It’s now much easier for you and your commenters to keep track of the conversations you’re involved in across WordPress.com. Some recent tests have shown that by subscribing commenters to new comments by default, they are more likely to stay engaged and come back and comment more on your blog. With that knowledg

We’ve added a user showcase where you can view stunning customizations made by people just like you. From complete redesigns with CSS to adding pizzazz with Custom Fonts to clever use of options like background and header, this showcase will spark your imagination and inspire creativity. Discover details about what each s

Spring is in the air. With the weather warming up, now is a great time to get started on a photo blog. Creating a photo blog is a wonderful introduction to blogging on WordPress.com or an opportunity to refresh your current site. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a new blog right [...]

Happy Thursday! We’ve added some exciting new themes to our ever-growing collection, and we’re happy to tell you all about them. First out of the oven is…Just Desserts. Yep, that’s a theme! Designed by Andy Rutledge, Just Desserts is a deliciously stylish premium theme that’s perfect for blogs cent

Are you curious to see how your friends are using WordPress? Give the new and improved Friend Finder a try to connect with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google contacts who have WordPress sites! After authorizing WordPress.com to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to find your friends (don’t worry — non

In our quest to help you find the perfect look for your blog, we’ve added two brand new themes to our collection! First up is Everyday, a beautifully designed premium theme by James Goode. Everyday has been precisely calibrated to be pleasurably readable on almost any screen. Attention and care has especially been giv

Back in 2010 we introduced the exciting new ability to Like the individual posts you’ve read all around WordPress.com. It’s been one of our most popular features since then, as evidenced by the chart below that goes up-and-to-the-right as an indication of great success and achievement. Today I’m happy to

This Sunday, April 22nd will mark the 42nd observance of Earth Day. According to Earth Day Network, “More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.” To inspire you to get in on this year’s celebration, here are eight amazin

We’re happy to announce three new things that you can embed into your site! Spotify Embed music from Spotify by right-clicking any song, album, or artist in Spotify and selecting “Copy HTTP Link” or “Copy Spotify URI”: Then paste that into your post editor, making sure that it’s located o

This is a guest post by Kristina Chang, Evan Moore, Tony Xu, and Omer Rabin; students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “What makes a blog popular? What drives page views?” These are the questions that we’ve been trying to answer over the last few weeks. We were on a mission to dig into the [...]

We are happy to announce our new REST Application Programming Interface (API) that lets developers explore, interact, and create great new content with the vast community of sites on the WordPress.com network and, in the near future, Jetpack-enabled sites. The API gives developers access to posts and comments, as well as th

People blog for different reasons, but many post with hopes of seeing feedback from readers. Here at WordPress.com we’ve studied why some posts and blogs get more comments than others, and want to share our advice with you. You need visitors before you’ll get comments. You won’t get comments until people v

It wasn’t just a one-time event! The Automattic Worldwide WP 5k is back again in 2012! Set your timers for April 29th! At Automattic we work from all over the world, and we use internal blogs for socializing and exchanging non-work ideas in addition to making WordPress.com and our other products more awesome. One o

Heads up, Custom Design users! The Custom CSS feature on WordPress.com now supports all of the new features of CSS3. This means that you can use gradients, animation, multiple backgrounds, @media queries, and many more new features in your custom CSS. If you want to make your images pop and tilt, give your post titles [...]

We have three awesome new themes for you today that I think you’ll love. A news-oriented magazine theme, a theme for just about everybody, and a food-oriented theme. Here they are! Mimbo Pro is a sharp-looking, premium magazine theme from Pro Theme Design. It takes your content and formats it in a structured way group

 We know many of you love your blogs, and gleefully publish photos and posts without thoughts to reuse your work in other forms. But we know some wonder: could this be a book? Recently we wrote about how a WordPress.com blogger scored a book deal for You Are Not So Smart. But what if you [...]

Another beautiful theme worthy of the red carpet has been added to our ever-expanding cast of premium upgrades. Designed by Jason Schuller of Press75, On Demand was created to bring videos front and center. Adding them into posts is a snap, and you’re free to use virtually any embeddable video format from any video se

As more and more of you take advantage of our fabulous Upgrades, we’ve been conscious of the increasing need to offer a great way to manage your purchases. What if you could track all of your upgrades, manage them, renew them and *gasp* even cancel them, all in one place? Well, starting today you’ll see [...]

Today I’m happy to announce two great new additions to our collection of premium themes. First, we have Standard, a sleek, exacting theme designed by 8BIT for professional blogging with an emphasis on contextual display of your content. Your content, in each of its various forms, deserves to be presented with unique d

Once in a while, it’s important to stop, catch your breath, and look at your accomplishments before you move on to the next thing — to put a stake in the ground that says, “I made it this far!” Today, we’re rolling out a couple of notifications to help you celebrate your blog activity milestone

Today, I’m excited to introduce the latest additions to our ever-growing collection of free themes. First up is Ari—a responsive and minimal blog theme designed by Elmastudio. This theme is beautiful out of the box but it’s also packed with cool features including two color schemes, three custom color opti

After moving from New York City to Chicago and getting married, Rachel Bertsche realized that her new life was missing one crucially important thing: a local best friend. So she decided to go on one friend date every week for a year, and she documented her quest on a WordPress.com blog at MWFseekingBFF.com. But before [...]

It’s been just over two years since we first launched our Posterous importer and I never could have predicted how the blogging space would evolve so quickly in that time. As you may have seen in the news today, the Posterous team is joining Twitter, which we know will be exciting for our friends at [...]

If you’ve ever wondered where on Earth all the visitors to your site are coming from, this feature is for you! Mosey on over to your My Stats tab on the WordPress.com homepage: …and check out the brand new “Views by Country” panel. Now, you can see at a glance exactly which countries comprise your

Today we’ve got two great new free themes for you: Sunspot and Triton Lite. Inspiration for Sunspot came from one of our older and beloved classics, Sunburn (and perhaps a bit from the recent solar storms). A sharp theme with subtle grid lines and sun-splashed accents, Sunspot is a great all-purpose canvas for your bl

The process of publishing new posts just got simplified big time. Starting today, any time you’re logged in to WordPress.com, you can create and publish new posts without the leaving the page you’re on. So instead of having to visit your blog’s dashboard each time you want to publish a post, now you can st

I’m excited to introduce a brand new free video theme brought to you by the team here at Automattic. Despite its minimalist design, Sundance was crafted with clean, elegant typography and close attention to detail. The home page offers a featured video carousel where you can highlight a maximum of ten posts that are a

For nearly thirty years, ArLynn Presser avoided leaving her neighborhood in Winnetka, Illinois, as she would experience debilitating anxiety and panic attacks when visiting public places and interacting with people outside her home. But once she turned fifty, the romance writer decided that she was tired of living in isolat

I’m pleased to announce the latest addition to the ever-growing collection of free themes here at WordPress.com. Retro-fitted by Justin Tadlock mixes subtle textures with clean lines and shadows to create a beautifully balanced composition perfect for all types of blogs. Retro-fitted can be personalized in a variety o

A few months ago we added Notifications to the WordPress.com Toolbar and recently we released a Chrome extension so that you can always keep up with the activity on your blog. Today we’re adding comment notifications, complete with comment moderation and reply functionality.  When your post receives a c