Exploring Your Dashboard: Four of Our Favorite Tools

A few months ago, we launched a spandy-new post editor, updates to the WordPress.com Reader, and a WordPress.com desktop app. They’re all designed to make publishing and managing your sites easier, from more effective auto-saving to quicker creation of image galleries.

Have you discovered everything the new and improved WordPress.com can do? Here are four of our favorite tricks.

Preview your site on any device, right from your editor

As more people access our blogs from phones and tablets, it’s increasingly important to make sure yours looks good no matter how large (or small!) the screen. You can buy a dozen devices to test how your site looks, bug your friends to check your blog on their phones — or preview your site on different screen sizes from right in the post or page editor.

When you click “Preview” in the editor, you’ll see a few icons across the top of the preview pane:

Click the three highlighted icons, and you’ll be able to see the post (or page) on three different screen sizes: computer screen, tablet, and smartphone. Be confident that your words and images appear just as you intend, no matter the device.

Copy and paste for quick hyperlinks

Links are the lifeblood of the internet; they help us navigate within websites and discover new ones. There was already an easy way to create hyperlinked words (like this) with the “create link” button, but now you don’t need a button at all: just copy and paste.

Copy the URL you want to link to to your computer’s clipboard, then head into your post or page editor. Highlight the text you want to make clickable, and paste the URL directly over the highlighted text, as if you want to replace it. That’s it!

The highlighted text will be underlined and blue to let you know it’s a hyperlink. To change a link, move your cursor over the link and click the pencil icon; you’ll be able to edit the URL, and set the link to open in a new window. To remove the link, click the X. (And don’t worry: you can still use the link button if you’re more comfortable with that.)

Everyone loves a list

If you’re like me, you read a lot of blogs — and keeping them organized can sometimes be a challenge. Enter Reader lists, a way to group the blogs you follow. Only want to check out new posts from your favorite food blogs, or political analysts? Want to share all your favorite DIY sites with friends? Make lists!

Head to your Reader. In the left-hand column, click the down-arrow next to Lists and then click Add to open the list tools. Add a title and description; lists are public, so a description helps others understand what they’ll find. To add blogs to the list, paste in the URL of a blog you want to include and click Add (and this can be any site, not just WordPress.com blogs). Here’s a list we made with some of our favorite sketchers and illustrators:

(Love art or sketching? Follow the list!)

To share a list, copy its URL from your browser’s address bar. Paste it into a post, page ,or comment so your readers can follow along.

All your posts and pages, from any site

If you’ve got more than one blog on WordPress.com (or self-hosted sites that use the Jetpack plugin), you can manage posts and pages from across all of them from your WordPress.com dashboard.

Log in to WordPress.com and head up to My Sites in the upper left. Click on “Switch sites,” and then “All My Sites.” Once you do, you’ll be able to select Blog Posts or Pages to see every post and page you’ve created across all your sites:

Use the toggles at the top of the page to filter all your posts and pages — only look at drafts, see everything in your trash cans, or search for particular terms.

We use all four of these nifty features every day while working on Discover, The Daily Post, Longreads, and more.

Do you have a favorite dashboard trick?

Filed under: Better Blogging, Dashboard, New Features, WordPress.com

Get More Readers to Your Business Blog

Blogging is a great way to communicate with your customers and reach new ones. Business owner Phoebe Clare blogs at Sage and Clare, where she documents her exotic trips scouting merchandise for her online home decor store she runs with Jemma Sage. Learn how Phoebe uses her blog to share inspiration for her curated marketplace while generating visits to the Sage and Clare eCommerce website.

Write meaningful content

One of Sage and Clare’s most popular posts was a commentary on a New York Times piece about Loulou Van Damme, a designer with a beautiful home in the hills of India. It spoke to the blog’s design-savvy audience and showcased products similar to the Sage and Clare inventory.

Regardless of your industry, choose topics that offer value or entertainment to your readers. Share how-tos, industry insights, and thoughtful posts. Don’t underestimate the importance of writing an enticing post title that will draw in your reader. On Facebook and Twitter, your post title is front and center, so it’s worth refining.

