New Theme: Toujours

Special milestones deserve special websites. This Theme Thursday, we’re introducing a fresh take on our classic wedding theme.

Toujours

Toujours — a refresh of our popular Forever theme — has a simple, elegant design that’s perfect for planning and sharing moments from your wedding. The theme includes a large slideshow, a unique layout for recent posts, and a special Guestbook template. The theme’s subtle color palette and large featured images will help your words and photographs shine.

Add a map to your venue, collect RSVPs, or create a page with pictures from your wedding Instagram hashtag: with its responsive design, Toujours looks good on any screen, big or small.

Find out more about Toujours on the Theme Showcase!

Filed under: Themes

Three Ways to Refresh Your Website in 2016

The new year is a great time to hit refresh and set new goals. If your website looks and feels a little stale, now is the time to make a change! Here are three quick ways to freshen up your personal or business website:

Take Inventory

Is your content still accurate? Do you need to update your photos? Are the important links working? Take a step back to think about your site’s purpose and audience. Have your personal or business goals changed since you launched it? Make a list of what needs to be fixed and set a timeline to get it done. Take a look at your most popular posts to know what’s working and target those posts and pages first.

In 2012, three friends — Jeri, Erin, and Allysa — founded a full-service event and styling company, bon évé Events. After refocusing their company’s priorities and goals, they recently relaunched their website. Their rebrand includes a new name (My Simple Soirée), a logo, and WordPress.com website.

 

Refocusing our business meant an extensive rebrand and rename. This can be challenging for a small business as your brand and name are your lifeline. WordPress.com made it easy to implement the changes we needed for social media first impression.

— My Simple Soirée

Evaluate your website in light of your objectives and make the most of what WordPress.com has to offer, from uploading a new site logo or custom header image to exploring our Premium and Business plans to unlock more space for media, design customization, and eCommerce integration. 

Boost Your Brand

Every website can benefit from custom branding, from hobby blogs to eCommerce websites. Create a cohesive brand experience by aligning all the elements that identify and set your website apart: domain name, website name, and logo. 

Adding a logo to your website is an achievable first step to branding your site. In your menu, click on Customize to launch your Customizer, and click on Site Title, Tagline, and Logo. Here, you can upload a new image or select one from your Media Library.

Click the Save & Publish button at the top right of the Customizer to activate your new logo.

In a few clicks, you can take your website to the next level with a custom logo. (And if you switch to and from any logo-supported theme, your logo will still be there!)

Textile artist Krista blogs at Looming Jane. She has a custom logo at the top of her website — a stylish cursive display of her brand and shop name. While each theme’s default fonts are carefully selected, you can transform the look of a theme by swapping out the Header Text with your own designs.

Add Fresh Content

The best way to have a vibrant and active website is to publish new content regularly. If you feel stuck, look to Automattician Andrea Badgley, who has developed a great strategy to help you meet your blogging goals this year.

In her post Publish in 10 Minutes Per Day, she shares her secret sauce for blogging regularly. It has two ingredients: carve out 10 minutes per day and keep topics on hand.

Giving yourself meaningful topics to write about and then carving out the time to write will get you not only practicing, but will get you publishing again. It will make your blog active and will bring visitors to your site.

— Andrea Badgley

Committing to a blogging schedule can be a challenge, so a New Year’s resolution is the perfect motivation to kickstart a new routine. Make your resolutions a reality by investing in your WordPress.com website.

Planning on Turning Your Website into a Lean Mean Marketing Machine?

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. Try it out for 30 days.

 

Filed under: Customization, WordPress.com

New Theme: Canapé

It’s the New Year, and we’re excited to kick it off with a new free theme!

Canapé

Canapé is a bold and refined theme, designed to help you create a beautiful online presence for your restaurant. Integrated with food menus, testimonials, and the Open Table widget, it’s the perfect choice for any food-related business.

