Kayla I. Shown-Dean's Blog, page 28

Hot Off the Press: New WordPress.com Themes for May 2023

The WordPress.com team is always working on new design ideas to bring your website to life. Check out the latest themes in our library, featuring fresh options for startups, visual creators, minimalist bloggers, and more.

All WordPress.com ThemesIotix

Looking for a great starting point for creating a business or startup website? Try lotix. It offers tailored templates and patterns, including a business landing page, blog, and pricing sections, to help you present yourself and your business more quickly and easily.

With Iotix, you can create a professional and polished website that reflects your brand to help you reach your target audience.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

Storia

Storia is a stunning visual story theme designed to showcase your creative work and engage your audience. With large featured images and a minimalist design, this theme allows your visual content to take center stage and tell a compelling story. With Premium styles, you assume a laid-back, contemplative, or excited mood, depending on your aesthetic.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

CTLG

CTLG is a free, responsive WordPress block theme specifically designed for creating lists, directories, and catalogs. It comes with a variety of predesigned templates and four distinct premium style variations. Its index template features a full-width header, followed by a right-aligned query loop where you can display blog posts or pages, and a simple full-width footer. Its post and page templates follow the same layout.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

Hey

Hey is a simple block theme made for personal blogging. The front page consists of only a few elements: a site logo, a heading, and a list of your three latest posts. On other pages, the site logo is smaller, so the content takes the main stage in a single column.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

Vetro

Vetro is a portfolio theme with wide-width layouts that allow for generous imagery and typography. Its simple pages are aligned left with ample right paddings and large content blocks to grant viewers focus on visuals and short paragraphs.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

To install any of the above themes, click the name of the theme you like, which brings you right to the installation page. Then click the “Activate this design” button. You can also click “Open live demo,” which brings up a clickable, scrollable version of the theme for you to preview.

Premium themes are free to use for those on a Premium plan or above, or can be purchased individually by those with free sites or Personal plans.

You can explore all of our themes by navigating to the “Themes” page, which is found under “Appearance” in the left-side menu of your WordPress.com dashboard. Or you can click below:

All WordPress.com Themes

A Tour of the All-New Stats Page

In recent weeks, you may have seen a redesigned Stats page on your WordPress.com dashboard. This all-new Stats experience enhances your ability to analyze and optimize your site’s content. We’ve restructured the layout in a friendlier way, introduced new modules that reveal crucial data points, and revamped the overall look of this powerful analytics tool.

Let’s jump in and take a short tour! 

Skip the tour, take me there now! Go beyond the numbers

On the new Stats page, you’ll now see two tabs:

Traffic: When you first click over to Stats, you’ll land on the Traffic page, which displays your site’s latest metrics. By navigating within the chart at the top, you can also focus on a specific week or month.Insights: This is where things get interesting, in our opinion. The Insights tab allows you to view and learn from long-term trends. This includes data about the most effective times/days to publish, your most popular posts/categories on an annual (or all-time) basis, visual overviews of your traffic and posting history, and more. Monitor trends and track cumulative stats

When checking stats, it’s easy to focus on the present and lose track of content performance over time. To help you take that longer-term view, we’ve pulled together “7 Day Highlights” to help you compare visitor interaction on a week-to-week basis, along with a year-in-review section that displays cumulative stats for the year.

You can also monitor lifetime statistics, as well as other interesting data points, by looking at “All-time highlight” on the Insights tab. 

Know your impact anytime and any place 

Everything on the Stats page has been optimized for mobile phones, tablets, large desktop monitors, and everything in between.

Having these numbers available across multiple platforms allows you to check on your latest posts’ data and traffic stats when and where it’s most convenient. 

A better Stats experience 

We believe that these changes will help you better understand how your website is performing and make data-driven decisions to grow your business. We hope you enjoy the new Stats page, and look forward to hearing your feedback. 

Check it out for free today at WordPress.com/stats or in the Jetpack mobile app.

