Tim McGiven's Blog, page 40

New Theme: Twenty Twenty One

Twenty Twenty One is the latest WordPress default theme, which is now available to all WordPress.com sites. Designed by Mel Choyce-Dwan, the muted tones and timeless design will let your work shine.

Twenty Twenty One takes advantage of all the latest features of the Block Editor — the new block patterns allow you to create a beautiful layout in seconds.

Learn more about TwentyTwentyOne, or check out the demo site!

Let Our Experts Build Your Dream Website

If one of your 2021 resolutions is to launch a business or move an existing one fully online, our WordPress.com experts can help you make it happen.

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State of the Word 2020

State of the Word is an annual keynote address delivered by WordPress project co-founder, Matt Mullenweg. This year’s keynote will be streamed on the WordPress.org blog, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter on Thursday, Dec 17th, at 1600 UTC. You can view a replay of the event at any time after it airs on any of these platforms. 

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New to State of the Word?

If this is your first time hearing of this talk and want to learn more, you’re in luck! Check out previous recordings below.

State of the Word 2019 – WordCamp US, St. LouisState of the Word 2018 – WordCamp US, NashvilleAll recordings

New from WordPress.com Courses: Podcasting for Beginners

Would you like to learn how to create your own podcast or improve your existing podcast? WordPress.com Courses is excited to offer our new on-demand course, Podcasting for Beginners. We’ll help you get started, learn how to publish, and even how to use your podcast to make a living.  

Our courses are flexible. You can join, and learn at your own pace. But that’s just the start. Podcasting for Beginners is more than just a course —  it’s a community that gives you access to weekly Office Hours hosted by WordPress experts. A place where you can ask questions, share your progress, and pick up a few tips along the way. 

Lessons include step-by-step videos covering:

The Foundations (Curating your content and an editorial calendar.) Interviews (Recording, editing, and outreach.) Configuring Your Site (Integrating your podcast into your site and distributing it.) Growing Your Community (Engaging with listeners.) Making Money (Monetization basics and preparing for the future.) 

Let us take you from “What is podcasting?” to launching a podcast of your own.

Cost: A $99 annual subscription gives you unlimited access to course content, our online community, and virtual sessions.

Join now as our first 100 customers will enjoy 50% off the subscription fee with the code PODCAST50.

Register here!

Recommended Reads for International Day of Disabled Persons

WordPress.com, as my colleague Anne recently wrote, continues to be a space for people to tell their personal stories and amplify their voices. Today, International Day of Disabled Persons, we’d like to highlight a few perspectives and thoughtful reads to raise awareness of the myriad experiences of disabled people.

This reading list is merely a starting point — be sure to explore more posts tagged with “disability” in the WordPress.com Reader, for example. We hope it introduces you to writers and disability rights advocates whose work you may not be familiar with.

“How to Properly Celebrate a Civil Rights Law During a Pandemic in Which Its Subjects Were Left to Die” at Crutches and Spice

Imani Barbarin at Crutches and Spice writes about life, current events, entertainment, and politics from the perspective of a Black woman with cerebral palsy. Read her reflections on the death of actor Chadwick Boseman, or the anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act (which turned 30 this year), excerpted below.

Prior to the pandemic, disabled people were told that the accessibility we needed was cost-prohibitive and unlikely to be implemented only to watch as the institutions that barred our inclusion make those tools available now that nondisabled people needed them. We called for polling places and voting procedures to be made accessible only to watch as politicians shut down polling places in predominantly black neighborhoods. We begged for businesses to be inclusive and accessible to disabled customers only for accessibility to be pitted against small businesses and workers’ rights.

And now, unironically, they celebrate.

They celebrate not weighed down by their own words calculating the amount of acceptable death it would take to reopen the economy. They post our pictures celebrating their own “diversity and inclusion” without confronting the fact they only became accessible because of a pandemic and as they loudly push to reopen, they amplify our voices for now with no plan to continue to include the disability community as businesses start to reopen.

I’m angry.

But I am also filled with love and gratitude for my community.

#ADA30InColor at Disability Visibility Project

Founded by Alice Wong, The Disability Visibility Project is a community focused on creating and sharing disability media and culture. You’ll find a range of content, including oral histories, guest blog posts, and a podcast hosted by Wong and featuring conversations with disabled people.

