New Theme: Cerauno

It’s a beautiful day for a new theme! Today, I’m happy to present a free magazine theme, Cerauno.

Cerauno

Cerauno is a polished, user-friendly theme designed by Mel Choyce.

In Mel’s words:

I designed Cerauno with subject bloggers in mind, like food, fashion, or travel bloggers. I wanted to make a theme for someone who’s been blogging for a little while, but wants to boost their traffic and bring their site into the spotlight with a clean and authoritative design. I’m so excited to see it launch!

With plenty of options to tempt and tantalize, Cerauno is sure to please. Add secondary content in up to five widget areas, brand your content with a Site Logo or Custom Header, include links to your favorite social networks, and add Featured Images to grab your readers’ attention.

Cerauno is also responsive, stretching or shrinking to accommodate any screen size.

Check out Cerauno on the Theme Showcase, or activate it on your site from Appearance → Themes!

Early Theme Adopters: Resonar

Resonar, designed by Automattic’s own Takashi Irie, made its debut in March. Created for food and design bloggers to showcase photography and longform posts, we’ve loved watching how you’ve turned Resonar on its head.

Here are five of our favorite takes, from simple and chic to full-color and bold.

Joshua S. Porter

Writer, filmmaker, and musician Joshua Porter transformed Resonar into a stark, high-impact portfolio site:

He opts for a static front page rather than a regular blog, populating it with a single row of monochrome that link to his books, music, and podcast. A simple menu helps visitors get in touch, hear more music, or dig into his blog posts. Open the widget panel — on Resonar, you’ll find it cleverly hidden behind the three dots to the right of the menu — to reveal his social media connections, including Twitter and Instagram feeds.

Japan, Etc.

Jessie Murray is chronicling a summer of travel on her blog, Japan, Etc., and chose Resonar to showcase her photos and reflections:

The widget area displays an Instagram feed, so followers can see where she’s been between posts. Otherwise, there’s nothing to distract from her words and photos — just a custom header displaying her bold title, and a clean layout that puts her content at center stage.

Grow RVA

Resonar also supports site logos. Grow RVA, an organization that supports farmers’ markets and food sustainability efforts in Virginia, takes advantage of that to brand their blog:

The menu helps visitors find information on Grow RVA’s full website quickly and easily. Resonar lets them highlight additional photos of food and farmers, and the site logo keeps their branding consistent — so you always know you’re reading about Grow RVA, no matter where you are on their sites.

Meet Me in the North

You don’t need to be fluent in Spanish to appreciate the lovely site of photographer Garbi:

Wedding photos, street photography, fashion shoots, mom-to-be portraits — Garbi does it all, and Resonar provides the perfect backdrop. She adds a playful header image, and a focused menu helps visitors navigate her posts. As with all Resonar-based sites, the classic serif typography is easy to read and lends an elegant air without distracting readers from the content itself.

Elsa’s Wholesome Life

Of course, there are still plenty of folks taking advantage of Resonar‘s glorious full-width images. A visit to the home page of food blog Elsa’s Wholesome Life reveals this vibrant beauty:

Beets, raw fudge, and eggplants have never looked so good!

Interested in giving Resonar a whirl? Learn more about it and explore the demo site in the theme showcase, or activate it on your blog from your Customizer. 

New Themes: Snaps and Gateway

On this Theme Thursday, I’m happy to introduce two new free themes.

Snaps

Snaps, by Graph Paper Press, is a portfolio theme designed to showcase portrait-oriented photographs, illustrations, and other works of art. The simple, elegant design keeps the focus on your projects, and scales to fit any screen size.

Read more about Snaps on the Theme Showcase, or activate it on your site from Appearance → Themes!

Gateway

Gateway, by Rescue Themes, is the perfect mix of class and elegance, a traditional yet customizable home for your content. Reinforce your brand with a site logo, add a bold header image and call to action, and showcase your best posts or a video with a special Homepage template.