Inside the Feature: Why Real-Time Backups Are a Big Deal

Let’s be honest, new and shiny features get most of the attention around here. It makes sense: New stuff is exciting! But WordPress.com has plenty of baked-in features that are worth talking about too. 

Losing your work is one of the most frustrating things you can experience as a website owner. When you choose WordPress.com, you never have to worry about that again. Today, let’s chat about backups, which are powered by Jetpack (Automattic’s own suite of security, performance, and growth tools). 

Real-time backups and one-click restores With Jetpack VaultPress Backup, every single change to your site is captured in real-time. We also back up your site at a consistent time each day as a failsafe.

Our backups happen in real-time, making restoring your site to a previous state as easy as finding a cute dog on the internet. 

Let’s look closer at how this feature can benefit you and your site(s).  

No expertise required 

Manually backing up a website is a time-consuming and resource-intensive task, not to mention a bit daunting on a technical level. 

We’ve removed all that hassle by doing the work for you behind the scenes. 

Even better, we house redundant copies of your backups on multiple servers around the world, so your data is always secure and accessible. 

Version control, but for your website

With the Activity Log, you can quickly see every site change at a glance, letting you know exactly what action (and which user!) broke the site. 

Our one-click restores allow you to quickly recover a site from any point in time: Simply find when the problem occurred, click “Restore,” verify that you want to revert your site to a previous state, and in as little a few minutes’ time, you’ll be back up and running.  

Never miss a sales order 

If you’re running an online store, you know that orders can come in at any time. It goes without saying that you need a backup system to keep your order and customer data safe. There are times when daily or even hourly backups simply don’t cut it.

If you’re running WooCommerce on your site, you can reinstate your store to any previous iteration, while keeping all orders and products current. 

Losing your work is a thing of the past 

Our automated backups save everything for you: posts, files, databases, themes, plugins . . . all of it. Should your site crash for any reason — an incompatible plugin or theme, for instance — rest assured that it can be easily restored in just minutes. 

Whether you’re running a business or spending hours perfecting your site as a hobbyist, our state-of-the-art technology provides the peace of mind that you’ll never miss a sale or lose content again.  

Learn more about our real-time backups

Real-time backups and one-click restores are available on Business and Commerce sites.

Elevate Your Website with Our May Webinars

Our free webinars are live, interactive, and designed to be accessible and informative for everyone, regardless of your experience level with WordPress. Each session also concludes with a live Q&A with our experts. This month we’ll be hosting three insightful webinar topics, providing you with the tools and knowledge to enhance your WordPress.com skills and improve your website.

This is the final month that we’ll be offering our popular Compelling Homepages webinar, so don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn about creating an attention-grabbing homepage.

Site Editor vs. Page Editor — Editing Your Entire Site in WordPress

Discover the power of the WordPress.com Site Editor, allowing you to edit every aspect of your site — from header to footer — with no coding whatsoever.

Tues May 9 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDTWed May 10 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CESTThurs May 11 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDTRegister to attend Site Editor vs. Page EditorCompelling Homepages — Create a Custom Layout With the WordPress Block Editor

This is your last chance to join our live Compelling Homepages webinar! Your homepage is a critical component of your website, setting the tone for your visitors and directing them to key areas. Our experts will guide you through using the WordPress block editor to create a visually appealing and effective homepage layout without any coding.

Tues May 16 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDTWed May 17 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CESTThurs May 18 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDTRegister to attend Compelling HomepagesSite Editing — Custom Headers

Your site header is the first thing visitors see and is crucial for establishing your brand while also providing seamless navigation. With our Site Editor tools, customizing your header is now easier than ever. Our experts will show you how to create a unique and professional-looking header that perfectly represents your brand.

Tues May 23 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDTWed May 24 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CESTThurs May 25 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDTRegister so attend Site Editing — Custom HeadersYour go-to resource for all things WordPress.com

We’re passionate about providing all the resources you need to successfully create the website that suits your needs and leads you to your goals. Explore more of our free offerings, including courses, checklists, and recordings of past webinars, at WordPress.com/learn.

