Tim McGiven's Blog, page 35

Try Our New Tools for Creating Beautiful Sites

Last week we opened up limited access to a revolutionary array of new site editing tools that will transform how you create, edit, and update the look and feel of your WordPress.com website by leveraging easy-to-use drag and drop functionality. 

Today we’re excited to announce that the wait is over. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling these new tools out to all of our customers. Here’s what that means for you.

Exciting Features Included in This Release List view for dragging and dropping your content

Until now, you’ve been able to create and customize the key content on your posts and pages by dragging and dropping blocks into any arrangement and style you can think of.

Full Site Editing takes that same idea a giant leap further.

The headers, footers, menus, and other elements of the page previously only editable behind the scenes are now at your complete control via the block editor you’re already used to using. That means you can drag, drop, and visually edit any and all parts of your site without a line of code or an admin dashboard in sight.

Any page, any post, any way

With the new Site Editor, you’ll also be able to take total control of the look and feel of specific page templates. From your home page to individual posts, your 404 page to your blog archive, FSE gives you quick, granular control of the design of each and every element of your site.

Instant visual feedback 

Speaking of granular control, the integrated Styles tool gives you an easy-access way to make subtle or site-wide changes using an intuitive suite of visual design tools.  From your global color palette to fine-tuning your typography, building out a beautiful, consistent look and feel is now an instantaneous, hands-on experience.

What this means for you

You’ll be pleased to hear that you don’t need to take any action at all, whether you have an existing site or are about to create a new one. You’ll be able to continue editing your site in exactly the same way you always have by choosing not to use the new block themes. 

For new sites

In the coming days, all new sites will give you the chance to choose a theme that takes full advantage of the new Full Site Editing experience. We’ll be rolling out new resources, guides, and help docs to get you up to speed, fast.

For existing sites

Over the next few weeks, we will be rolling out the ability to switch your existing site over to a theme that will give you access to these features. This won’t be automatically switched, so watch out for an announcement and the details on how to access these new tools. 

The WordPress.com advantage

If you follow the wider Open Source WordPress project, you might have heard of ‘releases’ or ‘versions’ of WordPress. Full Site Editing incorporates the tools and features added to WordPress in the latest release, WordPress 5.9, which went out on January 25th. 

As the fastest WordPress managed hosting provider on the planet, WordPress.com includes everything you’d expect from WordPress 5.9 hosted elsewhere, with blazing fast site speeds and specialized integration into our platform to help ensure that all of our users have a great first experience with these exciting new features from day one.  We’d love to hear what you think of the new experience and are always on hand to answer any questions you have as you make the switch.

Ready to get started?

We’re dedicated to helping you get the most out of the new Site Editor experience. 

If you’re eager to get started, you might find these extra resources a great next step:

Check out a great overview of Full Site Editing in action in the official WordPress 5.9 intro video Keep an eye out for our upcoming webinars on Full Site Editing. Check out some of the detailed deep-dive content in our support docs. 

Bloganuary: A Resounding Success!

Even though you can build any type of website on WordPress.com, from an eCommerce store to a photography portfolio, blogs still make up the majority of our 60 million plus sites. To improve interaction and connection with these bloggers, we tried something new: Bloganuary, a writing challenge throughout the month of January, where we provided daily prompts to inspire people to publish blog posts.

Never having run a month long blogging challenge before, we didn’t know what to expect. Would bloggers join in? Would the community appreciate this? 

But the results were incredible! Thousands of participants joined in from around the world, blogging in different languages. Perhaps what warmed our hearts the most, though, was we got to see first-hand how close our community of global bloggers really is. People liked and commented on shared posts, watched their audiences grow, and followed new sites they didn’t previously know about. 