Check out Gateway on the Theme Showcase, or activate it on your site from Appearance → Themes!

Recommended Reading: Authors on WordPress.com

Looking for summer reading suggestions? Or perhaps winter reading suggestions, should your hemisphere be the Southern one? Look no further than these three authors who — like you — make their online home at WordPress.com.

Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller‘s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, has been called “impossible to put down” by Amy Gentry at the Chicago Tribune.

Claire began writing at age 40, after co-leading a marketing agency for many years. The book has been shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize, which is awarded annually to a first novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom.

Claire is a prolific blogger who likes to share her flash fiction and offer writing advice. Why not pick up a copy of Our Endless Numbered Days and then see if your location is on Claire’s upcoming events list?

Here’s a synopsis of Our Endless Numbered Days:

Our Endless Numbered Days is the story of Peggy Hillcoat, who is eight in 1976, and spends her summer camping with her father, playing her beloved record of The Railway Children and listening to her mother’s grand piano.

After a family crisis which Peggy doesn’t fully understand until later, her survivalist father James, takes her from London to a cabin in a remote European forest. There he tells Peggy the rest of the world has disappeared. And so her life is reduced to a piano which makes music but no sound, a forest where all that grows is a means of survival and a tiny wooden hut that is Everything.

Peggy isn’t seen again for another nine years.

Victoria (V.E.) Schwab

V.E. Schwab writes fiction for adults, young adults, and middle grade kids. The author of seven books, her latest adult title is called A Darker Shade of Magic.

On her blog, V.E. Schwab shares her books’ origin stories, insight into her writing process, and even short stories. We particularly enjoyed her unique About page adjunct listing her favorite words. V.E. Schwab, too, has list of upcoming appearances.

Here’s a synopsis of A Darker Shade of Magic:

A Darker Shade of Magic is a fantasy series that takes place in a series of parallel Londons — where magic thrives, starves, or lies forgotten, and follows the last of a line of blood mages and a pickpocket from Georgian London as they combine forces to save the worlds — all of them.

John Scalzi

Author John Scalzi makes his home on the web at Whatever. A New York Times best-selling author of a whole mess of books, short stories, and nonfiction pieces, Scalzi publishes frequently on his blog, often highlighting other authors in his excellent series The Big Idea. He’s also famous for taping bacon to his cat.

Scalzi’s latest book is Lock In. Here’s a synopsis:

In the exceedingly near future, a virus sweeps the globe, killing some, ignoring most, and for about 1% of the population destroying the neural connections between body and brain. These few are fully aware, but cannot move or respond to stimuli. They are “locked in,” suffering from what’s known as Haden’s Syndrome.

John Scalzi’s got a few upcoming appearances you might want to know about.

And now, over to you

Who are your favorite authors? Which book(s) do you find hard to put down? Share your recommendations in the comments.

Female students in Tanzania face gender stereotypes which often manifest themselves in sexual abuse, early pregnancies, early marriages, household duties, limited access to schools, long distances to schools, and lack of priority for consideration of higher education, specifically for the poor families, thus influencing the higher drop out rates of the female students. Though identified in the Government Report, it does not offer any plans to solve the identified problems.With regard to sex discrimination in education it has been noted that there are no specific mechanisms or measures which are in place to deal with the problem. Such a situation is encouraging the continuation of sex discrimination in education. The Tanzanian government needs specific plans for large-scale reform that is necessary to increase the enrollment and retention of female students at all levels, specifically, the government needs to address the traditional cultural and community norms which discriminate against females and to adopt specific mechanisms or measures which are aimed at combating sex discrimination in education.

The quality of education is not being properly addressed in Tanzania. There are inadequate educational facilities, infrastructure and resources (both human and financial resources) but the Government Report makes no mention of the quality of the education that is being provided to students or whether the students are going to be successful participants in Tanzania's developing society.