If you’re not sure where to start, dive into the 13 posts in the #ADA30InColor series — it includes essays on the past, present, and future of disability rights and justice by disabled BIPOC writers. Here are excerpts from two pieces.

More than anything, however, it was my blindness that allowed me to experience perhaps the biggest impact of this transition. Being able to attend a “regular” school as opposed to the school for the blind and take classes with sighted peers every day, becoming friends with classmates who have different types of disabilities, having Braille placards by every classroom door at a school not intended solely for only blind students, meeting blind adults with various jobs — ranging from chemist to statistician to lawyer — was my new reality. Even as a teenager, I knew it was a great privilege to be in this new reality — America, where there were laws in place to protect the rights of disabled people to live, study, play, and work alongside the nondisabled. At the same time, this reality began to feel like a multi-layered burden as I began to form and understand different elements of who I am: a disabled, 1.5 generation Korean-American immigrant. 

“Building Bridges as a Disabled Korean Immigrant” by Miso Kwak

Even with medical documentation on file, disabled BIPOC face added suspicion, resistance, and stigma from instructors, particularly for invisible disabilities. We are also stereotyped in racially coded ways as unreasonable, aggressive, and “angry” when we self-advocate. We are especially heavily policed in graduate and professional programs, and this is apparent in our representation — while 26 percent of adults in the US have a disability, only 12 percent of post-baccalaureate students are students with disabilities. This is even lower among some ethnicities — only 6 percent of post-baccalaureate Asian American students have a disability.  

“The Burden and Consequences of Self-Advocacy for Disabled BIPOC” by Aparna R.

“My Favorite Wheelchair Dances” at Alizabeth Worley

Alizabeth Worley is a writer and artist with moderate chronic fatigue syndrome. She writes about topics like health and interabled marriage (her husband has cerebral palsy). In a recent post, Alizabeth compiles YouTube clips of beautiful and inspiring wheelchair dances, some of which are from Infinite Flow, an inclusive dance company. Here’s one of the dances she includes in her list, featuring Julius Jun Obero and Rhea Marquez.

“The Intersection of Queerness and Disability” at Autistic Science Person

Ira, the writer at Autistic Science Person, explores the parallels between queerness and disability, and the way other people make assumptions about their body.

I often put down Female for medical appointments even if there’s a Nonbinary option, as I don’t want to “confuse” them. It’s just easier for everyone, I think. I worry about backlash I would receive, or the confused looks I would get if I put down Nonbinary. I think about people tiptoeing around my gender. I can’t deal with even more self-advocacy in a medical visit as an autistic person, so it’s just not worth it, I think. I’m reminded of the time I carried folding crutches to my unrelated medical appointment. Both the staff and doctor asked me why I brought crutches when I was “walking normally.” I had to explain that I needed them on my walk back for my foot pain. Both explaining my disability and explaining my gender — explaining the assumptions around my body is exhausting.

No matter what, people will make assumptions. Both ableism and cisnormativity are baked into our brains and our society. The things people have to do to accommodate us and acknowledge us involves unlearning their preconceptions. Society really doesn’t want us to do that. This is why there is so much defensiveness for both providing accommodations and acknowledging someone’s gender, pronouns, and name. People don’t want to do that work. They don’t want to be confronted with structural changes, the issue of gender norms, and the problems that disabled people face every day. They just want to go on with their lives because it’s easier to them. It’s easier for them to ignore our identities.

“The Last Halloween, The First Halloween” at Help Codi Heal

“The first Halloween my daughter could walk was the last Halloween that I could,” writes Codi Darnell, the blogger at Help Codi Heal. In a post reflecting on her fifth Halloween in a wheelchair, Codi reflects on change, pain, and the firsts and lasts in her life.

It was all automatic — all done without realizing the ways these simple acts of motherhood were deeply engrained in my identity. All done with zero understanding that something so simple could be snatched away — and how painful it would be when it was.

Because a year later I would not hold her hand up the stairs or scoop her up and onto my hip. I wouldn’t stand beside her at the door or see her face light up when — in her big two-year-old voice — she managed all three words “trick-or-treat”. A year later, I would understand the fragility of our being and know intimately the pain of things taken away. But I would still be there. 

“Even If You Can’t See It: Invisible Disability and Neurodiversity” at Kenyon Review

At Kenyon Review, author Sejal A. Shah writes a personal essay on neurodiversity, depression, academia, and the writing life.