Safely Jazz Up Your Website With Staging Sites on WordPress.com

In jazz, each instrument and rhythm needs to be in sync — but that doesn’t happen without a lot of practice and experimentation behind the scenes. Even the most talented improvisers wouldn’t roll out a brand new number without having rehearsed it beforehand. 

Sound familiar? 

Your website isn’t all that different from a jazz band — various elements (content, images, plugins, and forms) that all have to work together to create a cohesive experience. But when you’re always making edits to a live, working site, you risk the site-design version of flubbing a solo or even dropping your drumsticks: a mistake that might create a poor user experience, or even break the site altogether.

That’s where staging sites, our newest hosting feature, comes in handy. 

Staging sites are here! 

We’re excited to announce that staging sites are now available for all customers on our Business and Commerce plans. This powerful feature allows you to test changes and updates of all your site elements in a safe and stable environment.

Staging Site: A test version of your website you can use to preview and troubleshoot changes before applying them to your production site.

Though generally geared towards developers, staging sites aren’t just for the tech-savvy. Bloggers, shop owners, podcasters — anyone with a website can benefit from iterating on design, experimenting with new plugins, and even trying out custom code before publicly unveiling the updates. 

The benefits of using staging sites

Here are just a few of the benefits of using WordPress.com staging sites:

Risk-free testing: Experiment without worry. By simulating changes on a staging site first, you can identify and fix any issues that could affect your website’s performance or speed.Faster development: Staging sites make it easier to develop and launch new features, plugins, and designs in even less time.Increased collaboration: A staging site allows multiple stakeholders to review and agree on changes in a safe place before going live.How to get started with staging sites on WordPress.com

Want to give it a shot? You can have your own staging site up and running in three simple steps: 

Starting in your dashboard, go to Settings → Hosting Configuration.Scroll down to the “Staging site” module.Click “Add staging site.”

Congrats! You now have a working staging environment to play around with site design, plugins, code, etc.

If you’ve already created a staging site, you’ll see this instead:

After your staging site is created, you can access and manage it from the module seen above on the Hosting Configuration page, or you can find it on the Sites page. 

Learn more about staging sites and try one out today!

Build Your Next Site on WordPress.com

Staging sites are just one more reason WordPress.com is the best managed WordPress hosting on the planet. Whether it’s SSH access, centralized site management, or enhanced site preview, we’re constantly adding new tools to make WordPress.com an indispensable part of your workflow. Follow our Developer Blog to keep up with all the latest announcements!

What other features would you like to see? How can we make WordPress.com an even more powerful place to build a website? Feel free to leave a comment or contact our friendly support.

Why Twitter Auto-Sharing Is Coming to an End

In early April, we experienced an unexpected suspension of our Twitter API access. This access is what powers Jetpack Social, which in turn helps you automatically share your blog posts to Twitter. Though the service was restored that same day, it turns out that there were bigger changes looming on the horizon. 

Twitter recently notified Automattic that it was dramatically changing the terms and pricing of the Twitter API. The cost increase is prohibitive for us to absorb without passing a significant price increase along to you, and we don’t see that as an option. We have attempted to negotiate a path forward, but haven’t been able to reach an agreement in time for Twitter’s May 1 cutoff. 

Given that, we have decided to discontinue using the Twitter API.

For WordPress.com and Jetpack users, Twitter will no longer be part of Jetpack Social. However, we’re adding Instagram and Mastodon very soon. In the meantime, auto-sharing to Tumblr, Facebook, and LinkedIn still works as expected, and you can continue sharing your blog post links on Twitter manually through their app or desktop site.

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes for your website and marketing efforts. We wish the outcome had been different, but our customers are always our primary concern, and we’re not willing to compromise the experience or value you receive from WordPress.com and Jetpack. 

If your recent experiences with Twitter have left you dissatisfied, go take Tumblr for a spin — we hear it’s quite a party over there.