Optimize your blog post

Did you know other WordPress.com users can discover your content through the WordPress.com Reader? Tagging your blog post with descriptive and on-topic tags will help new readers find your blog.

Phoebe Clare uses categories and a handful of well-chosen tags to organize her posts and help readers find Sage and Clare’s content. Be selective when you assign tags and categories to posts. Five to 15 tags (or a combination of five to 15 tags and categories) is optimum.

Promote your posts

WordPress.com has built-in features designed for easy sharing. Just like Sage and Clare, you can use Publicize to connect your WordPress.com blog to your social media accounts. Next time you press publish, your post will automatically be shared through the Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts you connected.

Make it easy for any visitor to share a link to your post on their social networks, their blog, or through email by adding Sharing buttons to the end of your posts.

BONUS: Help Google find you!

Do you know about the Google Search Console? If your business has a niche, you can tell the Google Search Console to help you position your site to be even more successful in search rankings. We’ll show you how!

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Your online presence begins with your website. Make it count by choosing the best of WordPress.com.

Consider upgrading to WordPress.com Premium or Business to unlock features like advanced customization, more space for your photos and videos, and stellar customer support.

Our Premium and Business plans also include a custom domain and access to premium themes.

Filed under: Better Blogging, Tags

Automattic at CMS Africa Summit

Automatticians, the people behind WordPress.com, can be found in just about every corner of the globe, but it’s not every day that we have the singular opportunity to promote open source software and meet some of the amazing communities that help build it in Africa.

Next week, several of our team members will be speaking at the CMS Africa Summit, to be held in Kampala, Uganda, April 1-2, 2016. The conference, sponsored in part by Automattic, will feature workshops and panels on topics ranging from open source software to marketing and social media. Event attendees represent a broad swath of Africa’s fast-growing tech community and include entrepreneurs and marketers, programmers and designers, consultants and students.

Developers of all ages and backgrounds can also test their mettle by participating in a 48-hour Hackathon during the conference. Contributors will be tasked with developing an app that will leverage the power of open source technology and open health data to solve some of the most intractable problems their communities face.

If you’re interested in attending and are in Uganda or plan to be in the area next week, click here to register. You can also learn more by checking out the conference’s Facebook profile and Twitter feed.

We’re thrilled to be a part of this exciting event and hope to meet some new friends within the open source community in Africa!

Filed under: Community, Events, International

Five Engaging Longreads Stories You Might Have Missed

Longreads has been connecting readers with quality stories since 2009, and since joining Automattic in 2014, we’ve published more than 100 pieces of original reporting, essays, and book excerpts from talented writers and reporters from across the globe. Here are five.

“Violet,” by Adele Oliveira

Violet was born at 25 weeks and five days—more than three months ahead of her due date. This is a story about becoming parents in the face of uncertainty.

I didn’t think I could handle the loss. But when I saw my daughter’s tiny red body under saran wrap on a tilted, flat bed, a thousand cords and wires attached to her chest, her eyes not yet open, and a ventilator breathing for her, I was not surprised to find that I loved her right away. I knew I’d never love anyone more, and I knew I’d always miss her if she died.

“The Fullness of a Moment,” by Jaime Green

Half a century ago, the Hall of New York State Environment in the American Museum of Natural History was not only the future of museum design, but also, one man hoped, the future of democracy itself.

Many things here are lovely or sweet, but almost nothing is beautiful. Nothing beautiful, nothing big, nothing cool. And nothing new. In a museum that otherwise shows visitors the most awe-inspiring science in the most modern and attention-grabbing ways, here is science of the most ordinary things in the world, the science of your humble backyard. Yet it is in the company of blue whales and cosmic wonders, this homeliest and homiest of halls.

“The Freelancers’ Roundtable,” by Eva Holland

A conversation between veteran freelancers Eva Holland, Josh Dean, Jason Fagone, and May Jeong about pitching stories, negotiating contracts, and breaking into a tough industry.

Josh Dean: I think we’re probably all going to agree that finding ideas is the single hardest thing about this job. It’s surely the single hardest thing about any kind of writing, at least once you get some experience and have built enough of a reputation to get past the gatekeepers. I can imagine that if there were a very young and new writer in this group, he or she would say that getting attention, getting ideas looked at, is the hard part.