Maybe things would have turned out differently had I requested accommodations, had I known about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, 1990), had I understood my “situation,” as my aunt calls it, counted as a disability. The ADA law was amended in 2008 to include bipolar disorder. I began my job in 2005 and finished in 2011. It would have been helpful to know about the law and my rights under it.

I didn’t know the laws then; I didn’t know them until writing this essay. I looked normal; I passed. Would my career have turned out differently had I been willing to come out (for that’s what it felt like, an emergence into a world that might not accept me)? I was certain the stigma of having a major mood disorder would have hurt me professionally. Even had I disclosed my disorder, HR and my supervisors may not have agreed to modifications in my work responsibilities. I would still have needed to advocate for myself — would still have needed the energy to provide documentation and persist. For years, I had been ashamed, alarmed, and exhausted from trying to keep my head above water.

“The Outside Looking In” at Project Me

Project Me is the blog of Hannah Rose Higdon, a Deaf Lakota woman who grew up on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation. In “The Outside Looking In,” Higdon offers a glimpse into her experience as a child who was born hard of hearing, and whose family had very little access to the support she needed. (Higdon is now profoundly Deaf.)

I look up as my uncle talks to me. I nod. I smile. And I pretend I know just exactly what is going on. The truth is I have no clue what he’s saying or why he’s laughing, but I laugh too and mimic his facial expressions. I would never want to draw any more attention to myself than necessary. You see, I might only be 5 years old, but I know just how important it is to pretend.

“How to Center Disability in the Tech Response to COVID-19” at Brookings TechStream

Organizer, attorney, and disability justice advocate Lydia X.Z. Brown calls on the tech industry to carefully consider how policy affects marginalized communities, looking at algorithmic modeling in hospitals, contract tracing and surveillance, and web inaccessibility.

For disabled people who are also queer, trans, or people of color, the deployment of algorithmic modeling increases the risk of compounded medical discrimination. All marginalized communities have long histories and ongoing legacies of surviving involuntary medical experimentation, coercive treatment, invasive and irreversible procedures, and lower quality of care — often justified by harmful beliefs about the ability to feel pain and quality of life. These health care disparities are exacerbated for people who experience multiple forms of marginalization.

Spoonie Authors Network

The Spoonie Authors Network features work from authors and writers about how they manage their disabilities or chronic illnesses and conditions. Managed by Cait Gordon and Dianna Gunn, the community site also publishes resources and produces a podcast. Explore posts in the Featured Author or Internalized Ableism categories, like the piece below, to sample some of the writing.

When my neurologist suggested that I get a parking pass, I turned it down.

“I’d rather that go to someone more deserving,” I said. “There are people out there who are far more disabled than I am. Let the pass go to one of them.”

“You have difficulty walking. What would happen if it was icy or there were other difficult walking conditions?” she said kindly. “This is for your safety.”

I nodded and accepted the parking pass, even though I felt it made me look weak. I wasn’t disabled enough to warrant a parking pass. I can walk. I didn’t need it, I told myself.

“Not Disabled Enough” by Jamieson Wolf

More recommended sites:



Deafinitely Wanderlust Unpacking Disability Have Wheelchair Will Travel Leaving Evidence Simply Emma Gin & Lemonade Autistic Collaboration

Note on header image: Six disabled people of color smile and pose in front of a concrete wall. Five people stand in the back, with the Black woman in the center holding up a chalkboard sign that reads, “disabled and HERE.” A South Asian person in a wheelchair sits in front. Photo by Chona Kasinger | Disabled and Here (CC BY 4.0)

Run With Us! Join the 2020 wwwp5K Movement

If you’re like us, you’re eager to send 2020 off to the dustbin of history. So grab your running/walking/yoga shoes and join us as we resurrect the historic #wwwp5K and celebrate reaching the 2020 finish line! As an added incentive and in the spirit of the season, we’ve also created a special wwwp5K Givz page, where participants can make a donation to three of our favorite charities: Black Girls Code, Internet Archive, and the WordPress Foundation. Automattic will match every dollar donated to any organization through the Givz page, up to $50,000.

What’s a 5K?

A 5K is the equivalent of about 3.1 miles. The virtual run will work on the honor system, but if you want to be accurate, apps like Strava, Garmin Connect, Runkeeper, Fitbit, and many others can help you measure the right distance.

Sounds awesome! How do I participate?