Tanzanian teachers face numerous hurdles in providing quality education to their students including lack of support – low salary scales, housing scheme, adequate teaching facilities and materials; and training – gender sensitivity training, and scholastic aptitude training.

Implementation of PEDP has resulted in the sharp increase in standard one enrolment in the country and a shortfall of teachers. In order to meet the demand for teachers the government decided to reduce the time that trainee teachers spend at teacher’s colleges from two years to one. In practice, the programme operates on an ad hoc basis; there is no organized, sustained effort to further teacher’s professional development.

Many teachers are complaining that changes are made in syllabi, with new topics and textbooks introduced, without building the capacity of teachers to teach these subjects.

Large class size and the lack of teaching and learning materials make teaching stressful for many teachers.

11 of 56The government needs to identify educational reform goals which take into account the value and quality of education the students are receiving, in addition to increased enrollment. The government needs to put in place standards to monitor the progress of its educational reforms.

The increased enrollment of both boys and girls has to go hand-in-hand with the recruitment of more qualified teachers with better salaries, housing schemes and availability of incentives for the teachers. In-service training programmes for the teachers have to be expanded to enhance the knowledge and skills of teachers to cope with the changes that are taking place in the education sector. In addition, the government must enact standards to evaluate the teaching skills of the new and current teachers to ensure that the education methods being used are effective.

The Government Report does not provide enough concrete details about the efforts it has undertaken to improve physical school infrastructure or provide instructional materials to schools, teachers and students.The distance from home to schools is still very far and as a result children have to walk long distances to school. In such circumstances girls and disabled children are the most affected groups. This is contributing to high drop out rate of girls. The availability of textbooks is still a major problem despite efforts made under the PEDP to provide textbooks to schools; the pupil to book ratio still stands at 1:5 for most school subjects.

Despite the Tanzanian government's efforts to reform the educational system, yet girls dropout rate is higher than that of boys due to early marriages, pregnancies, truancy, involvement in domestic chores and taking care of the sick children, which consume most of their time,” However, no solution to these problems has been offered in the government report.In addition, there are no plans regarding what strategies, if any, are being used to support female students' return to school once they have dropped out.The government needs to adopt specific plans and strategies to prevent female students from dropping out of school and to assist female students' return to school once they have dropped out.

The Government Report offers little discussion of disparities between the rural and urban populations on education and the efforts to reduce these disparities. In some schools, especially those in rural areas, children are sitting down on the floor in a class because there are no or inadequate desks to sit on. The proportion of children enrolled in primary schools varied between rural and urban areas. According to House hold Budget Survey 2000/2001, urban areas enrollment was 71% for boys and 71.3% for girls while in rural areas the enrollment was as low as 47.1% and 51.7% for boys and girls respectively in 2001. The Tanzanian government needs to implement strategies that will reduce the disparities between the literacy rates and educational opportunities between the rural and urban populations, specifically with respect to the disparities between the situations of rural and urban female populations.

There is limited understanding of disability and children with special needs in Government planning and programmes. Similarly there are inadequate plans within the primary school development plan to work with children who have special learning and behavioural needs. There is no mention of plans within the educational development plan to work with or accommodate children who have special physical, learning and/or behavioural needs. Given that significant number of children who suffer from physical or mental disabilities, the government needs to create specific plans to sensitize the population and address the needs of disabled children.

Though a guarantee of access to education is made to refugees and displaced persons in the Tanzanian National Education Act 1978, refugees face additional challenges to receiving basic education, including the fact that the law in Tanzania hinders the right to movement of refugees, which is an essential human right and impacts all aspects of refugees’ lives, including the full access to educational facilities. Schools have been constructed in their respective camps. However such schools are inadequate with lack of adequate facilities/supplies. Opportunities for secondary education, tertiary education and vocational skills training programmes are extremely limited. The government needs to evaluate its current status of compliance with the Tanzanian National Education Act in providing education to refugees and displaced persons and it needs to create plans to improve the access to educational services.