“The Queen of the Night,” by Alexander Chee

The first chapter from Alexander Chee’s much-anticipated second novel.

When it began, it began as an opera would begin, in a palace, at a ball, in an encounter with a stranger who, you discover, has your fate in his hands. He is perhaps a demon or a god in disguise, of­fering you a chance at either the fulfillment of a dream or a trap for the soul. A comic element—the soprano arrives in the wrong dress—and it decides her fate.

“Rebel Virgins and Desert Mothers,” by Alex Mar

In partnership with Atlas Obscura, we produced this story about the radical women of early Christianity.

Many of the female leaders of Christianity—in the Catholic Church in particular, with its 1.25 billion followers around the world—are barred from being fully ordained and are closely overseen by men. But this was not always the case. Scores of early Christian women—like Marcella, the desert-dwelling Susan, or the scholars Melania and Paula—embraced radical lives, helping the young religion fan out across the Roman Empire and beyond.

Each of these stories were made possible by readers like you who’ve become Longreads members to fund stories by outstanding writers and publishers. Visit Longreads to read more engaging stories hand-picked by our team.

Filed under: Reading

A Faster Mobile Web for All WordPress.com Users: AMP Is Here

Your sites are about to get even faster on mobile devices: starting today, WordPress.com sites support Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) – a new initiative spearheaded by Google to dramatically improve the speed of your pages loading on phones and tablets.

The best part? WordPress.com users don’t need to do a thing. AMP works automatically, loading a lightning-fast version of your posts. This means readers will get your content even faster on mobile when they come to your site from Google search, or news apps like Nuzzel.

To see AMP in action on WordPress.com, check out this article, or see a Google search demo at g.co/amp.

Speed matters on the web. AMP is an open-source framework that allows browsers and apps to load your sites quickly on mobile devices. See the AMP site for more details on how it works. We’re proud to be a partner in this initiative.

And if you have a self-hosted WordPress site, we’ve got you covered too. Here’s a free AMP plugin – click here to install it.

Expect to see more apps and sites embracing AMP in the weeks and months to come – and as a WordPress.com publisher, you’re ready right now.

Filed under: Admin Bar, Features, Mobile, New Features, WordPress, WordPress.com

Perspectives on Going Viral

You wake up one morning, check your phone, and spit out your coffee. You have thousands of likes on Facebook, hundreds of retweets, and an inbox that has exploded. Your little blog — which normally gets a dozen views per day and has an audience of exactly two, your spouse and mother — has been shared all over the internet, and that post you wrote last night, in your pajamas, has gone viral.

Going viral is different for everyone, but it can be a strange blend of exciting and terrifying — and very emotional, as writer Sam Dylan Finch described in his recent interview. Here, four bloggers on WordPress.com share their experiences.

Gretchen Kelly, Drifting Through My Open Mind

Last November, Gretchen Kelly published “The Thing All Women Do That You Don’t Know About,” in which she described all the tactics women employ to move safely through a world of sexism and harassment. Nearly two thousand comments and more than two million views later, the post continues to generate a lot of activity.

Can you pinpoint the spark that set it all off?

Twitter is where my post first started to get some traction. I knew something was going on when I started seeing retweets and comments from non-bloggers. Soon, my Twitter notifications were going crazy. People started asking to publish it in different languages, and the Huffington Post and Upworthy contacted me. It was circulating on Facebook, too, but I wasn’t as aware of that. I think it was shared initially because it resonated with so many women. Then, it was shared by people who were angered by it. There’s definitely a sweet and salty feel to going viral.

What is one thing you learned from the experience?

I don’t know if anything can prepare you for the turbulence of going viral. I learned that I’m not as thick-skinned as I’d like to think. I received so many positive, touching messages from both men and women. But the negative, hateful comments? Those were tough to take. At times I let them get to me and affect my mood. Eventually, I had to turn off notifications on my phone and take a break from it all.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

I don’t think I would do anything differently. I almost scrapped the post right before publishing it. I was filled with doubt, worried that no one would get what I was trying to say. But I published it and hoped for the best. I try not to question or overanalyze anything when it comes to my writing or blogging. It’s a struggle because I think generally, writers are an over thinking, self-doubting bunch. But I also know that overthinking can be the death of creativity. I try hard to just go with it and let things happen. So, no. I wouldn’t change a thing.

