experience the best it can be. If you have feedback or questions, chime in on the Forums. For support questions, contact Support.
Unfortunately, My Opera blogs are shutting down. Fear not — you’ll be able to export your content into a new or existing WordPress.com site. First, you’ll download an export file from My Opera, and then, you’ll import that file into your WordPress.com blog. Here’s how to do it, step by …
Do you regularly write about events that affect you, but find it hard to connect with interested readers? Have you wondered where to look for on-the-ground, personal stories on the topics that dominate the news? Today, we announce a new current events tag, WPrightnow, to help strong writers find new readers (and …
WordPress.com bloggers create some truly bespoke sites using our 200+ themes as a starting point — the possibilities are endless, especially if you’re willing to give CSS a try. What if you want something that’s more off-the-shelf, but still feels like you? Using a custom header and background — options that …
Working with our pals at Pocket — a service that lets you save articles, longreads, and other media like videos that you find on the web — we’re happy to announce you can easily save content on WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered self-hosted sites, which you can enjoy later on your computer or …
Do you use Google Chrome as your web browser? We’ve got a pretty nifty Chrome Extension for WordPress.com that allows you to post to your site with a click of a button, and follow other blogs without having to visit WordPress.com. We’re pleased to announce WP.com Chrome Extension version 1.3, …
WordPress.com is all about making your special day something to remember, and you’ll now find that there are a number of beautiful themes for sharing your wedding with friends, family or the world at large. Earlier this week we looked at some creative uses of these wedding themes, and today we’ll talk about why and how you might want to use the VideoPress upgrade, a wedding theme, and one or more of the various WordPress mobile apps to capture even more of your memories. We’ll be looking at weddings specifically, but you can apply a lot of the ideas here to your bar mitzvah, graduation ceremony, birthday party, Thanksgiving, or any other important event you’d like to remember.
The VideoPress upgrade gives you the capability to add beautiful, ad-free, HD video to your blog without ever leaving your dashboard or mobile app. Say good bye to uploading your video to one place before “embedding” it in WordPress, only to find that there are ads plastered all over it. With VideoPress, you can capture video right from your mobile, or upload it right from your desktop, and then share it instantly.
So what does this have to do with your wedding?
Sure you’ve hired a professional photographer, and the photos look great. But what if you had a way to capture everything going on at your wedding, from the perspective of the friends and family you care most about? With VideoPress, a beautiful wedding theme, and some mobile-toting guests, that’s exactly what you can have.
Think about all of the things you won’t see on your wedding day, because you’re nervous, busy getting ready, focused on the task of, you know, getting married, or otherwise occupied. This way you get to see everything, and know how the whole thing looked from your guests’ point of view.
You will need:
Simple, no? Let’s get started.
There are no limits to how many blogs you can have on WordPress.com, so why not start a new one just for your special day? If you’re logged in, head to the My Blogs tab from WordPress.com, and choose “Create a new blog” over on the left. If you’re new to WordPress.com, sign up and get stuck in.
There are no shortage of themes you can use to share your photos and videos, but if you want one tailor made for the job, take a look at:
You could also consider searching by Subjects > Theme on the WordPress.com Theme Showcase.
You’ll need the VideoPress upgrade to get up and running with video. You can grab that right from the Store menu in your dashboard, or by heading over to the WordPress.com Store. Once you have that activated, you’re good to go with the next step.
To let your guests post to your blog, you’ll want to invite them to participate on the new blog. You can do that from the Users > Invite New menu of your blog’s dashboard.
Now your guests have accepted their blog invitations, they’re ready to post video. To make that as easy as possible on the big day, point them in the direction of the WordPress mobile app that suits them. We have a bunch of different flavors, so most modern mobiles are covered. Ask them to play around with the app and find their way to the video capture/upload option in their given app.