Canapé can be personalized to match your brand by adding a logo, tweaking the fonts, and choosing a color scheme from six free palettes. The Front Page Template with a full-width featured image, featured menu sections, and three widget areas gives you ample opportunity to build a unique welcome page for your visitors.

Of course Canapé is responsive, so your content will retain its elegant and sophisticated look on mobile, tablet, and desktop screens.

Get to know Canapé on the Theme Showcase!

Filed under: Themes

The 2015 WordPress.com Year In Review!

Here’s an incredible fact: together, you published more than 660 million posts on WordPress.com in 2015, and made more than 655 million comments.

That’s a whole lot of joy, laughter, tears, insight, and thoughtfulness. And it’s just one part of a huge global community of people — WordPress now powers more than 25% of the internet — with interests ranging from the news shaping our world to personal stories that shape our own families and lives.

We talked about the serious and the mundane, the silly and the sorrowful; we talked about creativity, sports, marriage, parenthood, politics, love, romance, differences, divisions, and identity.

From all of us at Automattic to everyone in the WordPress.com community: it’s been a thrill to watch, participate in, and support your work.

Here’s a quick roundup of notable moments from 2015:

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Viral Hits of 2015

I thought, if there’s one person society won’t f— with, it’s a marathon runner.

—Kiran Gandhi, who ran the London Marathon while free-bleeding, in the viral post, “Sisterhood, blood and boobs at the London Marathon.”

We have all learned, either by instinct or by trial and error, how to minimize a situation that makes us uncomfortable. How to avoid angering a man or endangering ourselves. We have all, on many occasions, ignored an offensive comment. We’ve all laughed off an inappropriate come-on. We’ve all swallowed our anger when being belittled or condescended to.

—Gretchen Kelly of Drifting Through on “The Thing All Women Do That You Don’t Know About.”

There is no After – happily ever or otherwise. There is only today. Just today – During.

—Lisa Durant (Can Anybody Hear Me?) in “The After Myth,” on losing weight, and facing questions about identity along the way.

For mothers in the workplace, it’s death by a thousand cuts—and sometimes it’s other women holding the knives. I didn’t realize this—or how horrible I’d been—until five years later, when I gave birth to a daughter of my own.

—At Fortune, Katharine Zaleski writes an apology to the moms she used to work with.

Five-year olds shouldn’t straight line.

Why did this one?

Because of gun violence in the city.

—The story of “A Senseless Death,” from don of all trades.

Girls can do anything that boys do but it turns out that sometimes they get killed for it.

—In “Being a Girl: A Brief History of Personal Violence,” Anne Thériault (The Belle Jar) traces a lifetime of gendered assault, harassment, and threats starting at age six.

Curry isn’t a product of the math; he’s so good that he has his own math. Indeed, the math is so far in Curry’s favor that the Warriors — and even basketball in general — may not fully understand what they have yet.

—At FiveThirtyEight, Benjamin Morris looked for a mathematical answer to the question: just how good is Stephen Curry?

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Covering World Events

From the tragedy of the EU refugee crisis to the community coming together to uplift each other following attacks in Paris and Beirut, WordPress.com bloggers offered unique perspectives on what happened around the world in 2015:

“Most never thought they’d be in this position.”

—From Lionel Beehner’s visit to the Zaatari refugee camp. More blogs featured in “On the Run: Blogging the European Refugee Crisis.”

We don’t have to be united. We don’t have to agree. We don’t always have to “stand together,” even. That’s precisely what makes us strong, and that’s precisely what makes our way of life worth defending.

—Drew Messinger-Michaels (Everybody’s Talking at Once) on the Paris attacks. Featured in “Don’t Be Who ISIS Wants You to Be”: Bloggers on Paris and Beirut.

This is a day for celebrating equal treatment by the law, and equal recognition by the state.

—Lela Urquhart, at Tropics of Meta, on the history of marriage. Featured in the roundup “#LoveWins! LGBTQ Bloggers Make Their Voices Heard.”