Has blogging been a challenge since this viral post?

My desire to blog hasn’t waned. What was a challenge was deciding what to write next. I am not a niche blogger, and I don’t want to be pigeonholed. I sometimes write about feminism, but I also write about grief, about my life, about love. Would I lose new followers or let them down? Would people pick it apart like some did with the viral post? Eventually, I just wrote what was on my mind at the time. I’m still working on that not-overthinking thing!

Matthew Fray, Must Be This Tall to Ride

Last month, Matthew published “She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes by the Sink.” Before he knew it, the post had gone viral — no promotion needed on his part. Since then, he’s been experiencing the aftermath of the experience, which he reflected on in “Of Course It Was About More Than Dirty Dishes.”

Can you pinpoint the spark that set it all off?

Kind of. I work in digital marketing, so checking web traffic and content performance is part of what I do. I published the post on January 14th. It was viewed 263 times that day.

This is how the post performed afterward:

Views are slowly returning to whatever my blog’s new normal will be.

It was nothing more than some readers sharing it on Facebook, then their friends sharing it on Facebook, and then their friends doing the same.

What is one thing you learned from the experience?

I learned that blogging CAN make a tangible difference in people’s lives. A silly post about a dish by the sink — the deeper meaning was sadly lost on many readers — sparked countless conversations about marriage online and among couples. Some people said their relationships will never be the same. In a good way.

One thing I learned about myself is that everyone will not like or agree with me, and I need to be able to live with that. I didn’t like having so many people who didn’t know me make judgments about my marriage and my beliefs based on one post that most didn’t seem to read all the way nor understand. Moving forward, thicker skin will be required.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

There are sentences in the post which made sense to me and regular readers because we have context, but to millions of strangers, some thoughts were understandably misinterpreted. Had I known so many strangers would read it, I’d have exercised more thoughtful and prudent word choices. But, big picture? This got people talking about marriage in meaningful ways. I’m proud of that. In that respect, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Has blogging been a challenge since this viral post?

In my two-and-a-half years of blogging on WordPress.com, people have mostly been exceedingly kind when leaving comments. Opening the floodgates to a larger cross-section of humanity introduced me to criticism and some less-than-pleasant insults in a way I had never experienced.

Sometimes people (or maybe it’s just me) have a unique capacity to ignore the ninety percent saying nice things, and hone in on the ten percent who aren’t. I didn’t always handle that with grace and professionalism. Learning to accept that not everyone will agree with me, like me, or understand me will be my biggest challenge moving forward.

Lisa Durant, Can Anybody Hear Me?

In April 2015, Lisa wrote “The ‘After’ Myth,” a post about losing weight, yet failing to discover and truly love herself. A year on, the piece continues to resonate with readers.

Can you pinpoint the spark that set it all off?

Although I can’t be entirely sure, I think a photo made my post go viral. Since my post was about my weight loss journey (or, as I prefer to put it, my life gain journey), it included a before and after photo of my physical transformation. While I understand that a dramatic high-impact photo makes for good clickbait, in this scenario, it’s kind of ironic. That post (and my entire blog, really) are meant to take attention away from the physical and focus more on the mental and emotional challenges of major weight loss.

What is one thing you learned from the experience?

I was surprised at how many people were surprised by my willingness to talk openly about personal topics. I also felt a bit of fear over being so visible. I’ve always been an open book, but I’ve never had so many readers paging through. I learned that people are a lot kinder than I ever knew. I was shocked at how few negative and critical responses I received and overwhelmed by the support I found.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

I could have capitalized on it. I could have ridden the wave of being visible and used it to gain even more exposure. I could have grown my blog, sold ads, and tried to turn it into a career as many others have. But I purposely chose not to, and I don’t regret that choice. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed briefly writing for other publications as a result, but I also chose to retreat and let the viral post run its course. I suppose that’s one other thing I learned about myself: I don’t want to be famous; I just want to write.

Has blogging been a challenge since this viral post?