But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what some of Bloganuary’s participants had to say (some grammar edits were made for clarity purposes):

An excellent initiative. So much variety. I think, “what will I say?” and then come up with something unexpected. Have been on hiatus with my account through some of [the] lockdown. What a great way to get back into the swing of things. Thank you

– Storyteller, artandidioms.com

The #Bloganuary blogging challenge has been interesting! I have been writing a different kind of post from the usual – more personal posts. At first I was a little uninspired but have grown into it and am enjoying it (also meeting a diverse group of bloggers!) @wordpressdotcom

— Emma Lewis (@Petchary) January 24, 2022

#bloganuary was a chance for me to actually live in a community where we write, we read what others have to say and perhaps share our stories with each other. Every individual has a distinctive power through which he communicates with others, some by painting, others sing and we…WRITE. The spark of this whole challenge was how one topic can cause ripples in many ways and how many unique perspectives there are in a single topic.

– SaniaDiary, saniadiary.wordpress.com

@wordpressdotcom Thank you for #Bloganuary as it's gotten me back into the groove of writing my blog. I was stagnant and struggling bit your daily prompts have me, once again, excited about writing! pic.twitter.com/m8PsHJai3D

— Fiona (@daddiesgrl45) January 27, 2022

This is a real challenge, something I have never done before. I normally write a blog every few months but starting in February, I think it will be weekly. I have thoroughly enjoyed #bloganuary so far and intend to go all the way.

– johnarthurbetts

With such a great response to Bloganuary, we’re working to find new ways to engage with our WordPress.com community, so keep an eye out for some new and exciting challenges this year!

And if blogging publicly isn’t your preferred way to write, or if you like receiving daily writing prompts, consider downloading the Day One app. This will allow you to journal privately, or use the prompts to maintain your blogging routine.

WordPress.com Has a New Home on YouTube

The promise of the internet is nearly as big as the internet itself. With endless knowledge at your fingertips and electrifying inspiration everywhere you look, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to build your own website — your own way. 

Today, that became easier. We’re thrilled to announce the brand-new WordPress.com YouTube channel.

Whether you’re just starting out or are the seasoned pro your friends turn to, this channel is here to support all your website-building needs. Our step-by-step tutorials will have you up and running in 10 minutes — turning frustration into celebration. Follow along, find the answers you need, and become the authority in your own experience. 

And we’re not stopping at education and support. Above all, this channel will showcase you. Nothing speaks louder than our users’ success stories, and we want to share them all.

From first-time bloggers to ecommerce wizards, we’re going to bring them together to share their stories. What better way to learn than from each other?

With more than 15 years powering the open web, we’re here to support your journey: your successes, your learning experiences, and your fabulous ideas coming to life. Wherever you are on that path, we’ve got you covered.

Join us on YouTube

You won’t want to miss the educational content and community highlights coming to the channel.

Buy Paid Plugins Directly on WordPress.com

For users on our Business and eCommerce Plans, plugins are a critical part of the WordPress.com experience. We’re always looking for ways to simplify the process of discovering and installing powerful WordPress plugins.

As a result, we’re now making it possible to purchase certain plugins directly on the WordPress.com plugin page. Not only that, but WordPress.com will offer monthly and annual plugin pricing which provides site owners more flexibility.

Initially, you can purchase six of our most popular WooCommerce plugins on the WordPress.com plugins page.

WooCommerce Subscriptions — Allow customers to subscribe to your products or services and pay on a weekly, monthly or annual basis. WooCommerce Bookings — Allow customers to book appointments, make reservations or rent equipment without leaving your site. WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping — Advanced, flexible shipping. Define multiple shipping rates based on location, price, weight, shipping class or item count. WooCommerce AutomateWoo — Powerful marketing automation for WooCommerce. AutomateWoo has the tools you need to grow your store and make more money. WooCommerce Shipment Tracking — Add shipment tracking information to your orders. WooCommerce Xero — Save time with automated sync between WooCommerce and your Xero account.

Purchasing a plugin via the new WordPress.com interface is simple. On the plugins page, click on one of the paid plugin cards to be redirected to a detailed product listing page. When you’re ready, click the purchase button in the top right of the product listing page. Your purchase won’t be final until you confirm your payment method and details on the following page. The plugin will be installed automatically.