Article 11: Employment As far as employment is concern, there are still numerous national laws in effect which directly or indirectly provide a legal basis for discrimination between male and female employees. For examples the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) Act Cap. 47 R.E 2002 which provides inter alia for a Survivor's pension. Specifically, Section 35(a) of the NSSF Act provides that a widow who has the responsibility to care for the dependent children will be paid a pension for life, or until she remarries. On the contrary, Section 35(b) discriminates against women who do not have to care for dependent children.Sexual harassment also continues to be a serious problem for female

Insights: A New View of Your Stats

Today we’re introducing a new view of your stats. Insights give you instant access to your all-time numbers, including posts, views, and visitors. Dig deeper into your stats to make the most of your site.

Have you ever wondered what times of day or days of the week you have the most visitors? Insights has you covered!

Of course, one of the best things that you can do to improve the numbers on your Insights page is to post more frequently. You’ll find a visualization of your posting trends right at the top of the page — one glance, and you can see how many posts you publish when.

The stats that you’re used to seeing haven’t gone away. We’ve moved the Comments, Followers, Tags & Categories, and Publicize sections to the Insights page. Everything else is right where it was before, you’re still able to view the other modules by day, week, month, or year — just select the period you’d like to view at the top of the stats page.

We love that you’re passionate about your stats, and that you share that passion with us. These new features wouldn’t exist without your valuable feedback!

New Themes: Apostrophe and Canard

Happy Theme Thursday! Today, WordPress.com welcomes two new free themes to its collection: Apostrophe and Canard.

Apostrophe

With a pared-down design and bold images, Apostrophe is ideally suited to magazine-style sites, like travelogues, fashion blogs, or foodie sites. It’s an update of Semicolon, built by Automattic’s own Konstantin Kovshenin.

Apostrophe supports Social Links Menus, Featured Images, Site Logos, Post Formats, Custom Menus, Widgets, Custom Backgrounds, and Custom Headers.

Read more about Apostrophe on the Theme Showcase, or activate it on your site from Appearance → Themes!

Canard

Designed by Thomas Guillot, Canard is a flexible and versatile theme perfect for magazines, news sites, and blogs. It lets you highlight specific articles on the homepage and balances readability with a powerful use of photography — all in a layout that works on any device.

Canard also supports the following popular features: Custom Colors, Custom Header, Custom Menu, Social Links, Site Logo, Featured Images, and Widgets.

Read more about Canard on the Theme Showcase, or activate it on your site from Appearance → Themes.

Web Publishing for All! Introducing Community Translator Tools

Publishing tools for everyone

Roughly half of the content and traffic on the internet is in English¹, yet English is the mother tongue of only about a quarter of internet users², and less than 5% of the world’s population.³ We believe that WordPress.com should be for everyone, not just English speakers — it’s why we already serve WordPress in 131 languages — but we want to make it even more accessible.⁴

To keep so many languages up to date we need to make it radically easier for non-English speaking communities to help with translation. We’re proud to announce our latest step in that direction: the Community Translator.

Introducing: built-in translation

Here’s how it works: enable the tool in your blog’s settings. Then, when you activate the Community Translator, words in need of translation will be highlighted in green. You’ll be able to right-click on them, enter your new translation in the pop-up box that appears, and click “Submit”:

That’s it! Behind the scenes, we pass your translation on to GlotPress, where it goes through a standard process to be approved and then deployed to WordPress.com. In just a few days, you could see your contribution become the official translation.

You can enable the Community Translator right now in your settings page, as long as you’ve chosen a non-English language for your WordPress.com interface:

Then, activate and deactivate the translator by clicking on the floating Globe icon in the bottom right corner of the screen:

More detailed documentation is available on the support page.

We hope this new tool will make translating WordPress more rewarding and help improve the overall quality of translations. We’ll be continuing to work hard on making it easier for people to use WordPress in any language they’d like.