At first, going viral made me second guess everything I sat down to write. I worried that whatever I posted next would never be as good. I also became much more aware of how many people could potentially see the sometimes very personal things that I tend to bring up in my posts. But then, I realized that these fears were exactly the right thing to write about next, and so I did. And, I made a decision and a statement: I couldn’t promise that every post would be viral-worthy or even interesting to anyone else, but I could promise to be honest. I decided that I would continue to do what I’d been doing for years: write for me, not for an audience.

Corinne Rogero, Duly Noted

“I Should Be Engaged,” Corinne Rogero’s quiet musings on being more mindful in the moment and creating meaningful connections, made lots of noise in January as well. Ten days after, she beautifully reflected on the experience that turned her world upside down.

Can you pinpoint the spark that set it all off?

I think a lot of millennials are bombarded with the notion that engagement and marriage are the keys to happiness. So the word “engaged” in my post’s title perhaps drew people’s attention, and I’m sure some readers hoped to hear a valid reason for why they deserved to be engaged in the marital sense as well.

What is one thing you learned from the experience?

There is greater power in sharing stories and exchanging words than perhaps we’ll ever fully realize. And I think because our words hold such weight — whether we realize it or not — they deserve to be shared in ways that connect with other souls and land somewhere deeper than mere surface level.

Is there anything you would have done differently?

I don’t think many people expect their post to go viral when their cursor hovers over the “Publish” button, and because my experience was just as unexpected, I don’t think it could have taken place any other way. I was writing just to write, and it just so happened to be read around the world.

Has blogging been a challenge since this viral post?

Immediately after my post crossed the 1,000,000 mark, I felt pressure to publish posts of the same caliber — that anything under a million views meant it wasn’t a good post. And the same expectation carried over into other social media platforms where I’d gained hundreds of followers because of my post. Suddenly, each Instagram photo or tweet had to be perfectly clever and professionally delivered. But I’m reminded that whether a post receives one or one million views, those one or one million people are exactly those who need to read it. Playing the comparison game in writing will only stifle your voice and suffocate your story.

Looking for something to read? Explore the latest picks from our editors at Discover.

Filed under: Community, WordPress.com, Writing

Field Notes: The Codex Hackathon 2016

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 in the community. This week, I share my experience at the Codex Hackathon.

We’re big fans of publishing here at WordPress.com. From fantastic content created by our blogging community and news from our WordPress.com VIP partners, to longform articles on Longreads, we love helping publish the best content on the internet.

In that spirit, Automattic sponsored the Codex Hackathon last month. The event brought together over 160 people who are passionate about reading to the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA. Librarians, writers, editors, programmers, and designers came from all across the globe to collaborate on small weekend-long projects to visualize the future of reading. Mel Choyce, Kelly Dwan, Kat Hagan, and I attended from Automattic, and we were eager to meet and collaborate with the like-minded crowd. It’s not often that such a diverse group has the opportunity to drop everything and come together around something they love.

The weekend kicked off with a series of short presentations on Saturday morning. Attendees learned about tools (like the WordPress.com API!) and saw examples of publishing challenges for inspiration. Those of us who came with pre-imagined project ideas shared them with the group, and those who didn’t could either join a team, or participate in a brainstorming exercise. The attendees mingled and shared ideas, and project teams started forming.

I joined a team, while Mel, Kelly, and Kat pitched in with design and development help across many different projects. The rest of Saturday was spent meeting new people, brainstorming, sketching, designing, and writing code. Our Codex hosts kept us well-fed throughout, and the atmosphere was exciting and inspiring. Teams worked well into the evening on Saturday, and were up bright and early on Sunday to polish our projects.

The event culminated in a set of short presentations from each team. It was thrilling to see the different ideas people worked on. Due to the incredibly short weekend timeline, many projects were still in the conceptual phase, but we were treated to quite a few application demos as well. You can check out the full list of projects at the Codex Hackathon 2016 projects page. Some of my personal favorites:

• Stanza: A tool to deliver a playlist of poems tied to a person’s mood and emotion.
• LitCity: Literary context, delivered into the real world through location-based phone notifications.
• Cover Design History: The beginnings of a website dedicated to book cover design.
• HippoReader: A tool for programmatically simplifying the language in a given text, to make it readable even by those with a elementary English language skills.
• ReadMember: A web-browser extension to help you keep track of the things you read online.

