Automattic has just launched Jetpack, a new plugin which allows self-hosted WordPress users to enjoy several features previously available only to WordPress.com blogs.
Simply put, Jetpack is a vehicle to bring some of the best WordPress.com features to your self-hosted WordPress blog, and it’s launching today with Gravatar Hovercards, WordPress.com Stats, the Twitter widget, a wealth of cool shortcodes, Shortlinks, LaTeX markup, Sharedaddy, and After the Deadline.
Of course, these features are just the launch set. There are plenty more on the way, and all you need to do is watch for them to magically appear in your Jetpack panel.
Have you tried Jetpack yet? What do you think of it so far?
Disclaimer: I work for Automattic, Inc.
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger
WordPress.com has just launched their premium theme store, bringing premium theme developers and the first two of hopefully many premium themes to over 17 million WordPress.com blogs.
Previously, WordPress.com users were limited to just over a hundred free themes with no ability to upload their own, thus cutting them off from the premium theme market. Now, premium theme developers have a chance to cash in on “the other WordPress” users.
WordPress.com is starting their premium theme offerings with Headlines for $45 (available to self-hosted WordPress users for $70 with two “bonus” themes) and Shelf for $68 (also available to self-hosted WordPress users for $68). WordPress.com plans to increase their free and premium theme offerings “in a big way” this year, so this is definitely shaping up to be a game-changer in the premium theme market.
(Disclosure: I also work at Automattic.)
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
While it doesn’t happen often to the point where it’s in the news everyday, WordPress.com has removed a particular blog as it violated their terms of service. On December 30th, 2010 WordPress.com archived/suspended the site bootislam.wordpress.com for the posting of hateful material such as directions on how to properly shoot a Muslim, false bomb threats, and burning mosques. When The Council on American-Islamic Relations found out about the site they called on American Muslims and people of conscience to contact WordPress.com along with them to try and get the site removed. While the site is now offline, CAIR has also submitted the sites content to the FBI for further investigation.
I’m happy to see that no one has raised their voices to bring up the issue of freedom of speech because the Terms Of Service of WordPress.com specifically outlines what you can and can not do if you choose to […]
Original post by Jeff Chandler
Technorati Tags: blog, news
The talented team behind WordPress.com has launched a major update to their built-in contact forms.
The old built-in contact form system was in need of a major overhaul, and that’s exactly what it got in this update. The new forms are not just contact forms, but fully customizable forms with the ability to add or remove fields, select from a variety of field types, and mark specific fields as required.
The team also added a new “Feedbacks” section to the Dashboard, which is basically similar to the Comment management section, but specifically for managing the data collected by your new forms. As with comments, all form data is passed through Akismet to keep the spam bots from abusing your forms.
Of course, the new custom form system isn’t just for WordPress.com users. Users with self-hosted/installed WordPress blogs can enjoy the new system by installing and activating the Grunion Contact Form plugin.
Have you had […]
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
The talented folks at WordPress.com have just launched their official Theme Showcase!
Previously, the only way to browse through the over a hundred available themes at WordPress.com was to open a free blog and start looking through the Appearance section of the Dashboard. Now, current users and potential users are treated to an in-depth theme showcase featuring large screenshots, specifications, recommended uses, and examples of other WordPress.com blogs pushing the limits of the themes.
Though the showcase is specific to WordPress.com, most of the listed themes can be found for self-hosted WordPress blogs in the official Theme Directory.
What do you think of the new Theme Showcase?
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
Pingdom, a popular website monitoring service, performed a two month experiment to find the most reliable blogging services.
From October 15th to December 15th, Pingdom ran a variety of checks every minute from multiple locations around the world on the homepage and four individual blogs from each blogging service.
In the end, WordPress.com came out as #2, just behind Blogger, which should be the expected winner since it’s backed by the entire Google network.
Technorati Tags: blog, news
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, blogger, blogging, news, google
It has only been two months since Microsoft announced their intention to shut down their popular Windows Live Spaces blogging platform and offered an easy migration route to WordPress.com. Since then, WordPress.com has seen a marked increase in signups, and not all of them are coming from Windows Live Spaces.
Before the Windows Live Spaces migration was announced, WordPress.com held steady at about 400,000 signups per month. This number has now more than doubled to about 900,000 per month. With such a steep increase in signups and several new features, WordPress.com is on track to end the year with a bang.
Upgrading from Windows Live Spaces is a simple four-step process. Of course, this is a rather large-scale migration, and there have been plenty of questions along the way. Some of the more frequently asked questions have been answered in this support document, and a few were covered in more detail in […]
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
WordPress.com users are limited to about a hundred styles and no way to modify them except a few simple options, a variety of widgets, and the Custom CSS upgrade.
Those of you with WordPress theme design and modification experience may find the lack of being able to edit the template files to be quite limiting, but nothing could be further from the truth.
If you’re a WordPress.com user seeking to produce your own unique design, look no further than this collection for some of the best Custom CSS blogs on WordPress.com.
Some of the blogs in this collection used the Sandbox theme (practically a blank slate) to build their unique design using nothing but their own CSS, but some have used their Custom CSS upgrade to build extensively on top of existing fully designed themes.
Do you use custom CSS on your WordPress.com blog? If so, we’d love to see it!
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
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Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog, blogging
The WordPress.com theme team will be retiring the sorely out of date PressRow theme in favor of the new Pilcrow theme.
The new Pilcrow theme is incredibly similar in style to PressRow, but supports all WordPress 3 feature, like custom menus and featured images, and boasts six layout configurations and four color schemes.
Those of you who use Custom CSS along with the PressRow theme, may be interested in this very short list of CSS differences in Pilcrow.
PressRow will be officially phased out next week, but Pilcrow is available in the Appearance section of your WordPress.com blog’s Dashboard if you’d like to switch to it or try it out before that happens. Pilcrow will soon be available to self-hosted WordPress users via the official theme directory.
Are you a PressRow user? What do you think of the new Pilcrow theme?
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
Now you can try some of the latest and greatest WordPress 3.1 features without having to upgrade your own blog to the alpha release. All you need is a free blog from WordPress.com.
The WordPress.com team has just merged all of WordPress.com with the 3.1 branch. Not only will WordPress.com users have access to new features like internal linking, improved Dashboard pagination, and Dashboard column sorting, but the WordPress 3.1 branch has just gained well over a million beta testers!
If you can’t wait to try WordPress 3.1, get a free WordPress.com blog today and don’t be afraid to contact the Happiness Engineers if you find any bugs.
Do you have a blog on WordPress.com? What do you think of the new features?
Technorati Tags: blog
Original post by James Huff
Technorati Tags: blog