 

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WordPress.com Bloggers with Books

Some of the most talented, creative people in the world are part of this warm, cozy WordPress.com community — here’s just a few who announced new books in 2015:

Jenny Lawson

New York Times bestselling author Lawson (also known round these parts as The Bloggess) published her second book, Furiously Happy — CBC named it one of its Best of 2015 and Entertainment Weekly called it “a strange but beautiful fusion of mental health awareness and understanding that, while serious in parts, will have you snorting into your coffee or laughing loudly on the subway.”

Patrick Wensink

The author of five books released Fake Fruit Factory this year, and NPR named it one of 2015’s best.

Rachel Roddy

Roddy (of rachel eats fame) published her book Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome, and it will be released in the U.S. in 2016.

CN Lester

Lester (A Gentleman and a Scholar) will have a book out in November 2016 with Virago Press (Little, Brown), titled Trans Like Me: A Journey for All of Us.

John Scalzi

The sci-fi author (Whatever) published his latest book, The End of All Things, in August.

Jennifer K. Armstrong

In 2016 the pop culture writer will release her next book, Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything, an examination of the history and cultural impact of Jerry Seinfeld’s beloved TV series.

Alexander Chee

The author behind Koreanish is publishing his next novel, The Queen of the Night, in 2016.

Randall Munroe

The xkcd creator offered up his latest, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words.

Kevin M. Hardcastle

The author released a new short story collection, Debris, in September.

Mary Laura Philpott

The author and illustrator published Penguins with People Problems in June.

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Notable Quotes & Bloggers in the News

“No one tells you that you will break down and bawl and abandon your cart in the cereal aisle at Safeway because what woman, what mother, doesn’t know what her children want for breakfast.”

—Teri Carter, in The New York Times, on “A Stepmother Losing Her Marbles.”

There is no joy now without a shadow of bittersweet sorrow, but I experience my feelings more fully; as if a dial has been turned and my emotions amplified — the good and the bad.

—Hannah Richell, in Harper’s Bazaar Australia, on grief and losing her husband.

Let me tell you something you already know: Your housekeeper spies on you.

—Stephanie Land (stepville), in Vox, on her experience cleaning houses for rich clients.

Perhaps this is what MTV has brought us in thirty seasons of hot-tub parties and blurry night-vision footage of under-the-sheets trysts that everyone regrets in the morning—it has helped train us to see our daily lives as a continual acting out of identity in public.

—Amanda Ann Klein (judgmental observer) on “Thirty Seasons of ‘The Real World’” in The New Yorker.

Murders over money, over women: In any other neighborhood, we would call the killers youths committing crimes. In neighborhoods like Englewood and Auburn Gresham, we call them gang members, a label that has very real consequences.

—Jason Harrington (Taking Sense Away) wrote on Chi-raq and the changing nature of gun violence in Chicago for The New York Times Magazine.

“The Facts” distills the essentials of the How to Be a Girl series into a primer of sorts , the perfect starting point for newcomers who want to find someone under the age of 6 who can give them a master class in personal growth.

—The Atlantic on Marlo Mack (gendermom), whose podcast was named a Best of 2015 pick, and who was featured on Longreads earlier this year.

Over the century since its creation, the Periodic Table of Elements has been studied almost as much, if not more, comprehensively than the Harry Potter universe. It is far past time that the two academic schools of thought were combined.

—Lauren James, at The Toast, with “The Hogwarts Houses of the Periodic Elements: A Critical Analysis.”

“I try but I can’t think of a single aspect of having cancer, start to finish, that isn’t an act in a pantomime in which my participation is guaranteed however I believe I choose to play each scene. I have been given this role. . . . I have no choice but to perform and to be embarrassed to death.”

—Jenny Diski, writer for the London Review of Books, profiled in The New York Times Magazine this year.