We all had a blast at the event, and thoroughly enjoyed working with everyone. The Codex Hackathon left us inspired to keep building ways for you to publish your own great content here at WordPress.com and beyond.

Check out the Codex Hackathon website to keep up to date on more Codex events, and read through our getting started guide if you’d like to start building something cool with the WordPress.com API.

If building publishing tools for a more democratic web sounds like your idea of fun, we’re hiring!

Filed under: Admin Bar, Community, Events

New Theme: Revelar

On this Theme Thursday, I’m happy to present a brand new free theme for your enjoyment.

Revelar

Designed by Automattic’s own Filipe Varela, Revelar is a single-column blogging theme with a fresh, modern look. Designed to showcase your gorgeous photography and complement your writing, it’s a perfect choice for photographers, travelers, and authors. With support for large featured images, multiple post formats, and footer widget areas for additional content, Revelar gives your posts plenty of room to shine.

Find out more about Revelar on the Theme Showcase!

Filed under: Themes

Customizing Twenty Sixteen: Four Takes on Our Annual Theme

Every year we release an annual flagship theme as a blank canvas for bloggers, artists, professionals, and business owners. This year’s creation, Twenty Sixteen, is a gorgeous theme that celebrates a classic WordPress layout yet injects it with new energy and precise, minimalist flare.

Twenty Sixteen‘s customization options allow it to support any type of site — from a traditional blog to a professional web page. Here are four sites that caught our eye.

Shakespeare Confidential

Some of you might know blogger John Kelly from his superb etymology blog, mashed radish. John has embarked on a new adventure this month. Since 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, he intends to read the Bard’s entire corpus of plays and poetry by year’s end, and chronicle the journey on his blog.

He chose Twenty Sixteen for this project, and the theme’s crisp typography and nods to print culture work perfectly with his topic — check out the neat post intro which gives readers a hint of the post’s content (see screenshot above: “In 2016, it’s not the shrew that’s the problem. It’s the taming.”), or the magazine-like pull quotes (below).

A few other well-chosen elements, like a clean serif font (Libre Baskerville) and a custom header image based on a famous Shakespeare etching, come together to create an unobtrusive but memorable look.

YINKABOKINNI

A pop of color, a punchy tagline, strategically positioned social icons: with just a few brushstrokes, D.J. and radio presenter Yinka Bokinni has crafted a homepage full of personality.

Yinka, a UK-based music and fashion lover, hosts a morning show at London’s Rinse FM, and you sense something of that early-morning, big-city vibe in the site’s design, from the shocking pink custom background to the slender sans-serif fonts she uses (like Droid Sans Mono in the site’s title).

Yinka has opted for a static front page, but the site’s other sections — her blog and contact info, for example — along with her other social profiles are all one click away thanks to the well-placed custom menu and Social Media Icons Widget.

Lucão

Even if you don’t read Portuguese, Brazilian poet Lucão’s blog is a hymn to the virtues of minimalism — in writing as well as in design.

Lucão — real name Lucas Brandão — has cultivated a huge audience on social media, with more than 300,000 followers on Instagram alone. His blog — where he gathers all his handwritten, aphorism-length poems — is a comfortable hub where readers can explore his deep archives (he’s been publishing here for almost a decade). The black-and-white aesthetic of the poems work especially well against the backdrop of Twenty Sixteen, whose clean lines and focus on readability let the words speak for themselves.

Three Hour Brunch Friend

In our book, any food blog with “brunch” in its name is already ahead of the curve; Patricia, a Toronto, Canada-based food blogger went a few steps further and used Twenty Sixteen to create an inviting, bright space for her recipes.

Patricia’s blog demonstrates how the theme’s out-of-the-box look, including its default font and white background, are the perfect foundation for lovely photos and fun food writing. She’s added a handful of widgets — an Image Widget to introduce herself, a Categories Widget for easy navigation, an Instagram Widget for even more eye candy — and let the theme (and a winning custom header image featuring bacon) take care of the rest. We particularly liked how her wider images overhang the text (see the screenshot to the left), one of Twenty Sixteen‘s signature touches.