This announcement is just the start — look for more paid plugins and other exciting updates over the coming months. Let us know in the comments below what plugins you would like to see available for purchase directly on WordPress.com.

Stay tuned and click here to begin exploring plugins now!

As a reminder, all plugins (free or paid) are currently only available to customers with a WordPress.com Business or eCommerce Plan. If you’re interested in purchasing or upgrading to an annual Business Plan, click here for a 25% discount off your first year.

Promo code: PLUGINSBLOG25

Connect With Your Audience: Integrate Social Media With Your WordPress.com Website

Integrating your social media presence with your WordPress.com website has never been easier. We offer many options and tools that are available on all plans, at no additional cost. Whether you want to auto-share your website posts to a social media platform, display your social media posts on your website, provide links to your various accounts, or encourage your website visitors to share your content, we’ve got what you need to connect with your audience. 

Posting to Social Media

All WordPress.com plans include Publicize, a feature that lets you automate posting to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. When you set up and configure these social media accounts to your site, every new post you publish will automatically post to the platforms you’ve selected. This is a great way to repurpose your website content on your social channels, reach your audience where they already are, and drive traffic to your site. 

It’s important to note that Publicize cannot push posts to Instagram since Instagram doesn’t allow auto-posting from third-party services. However, if you’re on the Business plan or ecommerce plan, then you could consider using a third-party automation tool such as Buffer or Hootsuite, both of which can be connected to your WordPress.com site using plugins. There may be other tools that offer this feature as well, though you’ll want to research their limitations and plans to learn more.*

*Please note that third-party tools and plugins are outside the scope of WordPress.com support.

Social Media Feeds on Your Site

Another option that WordPress.com offers is displaying your social media platforms on your website. You can add widgets, blocks, or feeds to your WordPress.com site to display posts from your social media accounts in real-time. This can help you stay connected with your audience when they’re taking a break from social media, but still checking your site.

WordPress.com offers built-in features for displaying your social media feeds from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and TikTok, to name a few. We also provide a number of support documents to help walk you through the options for these embedding features.

Social Media Menus

You can also strengthen the cross-connection between your website and your social media platforms with the addition of social media menus. Many WordPress.com themes offer a dedicated Social Menu that allows you to connect your site to various social media platforms and display their respective icons on your site.

If your theme doesn’t offer this menu option, you can still create social media-style menus using our Social Icons Block. This ensures that your audience knows how to easily find you on your preferred social media platforms.

Social Sharing

Last but not least, don’t forget to enlist your visitors to share the love from your website to their social accounts by setting up WordPress.com’s Social Sharing option.

This feature allows you to choose which social platforms you want to encourage your visitors to spread the word by providing a Share button on every piece of content you publish. Nothing connects your audience more than the ability to share.

WordPress.com provides you with multiple built-in tools to make your website the centralized hub for connecting and integrating with your social media platforms—at no additional cost—so you can connect to your audience smoothly and seamlessly, all while driving traffic to your WordPress.com website.

WordPress.com will be hosting a live special topic webinar on Tuesday, February 22, 2022 at 19:00 UTC. Join our WordPress experts to learn all of the essential tips to integrate social media with your website and how to add Link in Bio pages to your website. Register for free today!

Get Early Access to Full Site Editing!

A big change is coming to WordPress to make it easier than ever to create websites called Full-Site Editing. You can be one of the first to try it exclusively on WordPress.com, before it gets merged into core open source WordPress with the upcoming release of WordPress version 5.9. 

What is Full Site Editing?

If you caught the State of the Word or follow along with news on WordPress.org, you may have heard about “Full Site Editing”, a set of new features that will allow you to edit all parts of your site. This collection of powerful new features empowers WordPress users to easily create and customize their entire websites without needing to know how to code. 

Some highlights of Full Site Editing include:

Point and click edits in all parts of your site, including headers, footers, and sidebars!Drag and drop blocks to design beautiful and complex navigation menu bars.Edit items like your header, page content, and footer all in one place. You’ll no longer need to jump out of your page editor to make changes in the Customizer! Everything is available to edit right where you already are.Use all the power of blocks, reusable blocks, and pre-designed block patterns to design every part of your site.