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Our Community, IRL

From the Press Publish conference in Portland and Phoenix, to the Longreads Story Night in San Francisco and New York, our community got together in person to celebrate our work, share advice, and seek inspiration from writers and editors like Christine Lee, Mary Laura Philpott, John Herrman, Ananda Leeke, and more.

Here’s a breathtaking moment from our Longreads Story Night in New York, with The New York Times Magazine’s Nikole Hannah-Jones:

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The All-New WordPress.com Goes Live

This past year marked the 10th anniversary of WordPress.com, and we celebrated by working behind the scenes to radically improve the experience. In November, we flipped the switch on an all-new WordPress.com: faster performance, a brand new editor, desktop apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux, the Discover Editors’ Picks showcase, and so much more.

It was all part of a new open-source project we codenamed Calypso, and we are thrilled that this is just the beginning. We’ll continue to make improvements so publishing is simple, seamless and fast — on any device.

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A Warm Welcome for Woo!

Ecommerce continues to grow in importance for people building their own sites and businesses, and this year one of the biggest names, WooCommerce, officially joined our parent company Automattic. Together, we’re excited to do even more to make it easy for businesses (large and small) to create and manage beautiful online stores.

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WordPress: Now Powering More than 25% of the Internet

WordPress.com is just one piece of a huge, open-source WordPress community, and together we hit a new milestone in November: WordPress is now powering more than 25% of all sites on the Internet.

The full history of WordPress is now documented in a new book, Milestones, released on GitHub in December.

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New on WordPress in 2015

A lot of notable companies and publishers created new sites on WordPress.com and WordPress in 2015. Here’s a few:

Feminist Frequency & The Online Safety Guide

The groundbreaking site and nonprofit organization, created by Anita Sarkeesian, is now part of the WordPress.com family, and we were proud to work with her on a new project: The Online Safety Guide for protecting against online harassment.

RED.org

We worked with the global AIDS charity (RED) on their new site. The organization is aiming to help “deliver the first AIDS-free generation in over thirty years.”

Kill Screen

The videogame arts & culture magazine launched a successful Kickstarter this year to reinvent their print magazine, and we helped them reinvent their site on WordPress.

The New York Review of Books

The legendary literary publication, founded by Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein in 1963, joined the WordPress community in December 2015.

Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings

Popova’s treasure trove of interestingness has been on WordPress for a long time, but this year she unveiled a fresh new design.

Ree Drummond, The Pioneer Woman

The award-winning blogger, bestselling author, Food Network TV star, and longtime WordPress publisher brought her site to WordPress.com in 2015.

Upvoted

Reddit turned its massive community into an editorially (or “Redditorially”) curated magazine on WordPress.com.

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Filed under: Admin Bar, Community, Hiring, WordPress, WordPress.com

New year, new blog? Start on the right foot.

Thinking of starting a blog, or re-committing to an older one? Blogging’s more fun with a little help from your friends: join us in Blogging U. for Blogging 101: Zero to Hero this January, and give your blogging skills a boost.

Blogging U. courses combine expert advice with personalized help and a supportive community. Reach your own creative goals, improve your technical know-how, and make new friends!

Blogging 101 is our foundational, get-started course: three weeks of bite-size blogging assignments that take you from “Blog?” to “Blog!” January’s course runs from Monday, January 4 through Friday, January 22.

Here’s how it works:

• Every weekday, we’ll send you one new, bite-sized assignment to help you publish a post, customize your blog, or engage with the blogging community.
• You’ll write posts and work through the assignments on your blog, to develop and focus it.
• When you need a helping hand, you’ll have access to a private site, The Commons. There, you can connect with other participants, share your work, and get support from WordPress.com Editors and Happiness Engineers.
• You’ll walk away with a stronger focus for your blog, several published posts and a handful of drafts, a theme that reflects your personality, a small (but growing!) audience, a grasp of blogging etiquette — and a bunch of new friends.