The virtual wwwp5K officially kicks off tomorrow, December 1, and will be open through December 31st. You can run, skip, walk, hop, walk backwards, or even swim the equivalent distance in an indoor pool — as long as you’re practicing appropriate safety precautions given local conditions and staying healthy, your activity counts.

Everyone is welcome! WordPress fans, friends, and family, as well as Automatticians around the world.

When you’re done, don’t forget to post a selfie on your WordPress site and tag it with “wwwp5k” so that we can share the love and others can read about your experience. Of course, you can also blog about your journey preparing for the wwwp5K, but most of all, we’d love to see your smiling face and happy shoes as you complete the 5K.

Is there swag?

What would a virtual run be without swag with a custom logo? To commemorate the 2020 run, we’ve created a limited edition technical shirt featuring the official wwwp5K Wapuu!

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They’ll be available for purchase in the WordPress Swag Store starting tomorrow until supplies last, so don’t forget to place your order.

Will you be joining us? Let us know in the comments!

Join Us in Honoring Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today, November 20th, people around the world pause to bear witness to Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day dedicated to honoring the memory of those murdered because of anti-transgender prejudice. Transgender Day of Remembrance reminds us to fight against forces that devalue transgender lives every day. To bring awareness to this important day, we want to pause to share a few stories of transgender people who have found their voice on WordPress.com. We posed a question: “What does Transgender Day of Remembrance mean to you?” Below, we’ve shared a few responses from creators on our platform.

We welcome you to share your own response on your site. In the meantime, read slowly and soak in the hard-fought words of the brave voices who are willing to share their experiences. 

Dr. SA Smythe (They/Them) of essaysmythe.com:

Some of us have been counted, but most of us are counted out—unthought and unthinkable. And so we do it ourselves. We account for Tony McDade. We are accountable to Muhlaysia Booker. We recall Riah Milton. We recollect the fierce life of one of our greatest contemporary remembrancers, the trans griot Monica Roberts. We name the nonbinary people who continue to be treated as unnameable as we slip through the matrix of binary gender. The competing racialized pandemics of our time continues to be intensified for trans people, especially Black trans women, in this year as with any other. We live with that reality and demand non-trans people do the same because our resilience is nothing without their reckoning for the violence they allow to continue against us. Trans Day of Remembrance is not only about how trans people have been stolen from us too soon, but how we continue to survive and thrive and persist against all odds. Has there ever been anything as beautiful as that?

Read more

Laura Kate Dale (She/Her) of laurakbuzz.com:

Going and spending some time in the company of other trans people was wonderful. I got to see trans people from a variety of backgrounds, some who had grown old and found love, and see proof that I could live a long and happy life as a trans woman. But the tone of the evening was contrasted by sitting with the knowledge of why we were all gathered, the knowledge of far too many lives cut far too short. I was surrounded by the trans people who had survived and thrived, as well as the memories of those who had not.

Read more

Nicole Eldridge (She/Her) of transgendersupport.org:

My name is Nicole Eldridge. I’ve been transgender since third grade. As I started to transition, I would read stories online about transgender people dying. This is absolutely terrifying if you want to do what they did. I never gave up and transitioned. Transgender Day of Remembrance means to me that we remember the transgender people that have died and carry out their goal of an equal future for all transgender people. Every time I listen to a Transgender Day of Remembrance speech, it brings me back to Martin Luther King’s speech, “I Have a Dream.” What King said about everyone being equal and having equal opportunities is so true when I hear the transgender people’s names who have died. It breaks my heart to hear all of the transgender people that died for the year. In spite of the hatred toward transgender people, I rise above it all and help transgender people all over the world with my website transgendersupport.org. This is what Transgender Day of Remembrance means to me.

Tallulah Ker-Oldfield (She/Her) of transrites.wordpress.com

Trans people are nothing new. Gender and its expressions have been changing throughout cultures, and trans people have existed throughout history with notable examples in the many ancient pantheons, including deities. There’s nothing new to consider, no trans question – we’ve been here all along, and the only terrible things that happened because of it happened to us…

***

And so I’m remembering trans lives lost this year, and trans lives filled with trauma, and everything that trans people have to do to simply… be. If you ever thought this year was scary, oppressive, isolating, challenging to get through and potentially fatal to be around people… you’ve been living a lot of the worst parts of the trans experience. Yet I’m remembering the powerful joy of my community, how our bonds through the pandemic have been strong, how well accustomed we immediately became to 2020, having lived our own version of it for most of our lives, creating found families, love, laughter, understanding and sometimes rainbows out of the unforgiving raw material of compromise.