If you’ve struggled to make your entire WordPress website look just the way you wanted in the past, we encourage you to give it another try. Full Site Editing may be exactly what you’ve needed.

What’s Available Right Now?

The WordPress.com team is excited to announce that we’re now offering early access to Full Site Editing (Beta) for all new sites created by our existing English-speaking users! If this describes you, then you don’t have to wait. 

Eager to give it a try? Just spin up a new site from your dashboard.

If FSE is not yet available to you, don’t worry. Stay tuned for more updates as the rollout continues for both existing sites and new users.

Want to know more about Full Site Editing Beta? Check out this free Full Site Editing course created by the WordPress.org team to help you get started!

Get Started with new webinars

Launching a website or learning how to monetize your online store can be overwhelming. But we are here to help you along the way. We are hosting free webinars to help get you on track and answer any questions you have.  We cover different topics and will soon have new ones. Make sure to bookmark the Webinars page for upcoming webinars. In the meantime, check out our January webinars.

The timezones are in UTC but you can click the time to see it in your own timezone.

Getting Started Mondays1900 UTCTuesdays1000 UTCWednesdays0600 UTCThursdays1900 UTCFridays1600 UTC Making Money Mondays – hours alternate weekly0600 UTC and 1600 UTC Blogging Tuesdays – hours alternate weekly0600 UTC and 1600 UTCEvery other Wednesday at1400 UTC WooCommerce 101 Thursdays 1600 UTC Spanish Webinars Every other Wednesday 1400 UTC

Get the specific dates and registration forms at https://wordpress.com/webinars/

Who’s Invited: New WordPress.com users and anyone interested in learning more about WordPress.com’s website capabilities.

Our WordPress.com customer service team, we call them Happiness Engineers, are experts in helping new users get up and running on their new websites. Across each week of webinars, we’ll cover questions about the basics of setting up your website, handling simple and recurring payments, blogging best practices, and adding in eCommerce capabilities. Come with questions as you’ll be able to make them during the live webinar.

Everyone is welcome, even if you already have a site set up. We know you’re busy, so if you can’t make the live event, you’ll be able to watch a recording of the webinar on our YouTube channel.

Live attendance is limited, so be sure to register early. We look forward to seeing you on the webinar!

WP Courses Helps Launch Creators Into The New Year!

As we approach the new year, we like to encourage our team, our friends, and our customers to look back and celebrate all we were able to accomplish. While this year has had its challenges, we kept creating, connecting, and growing.

We launched WP Courses almost exactly a year ago with our “Blogging for Beginners” course. With all of the excitement around the course, our team was eager to connect with and help more creators so we quickly followed with “Podcasting for Beginners.” With these courses, we’ve been able to connect with a wide range of creators who cover anything and everything from dementia to folk music. What has been more exciting and rewarding for our team is being able to help them grow. The engaged members in our course communities have been able to grow their audience, expand their content, and even monetize their site — getting paid to do what they love!

It’s fair to say we’re addicted to helping creators grow and we don’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. We were thrilled to see over 13,000 learners sign up for our free blogging course when we launched it just last month and you can count on us to keep that momentum going into 2022!

As a way to help you build up some momentum of your own, we’re running a sale starting today and going through 1/8/2022. You can use the promo code “Time2Launch” to take 25% off of your purchase at checkout.

Engage with a community of peers and learn from their experiences, solicit feedback, and make lasting connections. Join regular workshops and office hours with our experts to help get unstuck or learn new skills. Access to tons of content to help you work through everything from initial set up to growing your audience. Quarterly meetups, exclusive offers, and more! Stop waiting and start growing now!

Everything you need to launch and grow your idea in 2022. Just use “Time2Launch” for 25% off at checkout.

Let’s do this!

New Year, New Success with Bloganuary

In a few short days, you’ll surely be asked: What are your New Year’s resolutions for 2022? If starting a blogging habit is one of them, we’re here to help!  At WordPress.com, we’re trying something new for 2022. Instead of individual New Year’s resolutions, we’ll be focusing on a shared goal we can accomplish together.