Whether you’re just getting started or want to revive a dormant blog, we’ll help you build good blogging habits and blogger connections that will keep you going over the long haul. And of course, it’s completely free!

Ready to register? Fill out this short form. You’ll get an email with full course details prior to the start date:

Take Our Survey

Here’s to better blogging in 2016!

Filed under: Better Blogging, Community

What Was Your Favorite Post You Wrote in 2015?

The last few weeks of the year are the perfect time to look back and reflect on our most memorable work, so we asked a few bloggers to tell us about one blog post they put together in 2015 that they especially liked. Here are their responses.

Myfanwy, myf draws apparently

Favorite post: “How I experienced the life of a model, with Gudrun Sjoden”

I think I’d have to say that my favorite post was my account of traveling to Stockholm in Sweden to be an unlikely fashion model; it describes a rare and treasured couple of days, and then I got to relive the pleasure all over again by drawing and sharing it on WordPress.com! The comments were so warm and appreciative that I really got the feeling I’d added just a little bit of joy to the internet.

It was a welcome affirmation that people enjoy my view of the world, even if that view comes from a middle-aged aficionado of thrift shopping. That’s one of the real pleasures of blogging: showing who you are, and finding the people that appreciate that.

Sarah E. Bond

Favorite post: “Searching for the String: Labyrinths in Classical and Medieval Art”

My favorite post is actually about labyrinths. When I was younger, my favorite movie was Labyrinth (1986). The film spoke to my already steadfast love of muppets and no doubt fostered an early appreciation for David Bowie, but it was the movie’s maze — a character in the movie in its own right — that stuck with me year after year.

After graduating high school, I decided to become a classicist, and began to learn more about the ancient origins of the labyrinth. Although mazes and even the word labyrinth predate the myth, it is the Greek tale of Theseus and the Minotaur that gave us the famed Labyrinth of Crete (as it turns out, Jim Henson was also a fan of the myth.) In Greco-Roman antiquity, the symbol of the labyrinth became popular on coins, in mosaics, and in various literary works. Although you might think the pagan myth would die out in the transition to the early Christian period, it was again adapted for new purposes well into the Middle Ages and again in the Renaissance. The labyrinth, in its various iterations, often served as a metaphor for life in general. Whether a Greek or a medieval pilgrim, any person can relate to the feeling of being lost and searching for the string that Ariadne provided Theseus to allow him to escape.

In my own professional quest, I moved four times in the past six years: Chapel Hill, Lexington, Milwaukee, Iowa City. Along the way, I have gained and lost relationships, lamented how long it would be until I saw my family again, and wondered if there was any real purpose to this academic labyrinth. It took a lot of heartache, but I finally feel like I found the string I am supposed to follow. The reason the labyrinth has remained a malleable symbol for so long is that it speaks to humanity’s persistent questions of purpose, salvation, and creation. At the end of Labyrinth the movie, young Sarah realizes her own power to solve the puzzle and to escape the grasp of Jareth (David Bowie). She discovers that she is the heroine of her own story, and I guess I had to learn something similar. Perhaps that is why this is one of my favorite blog posts this year.

Tommy Tomlinson

Favorite post: “Our Old Dog”

You always hear that you should tell people how much they mean to you before it’s too late. I’m not sure how this applies to pets, but I wanted to write something about our dog, Fred, before he got to the end. He was such a big part of our lives. After I wrote this piece I heard from readers all over the world who shared memories of the pets they loved. It was one more moment of beauty that Fred was responsible for.

Catherine Ryan Howard

Favorite post: “I’ve Been Bursting To Tell You: I Got a Book Deal!”

I remember quite clearly setting up my very first WordPress.com blog in early 2010. A few months earlier, I’d made the drastic decision to quit my awful, soul-destroying office job and use what little savings I had to go “all in” on my dream of being a published novelist. Part of my plan was to self-publish some non-fiction and use the proceeds to keep myself in coffee grounds and ink cartridges (both crucial novel-writing tools, I’ll have you know), and the blog was where I was going to publicly chronicle my self-publishing (mis?)adventures.