Happy blogging, in whatever language you speak!

Street Photography: Seven Photos

It’s no secret that I love to pore through the street photography tag in the WordPress.com Reader and share images that catch my attention. Join me on another trip around the world as seen through the eyes (and lenses!) of these seven skilled photographers.

This arresting image of a bird in a car — juxtaposed against the unknowing elderly man passing by — mesmerizes me. Taken by Beirut photographer Ghaleb Cabbabé, there’s an element of the macabre about this photograph that I find intriguing. The odd bird and the filthy windscreen create a certain palpable sinister portent. Check out more of Ghaleb’s work at ALICE BACK FROM WONDERLAND.

Photo by Ghaleb Cabbabé

Continuing along with ethereal — perhaps even unearthly — imagery, check out this photograph by Akshay Shaha taken at the Multiplex Theatre in Hyderabad, India. The blurred people walking near the Poltergeist poster look as if they’re ghostly spirits who’ve come to take in a movie, wouldn’t you agree?

Photo by Akshay Shaha

Below, thasveeru‘s image of the two older gents in conversation in Malé City, Maldives, struck me. The man on the left, caught in mid-gesture, and his companion, deep in thought, leave me wondering what they were talking about.

Photo by thasveeru

And now, over to Paris, and Pat Callahan‘s charming photo of an elderly man clearly engrossed in his reading material. His bent posture and calm engagement against the deep red, yellow, and blue of the wall behind him is quite soothing.

Photo by Pat Callahan

From Paris we go to Brighton, UK, below for a bold image of a different kind by Peter, the photographer behind Eyeteeth. The jagged angles, the stark repeating pattern, and the intense contrast captured my attention.

Photo by Peter

From Brighton, we move to Seoul, South Korea, and this image of the bread vendor at TYR Photo. The man’s brightly lit face, his quizzical gaze, blue-striped shirt, and the colorful red and yellow sign are quite captivating.

Photo by TYR Photo

Below, at our last stop on the tour, we’re going to rest — just like this tired pup — in Shanghai, China. I can’t help but find that cute canine face and the dog’s relaxed posture irresistible! This photo is one among a vibrant, colorful gallery on Thatiana Terra‘s site, NEVER CLIP MY WINGS.

Photo by Thatiana Terra

Where in the world have you travelled courtesy of the street photography tag in the WordPress.com Reader?

Eventbrite Now Available for All of WordPress.com

We’re excited to announce big updates to our Eventbrite integration: your events can now be displayed right on your WordPress.com site, no matter what theme you use!

Enjoy Eventbrite, regardless of theme

In 2013, we launched two Eventbrite themes to help you promote your events. Since then, we’ve gotten requests from users to extend that functionality more broadly on WordPress.com. Today, we’ve rolled out our Eventbrite integration to all users, which means you are no longer limited to only using the Eventbrite themes to promote your events. You can now connect to Eventbrite from any theme to highlight your events. (The existing Eventbrite themes will still be available.)

Connect to Eventbrite using Publicize

Getting started is easy — your Eventbrite connection is located alongside your other Publicize accounts in Settings → Sharing. Once you connect to Eventbrite, your events will automatically display on a page of your choice, with links to detailed views and sign-up/purchase buttons. We also added some additional features to the integration to now allow you to filter your events by organizer or venue, just like categories and tags.

Display events with an improved widget

Our Eventbrite widget has also been updated for better performance. You can use the widget to display your events in handy dual list and calendar view anywhere on your site. You can activate this widget in Appearance → Widgets.

Eventbrite themes on WordPress.org

In addition to updating the Eventbrite integration on WordPress.com for our users, we’ve also been hard at work making the Eventbrite themes and plugin available on WordPress.org! You can find the themes here and the plugins here and here.

For more details, check out our Eventbrite support page. Enjoy!