Read more

To read more writing by transgender people, explore these sites on WordPress.com:

letsqueerthingsup.comautistichoya.nettransprov.wordpress.comgendermom.wordpress.com

We pride ourselves on being a platform where anyone can share their perspective, and we’re honored to be able to create a space for the personal stories of transgender-identifying individuals. Take the time to read their words and remember that it’s not enough to honor transgender people just one day each year. What we do matters every day. Follow these sites and others you come upon and, as a result, show your support in the days to come. 

Learn from the experts: Create a successful blog with our brand new course

WordPress.com is excited to announce our newest offering: a course just for beginning bloggers where you’ll learn everything you need to know about blogging from the most trusted experts in the industry. We have helped millions of blogs get up and running, we know what works, and we want you to to know everything we know. This course provides all the fundamental skills and inspiration you need to get your blog started, an interactive community forum, and content updated annually. 

How it works: Upon registering, you will receive access to review the lessons at your own pace. Our curriculum includes:

Foundations of bloggingGetting started with block basicsBuilding your blogUnderstanding audiences Designing your blogWriting for the internetBranding and growing your blogEarning money with your blog 

You’ll also be able to connect with WordPress.com experts and other aspiring bloggers, who will create content alongside you. Beyond the modules, this course provides: 

Monthly office hours with WordPress experts to answer your questions A certificate of completionAccess to a private blogging community onlineVirtual meetups scheduled quarterly

Cost: A $49 annual subscription gives you access to all of these on-demand blogging resources, community events, and course updates. That way, you won’t have to waste time looking for answers all over the web—you’ll be able to get started right away.

Join by Thursday, December 10th and enjoy 50% off with code WPCOURSES50.

We are looking forward to reading your new blogs soon!

Register now

The Spearhead Theme: A Minimal Design and Clean Slate for All Content Creators

When AngelList and Venture Hacks co-founder Babak Nivi came to us and wanted to donate a theme, our team was excited to work on the design to make it available to everyone on WordPress.com for free. Designed by Cece Yu and originally developed for the Spearhead podcast, the new Spearhead theme is fully block-powered and the first among our themes to support dark mode.

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Spearhead works seamlessly with the block editor, supporting a wide range of blocks — Audio, Video, Image, TikTok, Loom, and many more — so you can customize posts and pages as you like and showcase various types of content, from podcast episodes to video tutorials and more. And while Spearhead shines as a theme for media, its sparse design also displays long-form writing and text and images beautifully.

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Spearhead comes with some block patterns, or collections of predefined blocks, to give you a boost as you start building your site. There are a couple of patterns you can use to show a list of places where people can listen to your podcast, as well as a custom archive page.

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Being the first theme on WordPress.com to support dark mode, Spearhead’s default color scheme has a white background, but if your operating system shifts into dark mode, the theme will change and display a dark background with light text.

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Our team especially loves the theme’s clean design, which lets the content you create shine through. Your listeners and readers can sit back with their cup of coffee — headphones on — and enjoy your latest episode and read along with the transcript!

Explore the Spearhead demo site to see the design in action, and then visit the Spearhead page to activate the theme.

Activate the Spearhead theme

Expert Advice: How to Improve Remote Education Collaboration

As we’re witnessing with schools and learning communities around the world, education is shifting dramatically. With the right set of tools, your class, team, or group can learn to communicate and collaborate more efficiently online. Since our company was founded over fifteen years ago, the people behind the scenes at WordPress.com have worked from home — or from anywhere they choose in the world — and have learned a lot along the way.

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A tool we call P2 has been indispensable to us, and to a growing number of educators. Want to learn our tips and tricks? Join us for a free webinar on Thursday, November 5, so you and your team can learn to make the most of this tool for remote collaboration. You can also sign up for the free beta version of P2 that is now available.

Date: Thursday, November 5, 2020Time: 10:00 am PT | 12:00 pm CT | 1:00 pm ET | 18:00 UTCRegistration link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/4016033198190/WN_WjX8jQhIQ0iZVPpfGAklhQWho’s invited: Anyone looking to improve internal team collaboration or build a public forum with P2 are welcome, but this webinar is specially designed for educators and teachers.

Register for the webinar today! We look forward to seeing you.