I had to admit why I was doing it, which meant I had to publicly declare my goal of being a published novelist. I remember thinking, What if it never happens? What if I never get to write “the” blog post? What happens if the end of this journey is a quiet fade into public failure?

The next five years were one hell of a ride. My posts about self-publishing were a hit and they helped make my self-published books hits too. I began to speak on the subject, got a job working with a major publishing house as a social media marketer, and connected, through my blog, with fellow writers all over the world — some of whom became good friends in real life.

Then, in May of this year, I got to write the blog post I’d been dreaming of writing ever since I started my blog back in 2010, the one in which I shared the news I’d been dreaming of having all my life (as evidenced by the photo I included in it, one of me aged 7 or 8 banging away on the typewriter Santa gave me while Barbie’s Pink Magic Van sits to the side). Now I’ll be using my blog to chronicle my next adventure: my debut thriller will be published by Corvus/Atlantic in Ireland and the U.K. on May 5, 2016.

Where will your blog take you?

Sarah Kelly, Extra Dry Martini

Favorite post: “The Beach”

Extra Dry Martini is my diary. I document my life, and in particular, the challenges inherent in navigating an uncertain future while trying to heal from tremendous loss and grief. My writing is raw and honest, but also, I believe, hopeful, and ultimately about redemption. This year has been a rollercoaster — with incredible highs and lows — so when WordPress.com asked me to pick my favorite post, it felt a bit like asking me to pick my favorite moment from the whirlwind that was 2015.

I settled on “the beach,” a piece I wrote this summer that’s essentially a love letter to the place where I grew up. It’s a place where all of my happiest childhood memories are contained, but also a place that harbors a great darkness underneath the sunshine and saltwater and sea air. I didn’t realize it at the time of publication, but the beach would also end up being the place I’d travel to a mere six weeks later to see my beloved grandfather through hospice.

In good times and bad, the beach is my constant. Writing this post made me realize just how important this place is, both in my life, and in my writing.

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Explore the latest from more great bloggers at Discover!

Filed under: Community, WordPress, Writing

New Theme: Pique

Today, we’re welcoming a new free theme to our collection: Pique.

Pique

Pique is a stylish and modern theme designed as a one-page scrolling site, giving your customers easy access to all your information in one place. Personalize your site by adding featured images to your pages and tweaking the colors to create a site that’s perfectly suited to your brand. Upload your logo and custom header image to make your site distinctive.

Designed specifically with coffee shops in mind, Pique is particularly well-suited for small, independent businesses. Use it to build an online home for your bakery, hair salon, shop, or cafe.

And of course, it’s completely responsive, so it will look good on any device your customers are using, whether they’re on the road or at home.

Pique has lots of fantastic features that will allow you to create a beautiful and dynamic showcase for your business, including:

• Upload your own Site Logo
• Customer testimonials
• Optional sidebar on post pages
• Custom menus in both the header and footer
• Custom headers and backgrounds
• Featured images on posts and pages
• A large footer with three widget areas
• Social menu support

Single posts in Pique are clean and elegant and feature an optional sidebar for additional content.

Give Pique a spin on the Theme Showcase!

Filed under: Themes

What Are Your Blogging Goals for 2016?

You may not bother with resolutions for the new year, but setting goals for your blog helps you to (re)focus and shape your online home. We asked a diverse mix of bloggers:

What’s the most important goal you have for your site in 2016?

Lisa Jakub, lisajakub.net

My resolution is very simple and not so easy: I want to create work that tells the truth. Writing, for me, is all about connection, and nothing creates connection like open-hearted honesty. It’s about putting letters and spaces together in a way that reaches out and allows all of us to feel less alone. It’s about finding our commonalities and celebrating our individual authenticity. And if we can laugh about it in the process  — even better.