What’s New on WordPress.com: Focus Mode, Promotion From Your Pocket, and Risk-Free Redesigns

At WordPress.com, we’re always pushing our platform to do even more so that you can create, design, and publish amazing things with ease. 

The last few weeks have found us as busy as the springtime bees improving the writing and publishing process even more, bringing our ad platform to mobile, and ensuring that previous edits to your work are readily accessible. 

Let’s jump in and take a look.   

Write without distractions 

One of writing’s biggest challenges has nothing to do with the words — it’s filtering out the noise (both literal and figurative) so you can focus. We can’t change your physical environment, but we’re doing what we can to help you get into “the zone” a little more easily. Enter distraction free mode, a minimalist WordPress experience that removes the buttons and menus.   

From the top toolbar, click the three-dot menu on the right-hand side. Select “Distraction free” and you’ll notice the top toolbar disappear. (To bring it back, simply hover over the top of the page and it’ll pop back down.) Your pages and posts will be distraction-free until you deselect this mode. 

When to use this feature: You can’t resist experimenting with various settings or styles, but you also really need to get that new post finished. (Believe us, we’ve been there.) With this cleaner interface, you can focus on your words and your words alone. 

Promote your content from your phone 

Blaze, our self-serve ad platform, makes it easier than ever to spread the word about whatever it is you’re writing, creating, or selling. Now, you can Blaze on the go with the Jetpack app. 

From the main dashboard, simply click on the banner that says “Promote your content with Blaze.” You can also promote your work directly from the Posts or Pages menus by clicking “More” or the three-dot menu and selecting “Promote with Blaze.” 

When to use this feature: You’re waiting for take-out at your favorite Indian restaurant. While scrolling the Jetpack app, you notice traffic spiking on one of your recent blog posts — something about it is resonating with readers. Maximize its impact by boosting it to an even wider audience with Blaze.

Easily find and add free images 

Need a featured image for your post? You can now find and add free-to-use images even faster. Open the Inserter (the red “+” button at the top left of any post or page), navigate to the tab labeled “Media,” click “Openverse,” and find the perfect option from our favorite open-source library. 

You can also still access Openverse from the Image Block or Media Library. 

When to use this feature: You’re on the hunt for just the right image to use in your new blog post. Rather than doing a Google search in a separate tab — and running the risk of using an image you don’t have rights to — use the Inserter to search and place exactly what you need. 

Give readers a timetable

Here’s a fun built-in feature that a lot of folks don’t know about: The WordPress.com editor’s “Outline” function displays a post’s various headings for easy scanning, as well as a word/character count and a “time to read” estimate of how long it would take an average reader to get through the content on that page: 

You can even display that estimate to your site visitors with the new Time To Read Block. (Styling and other customization options are on the way.) 

When to use this feature: You do a lot of longform writing on your site, regularly publishing posts that go over 1,000 words. With this new block, let readers decide whether to start your post now, or wait until they have time to read it in one sitting. It’s a small touch, but a surprisingly thoughtful one. 

Access previous edits to your templates 

Access to previous versions and revisions of posts/pages has long been a staple of the WordPress experience. We’ve now added that same functionality to templates and template parts in the Editor.  

This can be useful for restoring a previous version of a template that you’ve made changes to, or simply for reviewing the changes you’ve made over time. 

When to use this feature: You experimented with some stylistic changes to your homepage template, but after a couple weeks of trying it out, the new look just isn’t hitting quite right. Head over to revisions to easily restore the previous version of the template. 

Transform Your WordPress.com Skills With These Popular Webinars

Looking to take your WordPress website to the next level? You’re in luck! Our WordPress.com webinars are designed to help you create and customize your site with ease, and they’re incredibly popular among site owners. Plus, they’re completely free to attend!

Check out these upcoming webinars, which are conducted live by our knowledgeable Happiness Engineers:

Compelling Homepages: Create a Custom Layout with the WordPress Block Editor

Your site’s homepage is its highest-traffic page, so making it count is crucial to the success of your site. Join us to learn how to create a professional-looking and engaging homepage using the WordPress block editor. Our experts will teach you how to build an effective visual hierarchy and design attention-grabbing calls to action.

