[New post] Introducing Content Options: An Easy New Way to Make Visual Changes to Your Site

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Thomas Guillot posted: "We're excited to announce a newly launched Customizer panel called Content Options. The Content Options section gives you an easy way to make small visual modifications across your site—like hiding the post date or displaying an excerpt instead of a full" Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on WordPress.com News Introducing Content Options: An Easy New Way to Make Visual Changes to Your Site by Thomas Guillot We're excited to announce a newly launched Customizer panel called Content Options. The Content Options section gives you an easy way to make small visual modifications across your site—like hiding the post date or displaying an excerpt instead of a full post, with no custom CSS needed! There are three main features for now: Blog Display: choose between displaying the full content of each post or an excerpt on the blog and category, tag, and date archive pages. A "default" option is also available for themes that mix excerpts and full posts based on post format. Author Bio: Hide the author bio on single posts. Post Details: Show or hide the post date, tags, or categories. You can see Content Options in action in this video: Check out the full support documentation to learn more about how these new theme options work. Not all the themes support all these features, but all new free themes will fully support Content Options. Here's an extended list of themes that either fully or partially support Content Options: Apostrophe Baskerville Big Brother Boardwalk Button Canard Cubic Dyad Ecto Edin Forefront (premium) Franklin Gateway Gazette Goran Harmonic Hemingway Rewritten Libre Libretto Motif Penscratch Pictorico Pique Rebalance Revelar Rowling Sapor Sela Sequential Shoreditch Twenty Sixteen We also plan to add support for modifying other elements in the future, including the ability to hide featured images and author names. If you have more ideas, we'd love to hear from you! Thomas Guillot | August 30, 2016 at 4:00 pm | Tags: Content Options | Categories: Customization | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-9AR Comment    See all comments    Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from WordPress.com News. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/08/30/introducing-content-options-an-easy-new-way-to-make-visual-changes-to-your-site/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

[New post] Introducing: Data for Breakfast!

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Carly Stambaugh posted: "  The Data Team at Automattic is pleased to announce a new blog for everyone who loves data! Data for Breakfast will feature posts about our data stack, trends in WordPress.com usage, and whatever currently tickles our data fancy. We're data scienti" Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on WordPress.com News Introducing: Data for Breakfast! by Carly Stambaugh   The Data Team at Automattic is pleased to announce a new blog for everyone who loves data! Data for Breakfast will feature posts about our data stack, trends in WordPress.com usage, and whatever currently tickles our data fancy. We're data scientists and engineers with a passion for our craft, and we're starting this blog to share that passion with you! In addition to blogging about data-powered WordPress.com features, like search and post recommendations, we'll share insights we've learned from our robust social network. Over 26% of the web is powered by WordPress! On an average day, the sites on WordPress.com alone stream about 1.5 billion events, and our largest Hadoop cluster does around 32TB of reads and writes. Our largest Elasticsearch cluster has 45 nodes and handles about 35 million queries on a daily basis. We're continuously developing this data ecosystem, and we'll share the journey with you. Why the toaster? The toaster was originally created by our team's designer Jan Cavan Boulas as an exercise to illustrate her design process. When the team reacted so positively, she quickly iterated, adding the bimodal slice of toast. With the comment, "Data: it's not a normal breakfast," our logo was born! So, if you like data, please join us for breakfast! You can find Data for Breakfast at data.blog. Interested in your own custom .blog domain? Apply for early access now!   Carly Stambaugh | August 29, 2016 at 3:59 pm | Tags: Blog, data, data.blog | Categories: Automattic, Stats, WordPress.com | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-9B5 Comment    See all comments    Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from WordPress.com News. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/introducing-data-for-breakfast/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

[New post] Level Up with Blogging U.