Emily J. Petersen, The Bookshelf of Emily J.

My goal for my blog in 2016 is to re-personalize it! I started out by writing about my memories and experiences as they connected with books, and I’ve gotten away from that. I’m working on a PhD and finishing my dissertation this year, so I’ve become preoccupied. My book reviews tend to be just that: book reviews. I think what made my blog special in the beginning were the stories I told about my life as they related to books.

So in 2016, I plan to make my posts more personal, more engaging, and more sincere. I read a lot of books, but I’d rather write about my personal reaction or connection to a book than repeat the plot line. I think this personalization will help me to reconnect with my loyal readers and to find new ones. I love the community aspects of blogging, so I hope to reinsert myself there by sharing who I am and opening up more.

Sam Nathapong, Sam in Bangkok

I’m interested in free speech in 2016. Bangkok, Thailand, has been under the military government for more than a year, since the May 2014 coup. The military junta has created a climate of fear among us, from small bloggers to journalists and academics all over the country.

My blog is small, so I’m not trying to be all Katniss Everdeen about it — and Bangkok is far more than what is described as The Hunger Games’ District 12. On Twitter, it feels especially tense for those of us writing in the English language from Thailand. But with this global language, I want to reach more people and let them know that there are still reasons to smile under such conditions — and to tell my own part of this story.

Bangkok is still rich in culture, and we have so many visitors each year. I believe that everyone has their own unique Bangkok story inside of them, and my goal is to reach out to these people. My door is open if they have a story to tell.

In 2016, I want Sam in Bangkok to be a blog where we can share and discover stories about Bangkok — freely.

Summer Pierre, Paper Pencil Life

I have always been a conflicted blogger, feeling slightly apologetic for keeping what can seem an indulgently personal project in a public forum. Yet after this year of feeling more connected than ever to a growing audience, due to telling my imperfect and personal stories, it hit me: Who am I kidding? I love my blog. If it weren’t for my blog I would have never tried half of what I’ve done. It is both my lab and my studio, and although I might have made comics and written essays without it, I doubt I’d ever have felt as connected to people on such a consistent personal level through my work.

Without my blog, I would never have come up with my latest endeavor: teaching an online class on comics in the New Year. The class is a direct extension of everything I’ve made on my blog and feels like a natural progression as an artist on WordPress. I feel more excited than ever to continue to tell my own story through words and pictures, and to extend the reach by helping others tell their own. What could be better?

Russell Jackson, Draw the Public

Samara Speaks, A Buick in the Land of Lexus

In 2016, I would like to parlay my blog into a successful freestyle rap career and share my rhythmic wisdom across the globe. Sadly, I have zero rapping skills. Can I change my answer?

For 2016, I would like to actually HAVE goals. For two years I’ve flown by the seat of my pants. (What does that even MEAN? Sounds painful.)

The grown-up bloggers set goals. They use editorial calendars and blog organizers. Blog organizers? I can’t even find a clean bra. Check my Google Analytics? I get lost at Walmart.

I’m reasonably intelligent, but blog tech jargon makes me hyperventilate. Someone says, “determine a niche to develop your overall SEO strategy.” I hear, “Blerghity blergh blergh.”

Did you know Pinterest can be used to drive traffic to your blog? Do you know what custom CSS is? Bounce rate? Meta tags?

Did you know that the Amish are a real culture of people and not just an old-timey group of actors who are just really into it? Do you realize that our presidential elections are basically a national scam and we’d be better off electing a God of Cake?

So, for 2016, my big goal is to SET GOALS.

Guess what? I checked with Lady Google, and only 8 percent of goals are ever met. If seven of us are answering this question, only .56 of us are going to meet our goals. Not even ONE WHOLE PERSON!

Maybe winging it IS the way to go. I’m not rich or famous. But I must be doing something right, because I have the coolest blog family on the planet. The people who read my blog make it what it is. I don’t have to change a thing.