Say Hello to Bloganuary

We’re running a month-long blogging challenge in January and we invite you to join us! Each day, you’ll receive a new writing prompt to inspire you to publish a post on your blog. There is no right or wrong way to respond to the prompts. Take this opportunity to exercise your creativity and have fun. Maybe you’ll choose to respond with a story, a drawing, a poem, a photo, a comic strip, a recipe, or even a playlist. Anything goes!

By participating in Bloganuary, you’ll join bloggers around the world in the shared goal of creating and/or solidifying a strong blogging habit. You’ll get access to the Bloganuary community site where you can meet and get to know others working toward similar goals. You can share tips, learn from others, reach a new audience for your blog, and make some new blogging friends.

Here’s a badge you can add to your blog to show others what you’re doing and encourage them to join in the fun. 

Join the Bloganuary challenge, stay motivated, and start the new year off on the write track! Click the button to learn more and sign up using your WordPress.com account.

Learn More

If you’d prefer to journal privately instead of blog publicly, check out the Day One app:

iOSMacAndroid

Live from New York … It’s State of the Word!

Yesterday saw the return to a live State of the Word annual address, broadcast to the world from our new NoHo event space in New York City! Suited up and re-energized by a recent trip to Antarctica, Matt delivered his thoughts on the state of WordPress in 2021 and made some big announcements for 2022 and beyond. Check out some highlights below or watch the entire address!

WordPress 5.9 is Coming in January

Originally slated for December 2021, the release of WordPress 5.9 was delayed until January 25 so that full site editing – which allows for greater customization and simpler site building – could be fully realized prior to the 5.9 reveal. In other exciting news, Matt shared that version 6.0 would be coming later in the year and that 2022 could very well see a total of four new releases instead of the usual three. Watch this space!

2021 WordPress.org Highlights: News, Openverse, Pattern Directory

This year, WordPress.org saw the redesign of the News page, which was inspired aesthetically by the playfulness of jazz, as well as the launch of Openverse search engine (named before Facebook’s recent name shift, we swear!). The search engine allows users to easily find openly licensed photos for their sites. There are currently more than 600 million images available on the Openverse, and early 2022 will see the addition of audio files! 

The Pattern Directory was also launched this year, where folks are able to copy and use any of its featured patterns to spice up their sites with little or no coding expertise. Starting with WordPress 5.9, users will also be able to add their own patterns to the directory, empowering them to help others create beautiful online content.

Hey, Hey, It’s the Polyglots

A sign of our ongoing commitment to global inclusivity, accessibility, and the democratization of the internet, 2021 saw a 76% increase in the language packs available as core WordPress plugins. We now have nearly 16,000 active translators in the community, which means that WordPress products can be translated into 71 different languages at release.

WordPress Powers 43% of the Internet (Actually 43.1%, But Who’s Counting?)

The company saw significant growth in 2021, and WordPress software now powers more than 43% of the internet. This year also saw nearly 12% growth in both the number of available themes and total downloads (fresh downloads, not including updates).

It’s a Block (Theme) Party!

At the end of 2020, there were only two or three fully customizable block themes available in the world. As the end of 2021 approaches, we now have 28 – a 1,000% increase! WordPress 5.8 added the ability to manage widgets in the block editor as well as a new Query Block and duotone filters, and next year will see the release of the appropriately titled Twenty Twenty-Two default block theme.

Have a Penny, Leave a Penny. Need a Penny, Take a Penny.

The Five for the Future initiative, launched in 2014, continues to be a top priority. In exchange for all of the benefits that they’ve personally received through their work, Five for the Future asks members of the WordPress community to give 5% of their time back to the community however they see fit – reporting bugs, offering translations, developing plugins or themes, designing code, offering training, etc. – which, in effect, fertilizes the soil for continued future growth.

Watch the Recap 

If you missed the event’s live stream, you can watch the full address below.