Tues Apr 18 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDTWed Apr 19 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CESTThurs Apr 20 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDTRegister for Compelling HomepagesSite Editing: Custom Headers

Your site header is an essential element of your brand identity. In this webinar, we’ll explore the importance of your site header and show you how to create a unique, brand-aligned header using the WordPress.com Site Editor. You’ll learn how to select, customize, and replace header templates, add and edit your site title, logo, and navigation menus, and troubleshoot common issues.

Tues Apr 25 at 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 12:00pm PDTWed Apr 26 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CESTThurs Apr 27 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDTRegister for Custom Headers

Don’t miss these opportunities to level up your WordPress skills and create a website that reflects your vision. Our WordPress.com webinars are incredibly popular, and for good reason. Register now for these free webinars, and bring your questions for our live Q&A sessions.

We can’t wait to help you bring your website to life!

Case Study: LUBUS Agency’s Clients Save 50-90% by Migrating to WordPress.com

Executive Summary

LUBUS, a development agency specializing in WordPress and Laravel, faced challenges with variable hosting costs and maintenance for their clients. They needed a solution that offered fixed costs, high performance, secure web hosting, and reliable service and support. LUBUS decided to test WordPress.com and, after witnessing positive results, confidently recommended it to their clients.

The migration to WordPress.com led to faster site load times, improved stability during traffic surges, and significant cost savings of 50-90% for clients. This allowed LUBUS to concentrate on its core services and offer a more straightforward solution to its clients without the need for DevOps budgets or ongoing maintenance costs. WordPress.com provided an all-in-one solution, ensuring a stable, secure, and cost-efficient experience for LUBUS’s clients.

Introduction

We recently spoke with Ajit Bohra, the Founder and WordPress Engineer of LUBUS, a development agency specializing in WordPress and Laravel. LUBUS, established in 2008, creates high-quality websites for clients in India and across the globe. They have experience building a wide variety of websites, including healthcare, renewables, publishers, telecommunications, music news, online stores, and more. 

Their commitment to delivering “friendly solutions” in WordPress website development led them to seek a solution that provides their clients with:

A website with fixed costs and no hard limitsA high-performance, secure web hosting platformA host managed and maintained by WordPress expertsReliable service and support

LUBUS chose to test WordPress.com and, after witnessing positive results, confidently recommended it to many of their clients.

The LUBUS Story

LUBUS has a team of 12 WordPress designers and developers, serving 8 to 10 new clients annually. About 60% of their clients retain LUBUS’s maintenance and consulting services after the initial site development and launch.

Previously, they hosted clients on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and similar cloud hosting services. While these solutions were suitable for clients who required more complex control, they presented difficulties for many others.

The Challenges and Needs of Various WordPress Website Clients

LUBUS aimed to provide the best service to their clients while keeping their workload focused on core offerings.

Stable Costs and Hosting

For many clients, particularly those in emerging markets or with smaller budgets, the variable billing costs of providers like AWS were often disruptive. These clients needed to budget for exact costs without unexpected charges at the end of a pricing period. Some clients experienced large traffic spikes that either caused their websites to crash or resulted in increased costs to cover additional resources. Neither scenario supports effective growth and scaling.

Ajit Bohra, the LUBUS founder, shared an example where they migrated a heavy metal client’s website to WordPress.com. When the band Metallica shared one of the client’s articles, the site effortlessly handled the traffic surge without incurring additional costs or experiencing any performance issues.

Maintenance and Worry-Free Hosting

In the absence of managed hosting, clients either had to maintain the environment themselves or pay LUBUS for maintenance. This extra time and cost were prohibitive to clients and diverted LUBUS from its primary focus.