So, I guess my goal is to remain goalless. I am, after all, a non-conformist. Just like everyone else.

J.S. Park, jsparkblog.com

Every blog can hit a stride, and then the pressure’s on. With enough diligence, dark roast, and in-brain mud-wrestling over the perfect click-worthy title, we can get what we always wanted: a steady stream of readers.

The problem is we try to duplicate lightning in a bottle, and we hold too many bottles, and we stretch ourselves thin with thunder. Either the blog will turn into Swiss cheese, or we will. Or in my case, both.

I rode a wave this year that culminated in the best blog performance since I started 15 years ago, with a tsunami surge of clicks over the summer. But it came at the cost of my restless desperation. I had to write on everything. I had to have an opinion. I had to ride the momentum to rapture.

I knew it was bad when I thought, I can’t stop now. I thought stopping meant quitting, and quitting in my Eastern Asian world is harakiri by pen. 

My posts became passive-aggressive, choppy, less coherent and thoughtful. I got emails that said, “Sounds like it’s been rough lately, sorry.”

Their concern broke through. I had to rest.

I treat rest like an annoying pause-button before I get back to work, but rest is the living actual life that makes the work make sense. I forget to enjoy and cherish the downtime: which isn’t really downtime, but real time. I forget to remove myself from stats and post schedules to live life itself, so that I can have something to say at all. And I had to quit superimposing those moments into social media, to just let them breathe without an obligation to post them.

Rest is the room to breathe.

My hope is to write less and live more. Rest more and write better. Be still in the balcony and regain perspective. It’s this space that cultivates creativity, for better thoughts, and more thunder.

We wish all of you a Happy New Year — and can’t wait to see what you create in 2016.

Filed under: Better Blogging, Community, WordPress.com

New Theme: Twenty Sixteen

We’re pleased to announce that Twenty Sixteen — the new WordPress default theme designed by Takashi Irie — is available to all WordPress.com sites.

Twenty Sixteen is a fresh take on the traditional blog format, with great features including:

• • Optional sidebar
  • Multiple menu positions and a social menu
  • Overhanging large images
  • Post intro and pull quotes

Handy customization options let you create your own look. You can choose from several beautiful color schemes or create your own, and further customize by adding your own background or header.

Twenty Sixteen has many accessibility features and is universally designed for a wide range of WordPress users, whether you’re a first-time blogger or seasoned pro. Since the theme is developed with a mobile-first approach, it will look great no matter what device you’re using to view the site.

Check out Twenty Sixteen right here.

Filed under: Themes

The New WordPress.com App for Windows Is Here

You asked, and we answered—quickly! Just weeks after unveiling the all-new WordPress.com and desktop app for Mac, we’re thrilled to introduce our new Windows app.

Now you can manage your sites, write and publish, and even customize your site and view stats from a dedicated app in your Windows Start Menu. Use it for your sites on WordPress.com, as well as for self-hosted WordPress sites. (For the latter, you’ll just need to have the Jetpack plugin installed to connect your site.)

And just like the rest of WordPress.com, the new Windows app is simple, seamless, and blazingly fast.

Download the app

The new Windows app includes:

• The My Sites dashboard for managing multiple sites, whether WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress with Jetpack.
• The new WordPress.com Editor, with in-app previewing and draft auto-saving.
• The Reader, which lets you follow and read any of your favorite sites, and the all-new Discover, which recommends outstanding content from across all of WordPress.
• Insights and Stats, which show you exactly how your site and posts are performing.
• In-app notifications, so you can see comments, likes, and new follows all in one place.

This, of course, is just the beginning. We’re excited to have you try it out, and thanks for all your continued feedback and support. 

Learn more about the new WordPress.com in the video below. Since its launch you’ve already published upwards of 3 million posts using the new editor!

Filed under: Admin Bar, Applications, Features, WordPress.com, Writing