Who doesn’t love “Before and After” home improvement shots? It’s always amazing to see how just a couple of changes, like a coat of paint or a quick do-it-yourself project, can transform a living space dramatically. It’s no different when it comes to WordPress.com blog themes, in which a little customization can g

An ode to a father, a story of growing up with two mothers, a request for a cloak of visibility, and a reflection on goodbyes. Here are four Freshly Pressed standouts from this week — all quite personal pieces that have resonated with many readers. Go ahead and dive in: Why I Don’t Diet — […]

Happy Theme Thursday! Sharing and managing your work online should be easy, and today I’m thrilled to announce a new theme from our friends at The Theme Foundry that helps you do just that! Snap is a responsive, lightweight, and minimalist theme that makes it easy to feature your projects. Snap’s clean grid based bl

Since the dawn of time, humankind has yearned for control. While we can’t give you more control over most of your life, we can give you more control over your widgets. And today, with the new widget visibility tool, you can configure your widgets to be shown or hidden only on certain pages. Widgets are […]

All kinds of organizations make their home on WordPress.com: small businesses, municipalities, religious organizations, schools, community groups. We also provide an online HQ for quite a few non-profits, from the global to the hyperlocal. They turn to WordPress.com for an easy-to-use, low cost solution that gets them an e

Every few weeks, we’re sitting down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to 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. Philip Arthur Moore: Theme Broker, global nomad, and [&#

In some parts around the world, this Sunday is dedicated to the mothers out there. For Mother’s Day, we’ve rounded up sites on motherhood, parenting, and family. On WordPress.com, you’ll discover mothers on all paths: new moms, stay-at-home-moms, single moms, mothers who are full-time writers, and more. (E

This week’s three selections address some of our favorite topics: reading and writing. If you’re looking for inspiring and thought-provoking posts, you’re in luck. From the hunger that develops when a reader can’t find the time to read, to the power of the dictionary and your own memories, we’v

Theme Thursday is here, and I’m excited to announce the three fantastic new themes we’ve wrangled for you this week. Handmade is a beautiful retro-styled blogging theme for foodies and crafters, designed with love by the folks at Obox Themes. Focusing on an amazing attention to detail and gorgeous typography, ev

If you’ve ever had a question about WordPress.com, chances are you’ve visited our Community Support Forums. Forums are a great place to search for solutions and get answers. While our Happiness Engineers help out in these forums, WordPress.com enthusiasts — people who are passionate about WordPress.com and

Customizing your blog’s theme is one way to show off what makes you you. Young adult novelist Nova Ren Suma does a beautiful job of this at distraction no. 99, using both free and premium options to make Sight her own. (Once inspired, you can get busy customizing your own blog!) To start, here are [...]

This week’s three posts all explore a similar topic — being comfortable in one’s own body — yet diverge on that theme in markedly different ways. Bikini Body This, friends, is a cultural phenomenon that confounds me. In Los Angeles specifically, and the whole of America more generally, we are confronted again an

Happy Theme Thursday, all! Today I have two fantastic new themes for you to enjoy. First up is Newsworthy by WP Themes, a brightly-hued theme designed for news, magazine, and personal blogs. Its striking colors are sure to grab your readers’ attention at first glance! Newsworthy supports multiple authors, post formats

There are just a few hours left in NaPoWriMo 2013 — that is, National Poetry Writing Month, which asks participants to write a poem every day in April — and hundreds of resident WordPress poets are pressing “Publish” on their final stanzas and sighing with relief and satisfaction. We’ve loved r

Imagine this: you have access to the diaries of your mother or father: Windows into your family’s past. Snapshots of moments of history. What would this process be like? To sift through documents, to piece together a life — and, ultimately, your own family history? Susan Morrison, the blogger and author at Home

Last month Cheri took a look at longform writing on WordPress.com, and how tagging your over–1000-word posts WPLongform can help fellow bloggers, readers, and the editors of Freshly Pressed to discover longer, more in-depth material in the WordPress.com Reader. Since then you’ve shared a huge variety of work under the

Greetings and Salutations! Another Thursday has arrived and you know what that means … more themes! The theme machine here at WordPress.com has been cranking out few fresh, new designs that I am happy to present to you. Flora & Fauna is a colorful, illustrated premium theme designed by Aline Yamada. It’s per

If you’re a WordPress aficionado you’ll know why one of the most eagerly awaited announcements each year is the arrival of a new default theme. Wait no longer, friends. I’m thrilled to introduce the newest addition, Twenty Thirteen. This gorgeous theme is colorful, opinionated, and ready to give your blog

Think you need to be a graphic designer or buy a bunch of upgrades to make a sweet-looking, custom blog? Think again: Prada for Breakfast stands out from the other 214,699 blogs using the Forever theme with creative use of text and simple tweaks that are accessible to any blogger: Forever was originally designed as a [...]

Today, we celebrate Earth Day. Perhaps you’re marking the occasion by attending a volunteer clean-up event in your neighborhood, talking with your children about recycling, or choosing to bike to work, all in the name of environmental stewardship. Here in the WordPress community, we’re lucky to have bloggers cov

If you want to promote your hotel, inn, or bed & breakfast with a stylish and functional website that looks and works great on mobile devices, look no further than WordPress.com/hotels. An online property for your property You’ve worked hard to create a comfortable home-away-from-home for your guests, and now, we

WordPressers, day in and day out, you entertain us, you make us think, you make us laugh, and you make us grateful to be exposed to so many voices all over the world. It’s a pleasure to read what you’re writing. Like everyone in the community, we value that feeling of connection that comes from [...]

Though nothing stays still for long with WordPress, the design of your blog’s dashboard hasn’t changed much lately. While we’ve added new features and made some adjustments along the way, the dashboard has been looking forward to a refresh for some time. With that in mind, seven weeks ago, a scrappy gang o

It’s Threeme Day! I’m proud to present three new awesome themes! Meet Bon Vivant. Bon Vivant is a quirky restaurant-oriented theme designed by Denise Chandler. With a unique custom header information area, food menus support, Open Table registration widget, and a prominent space for your business’ phone number

We’re constantly working on updates to our mobile apps to make your WordPress.com experience on the go the best it can be. Today, we’ve jubilantly released version 2.3 of WordPress for Android to Google Play. After updating, you’ll see right away that this release includes very exciting updates to the user int

The dates are set, the call for speakers is open, and the website is up: WordCamp San Francisco returns this July 26-27 (with Contribute Day — formerly known as “Hack Day” — on the 28th)! WordCamp San Francisco was the first-ever WordCamp and is the official, annual WordPress conference. It’s a gr

Happy Theme Thursday! It’s spring in some parts of the world, which for many means tidying and redecorating their homes. Today we have a new free theme to help you do the same for your blog! Truly Minimal, designed by FlareThemes, lives up to its name for its clean typography and elegant simplicity. The theme [...]

At WordPress.com, we’ve launched a collection of improvements to smooth your editorial workflow, and save you time writing posts and organizing your content. Here’s what’s new: Improved Menus let you organize content more easily. Post Locking prevents accidental changes in a multi-author environment. Revis

If you’re an author or an independent publisher, check out our new Send to Readmill widget, which makes it easy to get your prose into your readers’ iPads and iPhones. Readmill is an ebook reader that not only offers a clean, elegant reading experience, it allows you to highlight and share passages with others a

Every few weeks, we’re sitting down with an Automattician to help you get to know the people who work behind the scenes to 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 Ms. Sara Rosso, the ultimate WordPress fan, and Worl