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Michelle W. posted: "Thousands of bloggers have used Blogging U’s step-by-step email courses to get started, grow as writers, create beautiful websites, learn the ins and outs of WordPress.com, push their photography skills, and more. There are ten different courses cu" Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on WordPress.com News Level Up with Blogging U. by Michelle W. Thousands of bloggers have used Blogging U’s step-by-step email courses to get started, grow as writers, create beautiful websites, learn the ins and outs of WordPress.com, push their photography skills, and more. There are ten different courses currently available, for folks of all interests and skill levels. Click any course's title to learn more about it and to get started! Blogging: Learning the Fundamentals -- a solid grounding in the three big components of blogging: publishing, customizing your blog, and engaging with the blogging community. Blogging: Commenting Basics -- a short course to get you comfortable with reaching out to other bloggers and commenting etiquette. Blogging: Branding and Growth -- audit your brand, analyze your stats, explore social networks, learn about SEO, and more in this intermediate course. Blogging: Intermediate Customization -- go in-depth into the customization options available on all WordPress.com sites. Learn to work with themes, custom headers, background and fonts, widgets, and basic HTML. Writing: Intro to Poetry -- find your inner Dickinson with daily poetry prompts, and sharpen your verse by learning some basic poetic forms and devices. Writing: Finding Everyday Inspiration -- a longer course to spark a daily writing practice and explore ways to find new post ideas all around you. Writing: Shaping Your Story -- an intermediate course on the art of revision: four weeks of self-editing and rewriting. Dig into the process of focusing and building a story, whether fiction or nonfiction. Photography: Developing Your Eye I -- a fun introduction to the fundamentals of photography, with 10 daily themes and shooting tips. Use any camera you like: the lens on your phone, a point-and-shoot, or a dSLR. Photography: Developing Your Eye II -- 10 more days of themes and tips, getting progressively more in-depth. Take it after Developing Your Eye I, or on its own! Websites: Build a Business Site -- create a website to help you meet your business goals. Publish pages and add site navigation, look at themes and customization, understand custom domains and SEO, and more. Courses give you a daily assignment or writing prompt, along with the technical help you need to complete the task and insider advice from both our editors and the wider blogging community; each course has a handy resource page collecting everything in one place for you to refer back to whenever you'd like. Publish new posts using the course's tag  and you'll be able to connect with others working through the same course for support, feedback, and friendship. Click on any course title for more detail on what it covers and to begin immediately (click the "Start" button on the course's page to enroll) or read on to learn more about how Blogging U. works. FAQs How do I start a course? Visit the page for the course you're interested in and click the "Start" button -- that's it! If you're logged in to WordPress.com, you'll receive an introductory email right away, and your first assignment a few minutes later. If you're not logged in, we'll prompt you to do so, and you're off and running. Do each assignment as you're able, and interpret them however makes sense for you and your site. What if I want to stop? No problem -- every email you'll receive includes an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Click it, and the course stops. This won't affect any of your other WordPress.com emails, like notifications. And if you want to give the course another try, you can register again. How many courses can I take? Can I take them more than once? As many as you'd like, as many times as you'd like. We recommend taking one course at a time -- blogging is fun, but that doesn't mean it can't also be overwhelming! -- but you're free to take multiple courses simultaneously. What if I need assistance during the course? Every assignment includes expert advice from our staff as well as links to more resources and to our customer support folks, called Happiness Engineers. How do I connect with other bloggers during my course? Reaching out to other bloggers helps participants get the most out of Blogging U. courses. We encourage you to use the tag for your course when publishing posts (e.g., #bloggingfundamentals) and to browse that tag in the Reader to find and connect with other bloggers. If you don't know what tag to use or browse, don't worry -- when you begin a course, we'll tell you. We also have a weekly Community Pool discussion thread where anyone can seek or give feedback on any aspect of blogging. A new thread opens every Monday. And each Friday, new bloggers are invited to share their first posts with the community in our First Friday thread. What if I don't blog on WordPress.com? All general assignments (publishing posts, customizing your blog, leaving comments, etc.) are applicable to any blog, anywhere. However, you'll need to have a WordPress.com account to register for a Blogging U. course, and any specific how-to guidance we offer will be specific to WordPress.com. How much does each course cost? Nothing. Blogging U. courses have always been free, and still are. Ready to register? Head to the Blogging U. home page to get started! Michelle W. | August 23, 2016 at 4:00 pm | Tags: blogging u., Business Sites, Email, Photography, WordPress.com education | Categories: Better Blogging, Community, Customization, Writing | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-9zV Comment    See all comments    Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from WordPress.com News. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/08/23/level-up-with-bloggingu/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

