[New post] New Themes: Shaan and Adventure Journal

New post on WordPress.com News New Themes: Shaan and Adventure Journal by Lance Willett I'm happy to introduce two new cool and colorful themes: Shaan and Adventure Journal. Shaan is a smooth-talking theme, quietly delivering a cool, casual backdrop for your content. It's perfect for writers who like a calm, quiet tone to their blog. If you use images to illustrate your writing, you'll like how Shaan displays featured images in two sizes: small in archives and search results, and large for sticky posts on your home page as well as on single posts and pages. Example of Shaan in action. Designed by Specky Geek, Shaan is available today in your WordPress.com dashboard and directly from the Theme Showcase. Have a well-traveled blog? Adventure Journal is a natural fit for highlighting your adventures. A theme for your next trip. Or your next blog. Example of the Adventure Journal front page. Featuring a warm wood background, a header image for your favorite photo, widget areas styled on curling paper, and a crinkled sticky post area for those important notes—this theme is full of rustic charm. Customize it with layout options, sidebar and footer widgets, and more. See all the options and details on the Theme Showcase. Designed by Contexture International, Adventure Journal is available in your dashboard and directly from the Theme Showcase. Enjoy! Lance Willett | November 24, 2011 at 3:36 pm | Categories: Themes | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2n7 Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/new-themes-shaan-and-adventure-journal/

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[New post] Code is Poetry, CSS is Art

New post on WordPress.com News Code is Poetry, CSS is Art by Sheri We want to help your websites come alive with beautiful design. The WordPress.com theme team has been adding new themes at a dazzling rate, but did you know you can customize the style of any of our themes using the Custom Design upgrade? CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets which are styles that define how to display HTML elements. You can do anything from changing font colors to styling an entire site from scratch using CSS. Not only does the Custom Design upgrade let you choose from 50+ custom fonts in the Fonts tab, it includes a CSS editor where you can save style rules after purchasing the upgrade or preview changes before buying. Whether you are a design expert of amazing talent proportions or you are just learning the ways you can bend websites to your will, we think you'll love making your WordPress.com sites even more beautiful with custom CSS. Beginners can start with the CSS Basics help page. Everyone is always welcome to share some CSS love in the WordPress.com CSS Customization forum where happiness engineers and amazingly tireless volunteers help with CSS questions. To inspire you, here are a few strikingly different Twenty Eleven theme variations currently living at WordPress.com made by our very own Automatticans: mattnt.com simpledream.net myphotomaton.wordpress.com If you are a WordPress.org user, never fear! You can use the WordPress.com CSS plugin to get a CSS editor that won't modify theme files, keeping them wrinkle-free and easy-to-update. Go to Appearance → Custom Design → CSS in your dashboard and try out some CSS edits! Sheri | November 24, 2011 at 12:02 am | Tags: CSS, custom design | Categories: Design | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2lH Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/code-is-poetry-css-is-art/

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[New post] Google Knols Move to WordPress: The Annotum Platform

New post on WordPress.com News Google Knols Move to WordPress: The Annotum Platform by Ryan Markel Today, we'd like to give a warm welcome to Google Knol users who are migrating to WordPress.com. Begun in 2007, the Google Knol project has provided people in many fields with a place to share their knowledge and expertise with the world using a platform designed for scholarly authoring and publishing. Starting today, those same authors can move their articles and collaborative journals to WordPress—and they have the power to choose whether to move to a self-hosted WordPress installation powered by the freely-available, open-source Annotum themes, or to have their Annotum-powered site hosted for free here on WordPress.com. Knol will slowly shut down over the next year, and we've worked closely with Google and Solvitor LLC to make this transition as simple as possible. We here at WordPress.com are thrilled to provide an easy, fast way for Knol authors to move to their new homes without the need for configuring their own installation. And WordPress.com users who would like to start new sites powered by the Annotum platform can activate one of the two new Annotum-enabled themes on new blogs and get started right away. It's yet another way the WordPress platform and WordPress.com are enabling the democratization of publishing and sharing of information with the world. For more detailed information on the Annotum Project, please visit the official site. If you're moving to WordPress.com and have questions about the process, please see our step-by-step guide and our list of frequently asked questions. Ryan Markel | November 22, 2011 at 9:42 pm | Tags: Annotum | Categories: WordPress.com | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2mO Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/google-knol-wordpress-annotum/

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[New post] More Custom Headers, Color Schemes, & Theme Improvements

New post on WordPress.com News More Custom Headers, Color Schemes, & Theme Improvements by Ian Stewart We want everyone on WordPress.com to be able to find the best theme possible for their blog. Something beautiful, amazing, and cool. A theme that makes you want to jump up, run your laptop next door, and show your neighbor your awesome blog. That's why we love bringing you so many new themes, why we have over 150 themes for you to choose from, and why we have even more on the way. It's also why every day you let us know different ways we could make all our existing themes just a little bit better. You contact us in support, add your suggestions in the forums, comment here, and — of course! — blog about it. Because of all that we took as many of those little bits as we could and made our incredible collection of 150-plus themes even better for you. More Custom Headers and More Color Schemes We know how much you love customizing your themes and making them your own so we made sure that our best, our most popular, and our most beautiful themes let you do just that. The Custom Header Image feature lets you quickly add your own personal stamp on a theme. We went and added it to themes missing it that could really use it and use it well. You'll now find that it's available in themes like Notepad, Titan, Simpla, Grid Focus, and Chaos Theory. And if you're using the Modularity Lite theme, Inuit Types, Spectrum, Bouquet, or Vigilance you have new bonus color schemes to choose from. Coraline alone got five brand new color schemes! Vigilance Dark Inuit Types White on White Modularity Lite Light Coraline Pink Make sure you try out all the new design possibilities these color schemes bring to Custom Design. Even More Theme Improvements There were even more theme improvements. They were slightly smaller but good things come in small packages. Things like improving the custom header feature in our most popular theme, Twenty Ten. You can now change your header text color or even hide it altogether with a visit to Appearance → Themes and just a few clicks. Sometimes less can be more We also added Post Format support to the Spectrum theme. There are more customization options in the Structure theme, Misty Look, and Fruit Shake. Ocean Mist has customizable Featured Images for each post's header image. Our most popular themes now have better comment labeling when comments are turned off and better author highlighting for multiple author blogs — making them perfect for blogs that are more like small business sites or magazines. And — and there are even more theme improvements that were done. Too many to list here! We'll keep on bringing you new themes. Keep on letting us know what you'd like to see improved with them. :) Ian Stewart | November 21, 2011 at 7:12 pm | Categories: Themes | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2lX Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/theme-improvements/