That’s it. Unloose your army of smartphone-wielding Spielbergs on your big day, and watch as the videos come pouring in right from their phones. Or, erm, watch later when you’re back from your honeymoon. Because our mobile apps let people upload video instantly, all they need to do is capture footage as it happens, hit upload, and publish those memories. Drunk uncle dancing? Check. Blushing bridesmaids and nervous pageboys smiles? Check. Cake cutting from seven different angles? You got it. And the best thing is, seeing as the uploads are instantaneous, all of these priceless moments won’t end up languishing on their phones or camcorders for months or years to come.
Whether you’re sharing your big day with the world, or you have a private blog that only friends and family can see, you’ll now have a beautiful, unique collection of memories gathered together in one place, to revisit whenever the mood takes you. If your VideoPress upgrade subscription lapses at some point, all of your videos will stay up and running, because we’re not interested in holding your memories to ransom. And if you ever want to take them elsewhere, you can easily download your videos to your desktop and do what you like with them. Easy in, easy out.
If you’re looking for some more information on the different mobile apps, start here:
We’d love to hear about your ideas for how you could (plan to, or did) make creative use of WordPress to make your wedding or other memorable event even more awesome.
We’re continually blown away by the posts published on WordPress.com. Week after week, we discover content that’s original. Bold. Honest. The most notable posts make us stop and think.
Looking for something to read? Consider these recent posts:
Last night I got an email informing me, “you lost a follower.” That’s when I found out that Dawn Hochsprung followed me on Twitter; she followed only 70 people. I was shaken.
Many readers, from educators to parents, responded to Diane Ravitch’s post on the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. The professor, educator, and mother takes a moment here to reflect and encourage others to mourn. In the end, she writes: “We have a lot of thinking to do. I don’t have the answers. I just think it’s time to start asking the right questions.”
So I survived Round 1 of disclosure at work, but I know there are many more to come. I hope that as I slowly tell people who matter to me, they will see how much trust and vulnerability it signifies. For a perfectionist like me, it’s excruciating to reveal something so flawed behind the curtains.
At Disorderly Chickadee, “DeeDee” shares stories of her “secret life as a certifiable nutcase” and discusses topics of mental illness, ADD/ADHD, therapy, and medication management. We were struck by DeeDee’s voice and engaging storytelling in this post, in which she tells her work supervisor that she has bipolar disorder.
Dear America,
It feels strange to hear your voice praising teachers for their selflessness, dedication, and love for their students. We’re listening to what you’re saying, but we must admit that we are listening with tilted head and quizzical eye. Why? Because we’ve become accustomed to hearing a very different voice from you.
In this letter to America in response to the Newtown school shooting, English teacher Lisa describes the nation’s collective praise for teachers over the past week as “puzzling.” She writes: “We are the same people we were last Friday morning, doing the same job we’ve diligently done since choosing our career.” She states that the brave acts of the teachers at Sandy Hook were a “natural outpouring of what they were already practicing” — a dedication of their lives to children.
I suddenly realized something. December 12, 2012 is just like any other day. They all won’t ever happen again.
December 12, 2012. It’s a special date that we’ll never see on the calendar again! True, but isn’t every day unique? Each day that comes and goes is a day to do great things and to better ourselves, right? So why is it that people choose to be more loving on Valentine’s Day, more grateful on Thanksgiving, or more kind during the holidays? Kathryn asks: “Why can’t we just be kinder and more loving period?” We appreciate the simple and positive tone of this post, and think you will as well.
To read all of the latest editorial picks on WordPress.com, visit Freshly Pressed. You can also tweet links you love to us @freshly_pressed.
For more inspiration, check out our writing challenges, photo challenges, and other blogging tips at the Daily Post; visit our Recommended Blogs; and browse the most popular topics in the Reader. For editorial guidelines for Freshly Pressed, read: So You Want To Be Freshly Pressed.
This is great and quite interesting.
Another author using WordPress to get the word out about her book is at JessicaLevine.com and her Paris Blog, parisregained.com
We just had our 1st book release at easybaked.net. “Life is Sweet”. It’s available on our site or at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1593177518/ref=redir_mdp_mobile
Thanks for sharing these new books- so interesting to see what my fellow WP bloggers are up to!