“We needed to move away from DevOps and concentrate on our core services. We searched for a straightforward solution that clients could manage themselves without DevOps budgets or ongoing maintenance costs. We aimed to provide clients with a reliable hosting service we could endorse without hesitation, ultimately resulting in satisfied clients. We found that service with WordPress.com,” explained Ajit Bohra, LUBUS founder.

Why LUBUS Chose to Migrate Clients to WordPress.com

Ajit and his team members often attended WordCamps, where they conversed with WordPress.com representatives. Eventually, Ajit felt confident enough to trial WordPress.com with a budget client who wanted to manage their site independently in the future. Factors that contributed to his decision to test WordPress.com included:

Eliminating security concerns for both LUBUS and the clientRemoving worries about performance or speedThe platform’s development by the same team behind the open-source WordPress applicationClients feeling confident enough to manage their own site, knowing they’re protected by Jetpack backups, activity logs, and backed up by excellent WordPress.com supportGiving clients an option for a lower and more reliable cost model. The Migration Process

LUBUS found the migration process smooth and cost-effective, significantly reducing DevOps and maintenance expenses.

As LUBUS migrated more clients to WordPress.com, they continued to experience smooth, error-free migrations. Even in challenging situations, the WordPress.com Happiness Engineers (support team) resolved issues efficiently, providing a positive experience for LUBUS.

The Results: Speed, Stability, and Cost Savings

We were eager to learn LUBUS’s thoughts on their experience with migrating clients’ sites to WordPress.com. Here’s what we discovered.

Faster Sites

Although LUBUS focuses on well-developed sites optimized for fast load times, developers cannot control the server’s TTFB (Time to First Byte). TTFB measures the time it takes for the first byte of the page to load in the client’s browser, reflecting the server’s responsiveness. On average, LUBUS observed a 60-70% improvement in TTFB speed after migrating sites to WordPress.com. This improvement can mean the difference between users staying on the site or leaving due to frustration with load times.

Stability

Some hosting providers hinder a client’s website success and growth. When a site experiences a traffic surge due to a successful marketing or social campaign, some hosts either fail to allocate the necessary resources to keep the site running or charge substantial fees for the extra resources. In both cases, the client’s potential gains from the traffic surge are negatively impacted.

LUBUS clients appreciate that WordPress.com aims to help them succeed rather than penalize them for their success. With high-performance CPUs and automated burst scaling, clients can trust that their sites will withstand traffic surges without incurring additional costs.

Cost Savings

LUBUS founder Ajit Bohra stated, “Many of our clients saved a considerable amount of money, ranging from 50% to over 90%, on hosting charges after moving to WordPress.com. This significant savings offers a tremendous boost for clients, especially in countries like India, or those with basic sites, blogs, webzines, mid-level traffic eCommerce sites, and startups.”

The End Result

“There are many reasons we recommend WordPress.com to clients.

—Clients want us, and their hosting provider, to simplify their lives.
—We don’t want clients to be intimidated by WordPress, and WordPress.com makes it much easier for them to adapt.
—Clients are skeptical about relying on plugins for tasks that should be managed by hosting, which WordPress.com does.
—Clients want everything in one place, such as support, domain, content, marketing tools, and hosting.
—Clients want to know their site will be stable, secure, and cost-efficient.

WordPress.com makes it simple to meet our clients’ needs.”

—Ajit Bohra, LUBUS founder

WordPress.com + Your Agency = Satisfied Clients

WordPress web design and development agencies are discovering the power of WordPress.com hosting and the benefits it offers to their clients. With full-stack performance, robust security, and developer-friendly features, WordPress.com provides agencies with a platform they can confidently recommend to their clients. Discover what we can do for your agency.

Looking for a development agency focused on providing friendly solutions to big or small ideas? See how Lubus can help you.

Twitter Functionality is Restored

The earlier reported outage has been resolved. Twitter is working again for Jetpack Social and all other functionalities that depend on Twitter. All Jetpack Social connections to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and LinkedIn can be used as usual. 

We are working with Twitter directly to ensure this service keeps running without interruption.