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[New post] New Themes: Anthem and Luscious

New post on WordPress.com News New Themes: Anthem and Luscious by Michael Fields I'm happy to announce that we have added two great new premium themes to our ever-expanding Theme Showcase! First up is Anthem - a responsive, minimal design from The Theme Foundry. Anthem is perfect for artists, designers, and photographers who want their images to take center stage. Choose from seven different post formats to give each post a unique look and feel. Anthem provides 4 customizable widget areas in the footer as well as 3 custom menu locations. You can also upload a custom logo image which can be cropped into a circle. Want to find out more? Head on over to the Theme Showcase! Next up we have Luscious by StudioPress. This eye-catching design has been custom-tailored with bloggers and publishers in mind. The deep red tones of Luscious are embellished with bright red and yellow accents drawing attention to each post's heading. Choose from 6 different layout options, 2 custom menu locations and 7 widgets areas. Read more about Luscious in the Theme Showcase. Michael Fields | November 17, 2011 at 5:11 pm | Categories: Themes | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2lw Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/new-themes-anthem-and-luscious/

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[New post] Drag & Drop Media Uploader & Flyout Dashboard Menus

New post on WordPress.com News Drag & Drop Media Uploader & Flyout Dashboard Menus by Sara Rosso We're excited to share some new features that will make it even faster to create content on your WordPress.com site. Drag & Drop Uploads The media uploader now supports drag and drop! You'll be able to use the new drag and drop media uploader wherever you need to upload your media files - while writing a Post or Page, or directly in the Media Library. In fact while you're creating a post, you'll notice now there's just one icon to represent all of the different media files you'll upload called "Add Media": After you've clicked that, find those image/music/video/other files you need on your computer, drag them over and drop them into the WordPress interface, and watch the magic happen! Learn more about adding images and video with step-by-step tips on Learn.WordPress.com. Flyout Dashboard Menus We want you to spend the most time creating content as possible, and that's why new flyout menus have been introduced. They'll save you time by allowing you to access any of the dashboard menu items from wherever you are, in just one click! Simply hover over the menu item and the submenu will fly out, allowing you to navigate directly to Add a New Post right after you activated your new theme, or Invite Users right after you finished moderating comments. More Room for Content Creation There's something else you might have noticed. Your blog title is no longer at the top of the dashboard. Since clicking on your site's name in the toolbar will take you to your site's front page, we reclaimed that space back so you have even more room for editing your content. So to get to your site's front page, just click on your site title in the toolbar! We're looking forward to the extra content you'll be able to create with the time you're saving. Happy Blogging! For WordPress.org users, these features will be coming to you soon in the upcoming version 3.3. Sara Rosso | November 17, 2011 at 12:25 am | Categories: Administration, Dashboard, New Features | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2kY Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/drag-drop-media-uploader-flyout-menus/

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[New post] Easier Invitations Mean More Followers and Blog Contributors

New post on WordPress.com News Easier Invitations Mean More Followers and Blog Contributors by Daniel Bachhuber We've made two big changes that make it easier to encourage friends, family, and colleagues to interact with your WordPress.com blog. First, now you can invite people to follow your blog. If your blog is public, anyone can use the Follow button to sign up to receive an update each time you publish new content. But if you'd like to share your blog with specific people, we've made it easy to send them an invitation to check out your site. Try it out now and invite some friends to follow your blog: 1. Head to your dashboard and click on Users → Invite New. Type the users' email addresses or WordPress.com usernames. 2. Set the Role to Follower. 3. If you like, add your own message to personalize the invitation, then click Send Invite. When your friend accepts the invite, they'll start receiving email updates each time you publish a new post. Secondly, you can also use the new invitations to add contributors to your blog. Have you ever thought that it might be fun to have a friend write a guest post? Or perhaps you want to ask a colleague to help moderate comments. Adding contributors to your blog has never been easier. Head to Users → Invite New in the dashboard and enter the person's WordPress.com username or email address. Then select the contributor, author, editor, or administrator role, and send the invite. Your new user will now be able to access your blog by visiting the My Blogs section of their dashboard when they log in to WordPress.com. They'll also receive an email notification that they've been added to your blog. For more details on the new invitations, check out the Support document on Inviting Contributors, Followers, and Viewers. Daniel Bachhuber | November 15, 2011 at 1:30 pm | Tags: Follow, Invitations, Sharing, subscriptions, WordPress.com | Categories: Administration, New Features, WordPress.com | URL: http://wp.me/pf2B5-2gx Comment    See all comments Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/easier-invitations/

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