I blog at lifepreserversblog.com and recently self-published “Never Tailgate on a Rainy.” This is a gift book of tips and advice for new drivers. It’s currently on sale on lulu.com — and soon to be available via amazon.com.
Lots of inspiration here. Thanks Cheri
Congratulations! I am a new author as well and blog at wordpress.com as Homeista Kelly. The book is a fun and practical model to have a better life. Each page is like chewing a piece of gum – refreshing and beneficial. Read an excerpt and buy at http://www.betterdaybetterlife.com. The blog is there too!
Hi everyone, I released my first novel, The WorldMight, a fantasy imbued with romance and mysticism a couple months back. I started a blog here on wordpress to showcase it and meet interesting peeps in the process. Check it out if you get the chance: http://cyrilbussiere.wordpress.com/
I enthusiastically had a plan for book.. but as for now will need to learn more to.come to that point.
Hi Cheri, although I have only been blogging for a year, I wrote ten books which I published independently on Amazon under a pen name. You can see them here:http://bit.ly/angel_e-books. I am thrilled to be part of the WordPress community of authors!
Hello! I recently published by book “Dear God: Passionate Prayers in 140 Characters or Less” and it is availabe in Paperbook and ebook on Amazon.com at http://amzn.to/1prxsuy. I blog at the wordpress site http://www.DearGodBook.com and started tweeting prayers in 2009 to encourage myself. I had no idea my words would encourage others. The book challenges some of the things that we have accepted as “truth” based on what we have been taught and examines the power of our words – prompting the reader to draw closer to God by having intimate conversations with Him.
Suggestion, Cheri: a post on WordPress bloggers who have had books published in the past (and missed out on getting mentions). A kind of retrospective that never was, you know ? :-\
If you were to read all the reviews of mine on my blog, not to go into the Comments, you’d possibly wonder how it did get missed … But then, I suppose it’s a matter of the right publicity; and I know for a fact that my publishers were fairly shabby in that area.
Hi Cheri, Just published my first book this month! The title is My Precious Life which is also the name of my website and WordPress blog site. The book is a memoir and is available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.uk, Barnes & Noble and other online book stores. It is the story of my life and faith from a toddler to a senior of seventy-seven years of age, and is getting good feedback from books sold so far. Thank you for a possible feature…that would be amazing! I just completed posting 100 blogs in 100 days and am now working on blog 105.
I am a WP author and have recently had the opportunity to build my very own writer’s retreat! I call it the Writer’s Nook. Check it out ;)
http://diannegray.wordpress.com/2014/04/29/writers-nook-complete/
Hi, I’ve been blogging for almost four years over at ocdtalk and have a book being published in January by Rowman & Littlefield called Overcoming OCD: A Journey to Recovery. Not only is the book the story of what helped and what hurt in my son’s amazing recovery from severe OCD, it also includes commentary throughout by Dr. Seth Gillihan, an expert in treating the disorder. For more info, and for links to Amazon and the publisher’s site, please check out this post: http://ocdtalk.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/overcoming-ocd-a-journey-to-recovery/ . The book is already available to preorder for those who are interested.
Thanks! Janet Singer
My first collection of poems and photographs, Separation Anxiety, is available in e-book form from Smashwords. I’m going the Espresso Book Machine for the print edition, which, after several delays, should be available within the next two or three weeks. In addition, I have a second collection (tentatively titled Journalism), in the works. Many of the poems included first appeared on my blog.
I have self-published two books and have written blogs. About both. What am I doing wrong? How can I make my blogs fancy like the blogs featured?
Let us know what specifically you’d like to add to your own blog (types of features, etc.) and we can offer some resources to get you started.
We try to highlight as many authors as possible, here on this blog, and elsewhere where we promote our writers and users. There are millions of you out there — we can’t really highlight everyone in one comprehensive list. But we’ll continue to look out for book releases and publishing stories to share here.