Have you added your own tweaks to Twenty Sixteen? Have you seen other beautiful customizations of the theme? Let us know in the comments.

Filed under: Customization, Design, Themes, WordPress.com

“Discover” Great Features You Might Have Missed

Late in 2015, we launched Discover — a site to showcase the people who use WordPress and the amazing things they make and do. There, we publish editors’ picks from across the WordPress landscape as well as in-depth features on WordPressers making a splash in the world. Here are five thought-provoking features you might have missed.

Anne Thériault: one gutsy feminist

You may already know Anne from her incisive blog, The Belle Jar, where she writes candidly of her experiences as a woman and a mother. In “Too Loud, Too Outspoken, Too Feminist: Anne Thériault Writes Her Truth,” Anne talks about learning from her mistakes, protecting her family’s privacy and safety, and handling trolls. She has great advice for women bloggers who may shy away from sharing their true thoughts online.

If I had to give advice to a woman who wanted to write but thought no one would care, I would tell her that reading stuff by other women has been so incredibly validating and affirming and enlightening. Hey women! Please keep writing! And if you’re thinking about writing, please do it! You are a treasure and your thoughts are interesting and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

— Anne Thériault

Curiosity meets camera: on the passions of Cameron Karsten

Cameron Karsten is a visual storyteller. Armed with his camera and innate curiosity, he travels the world to document people, customs, and raise awareness of environmental causes. In
“Stories of the World: A Q&A with Photographer Cameron Karsten,” Cameron shares his passion for the people, places, and causes he photographs:

I look forward to photographing people when I pick up a camera. I approach a person not as a subject but as a person who has needs and wants, a history of joys and sorrows, of gains and losses. I’ve never connected with the industry’s idea of using a camera to hide behind a lens as if to separate myself from the rest of the world. People aren’t subjects to me. Inanimate objects are what I call a subject. I first try to relate to and connect with a person by just being myself. Taking the photograph comes later.

— Cameron Karsten

Lori Duron blogs through fear and finds her community

When Lori Duron started to blog about the questions, fears, and challenges of raising C.J., her gender non-conforming son, she — like many of us — had no idea what she was doing. In “Raising a Rainbow: An Interview with Author Lori Duron,” Lori talks about why she writes about her parenting journey and the overwhelming support she’s received from the world community.

I received emails from parents who were struggling with the gender identity of their child; they felt alone and helpless like I once did. I tried to help them the best that I could. I have readers in more than 190 countries. There are little gender-nonconforming boys in Ireland, the Philippines, Iran, all around the world. And, their parents need help.

— Lori Duron

An exercise in process: 365 projects across WordPress

In addition to personal profiles and interviews, Discover features roundups highlighting the things people create with WordPress. “365 Days, 52 Weeks: Bloggers on Posting Daily or Weekly in 2015” profiles a handful of bloggers who participated in a 365-day or 52-week project and posted their sketches, stories, and essays online.

I write because Writing is a box under the category Creativity under the list Happiness that I have the luxury of checking off every morning. For nearly six years, I committed to writing and posting daily because on the days I didn’t write, I felt an itch of discontentment, and sooner or later, I realized it was because I hadn’t created something.

— Yi-Ching Lin

Danny Gregory on making creativity a habit

Ever wanted to learn to draw, but felt you lacked that special talent? Danny Gregory will be the first to tell you that anyone can learn to draw with practice. In “Making Creativity a Habit: An Interview with Danny Gregory,” the prolific author and Sketchbook Skool co-founder shares the best advice he’s received on establishing a creative habit and his advice on sticking with your drawing dream.

My advice: keep making and stop critiquing. And think about how what you are doing matters to the world in some way, how your creativity solves problems or brings joy. Get out of your head and your own concerns and see how you can make a difference with your art. It’s just a drawing, you say? Well, what if drawing something can bring you peace? Or give you an insight you can share? What if that drawing stimulates your imagination so you can solve a problem that’s been vexing your family or your coworkers? What if that drawing is a way of honoring yourself, of investing in yourself, in freeing yourself…

— Danny Gregory

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