[New post] It’s Time: Apply For Early Access to Your Own .blog Domain Name

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Mark Armstrong posted: "If you've been looking for the perfect address for your blog, it's about to get even easier. Millions of new .blog domain names (like yourname.blog) will be available this November -- and starting today, you can apply to secure your own domain name. Jus" Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on WordPress.com News It's Time: Apply For Early Access to Your Own .blog Domain Name by Mark Armstrong If you've been looking for the perfect address for your blog, it's about to get even easier. Millions of new .blog domain names (like yourname.blog) will be available this November -- and starting today, you can apply to secure your own domain name. Read more of this post Mark Armstrong | August 18, 2016 at 3:00 pm | Tags: Blog, custom domains, dotblog, names | Categories: Domains, New Features, WordPress, WordPress.com | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-9zA Comment    See all comments    Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from WordPress.com News. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/its-time-apply-for-early-access-to-your-own-blog-domain-name/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com

[New post] Three Ways to Showcase Instagram Photos on Your Website

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Andrea Zoellner posted: "Your Instagram account is a great way to share your life, products, and services online. With all that great content, why not showcase your Instagram account on your website or blog? Learn three ways WordPress.com makes it easy and discover other sites th" Respond to this post by replying above this line New post on WordPress.com News Three Ways to Showcase Instagram Photos on Your Website by Andrea Zoellner Your Instagram account is a great way to share your life, products, and services online. With all that great content, why not showcase your Instagram account on your website or blog? Learn three ways WordPress.com makes it easy and discover other sites that are doing it well. Activate the Instagram Widget The Instagram Widget allows you to display your latest Instagram photos in your site's sidebar, footer, or other widget areas available with your theme. La Colombe is a chain of coffee shops in New England. Their blog, The Daily Grind, runs on WordPress.com, using the MH Magazine theme. They display their Instagram account prominently on their site using the sidebar widget area.   If you'd like to show off your latest shots like La Colombe, begin by adding the Instagram Widget to the widget area of your choice. You'll have to grant WordPress.com access to the Instagram account from which you want to display photos. You can only display images from an Instagram account that you own or manage. Embed an Instagram photo on a post or page Whether you're blogging about your new pair of flip-flops or your recent summer road trip, you can add snaps from your Instagram account to tell the story. Embedding an Instagram photo includes the likes and comments the photo is generating and encourages your readers to follow your Instagram account. Ily Magazine is a new digital magazine founded by Erika Ramirez. It uses the Goodz Magazine theme and features essays, interviews, and poetry about love, passion, and relationships.  In an interview with Amy Forsyth, author Jessica Rovniak includes a throwback Instagram photo right in the body of the post.  To embed an Instagram photo in a page or post, copy the link of the Instagram photo on any public account and paste it into the WordPress.com editor. Your photo will appear along with the caption and likes. Add an Instagram social media icon Another way to make Instagram a part of your website is to link to your account using a Social Media Icons Widget. Pine and Crave is a food blog by Mackenzie Schieck. She shares her recipes, home-decor ideas, and lifestyle tips with beautiful photographs and thoughtful writing using the Zuki theme.  Mackenzie features her Instagram account with the Instagram Widget as well as the Social Media Icons Widget in her theme's sidebar. To help her Instagram followers find the related content on her website, she's also created a dedicated page called Instagram Bites, where she publishes the Instagram images and links to the related posts. To add the Social Media Icons Widget just like Mackenzie, launch the Customizer and click on widgets. Select the widget area and the widget, then add your Instagram username in the proper field.   If you have an awesome Instagram account to share, try out these features on your website today! Looking to do more with your website? If you're eager to make your mark on the web with a professional website or an impressive blog, consider the Personal Plan. The Personal Plan includes: A personalized domain that's all your own. No more ads on your site — just your content. 3GB Storage Space for all your files. In addition, WordPress.com Plans come with fast, friendly help from our expert Happiness Engineers: ask any question from theme help to setting up pages to adding widgets on your WordPress.com site. We're ready to help make your site even better. Andrea Zoellner | August 11, 2016 at 4:00 pm | Tags: embeds, how to, Instagram, Widgets | Categories: Customization, Embeds, Features, HowTo, Photos, Social, Technical, Widgets | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-9xu Comment    See all comments    Like Unsubscribe to no longer receive posts from WordPress.com News. Change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/three-ways-to-showcase-instagram/ Thanks for flying with WordPress.com