My Tips on WordPress.com
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, that’s creativity.
– Charles Mingus
From the time we started WordPress.com in 2005, we’ve focused on making it easy and rewarding to use so that anyone could get started with blogging. Along the way all of you who’ve been using WordPress.com and giving us your feedback have helped us figure out which features to roll out next. Thanks!
I took a look back at all the feature announcements we’ve made here, and it came to 370 posts, 82 in 2009 alone. That’s a lot of features. So in case you missed anything along the way here are some of my picks for cool things you can do with WordPress.com.
Create
We’ve set up lots of ways for you to write, post photos and videos, and generally add stuff to your blog, including mobile apps.
- Add quotes, images, and videos to your blog while browsing other web sites with the Press This bookmarklet.
- Post by email makes it easy to publish blog posts from any email client. (It’s what I use to post to my photoblog.)
- Post additional media to your blog, like video, with the VideoPress Upgrade and music, with the Space Upgrade
- Use shortcodes to display videos, slideshows, polls, maps, and more.
- Write posts, upload photos, edit pages, and manage comments on your blog using WordPress for iPhone, WordPress for Blackberry, and m.wordpress.com.
- Import your blog to WordPress.com from other platforms, like Blogger and TypePad.
- Schedule posts and pages so your blog can update itself, change your post and page timestamps, and display a page as your front page.
Personalize
You can also tweak how your blog looks, set the domain to be your own and pick your language.
- Customize the appearance of your blog with the Custom CSS Upgrade.
- Map your domain to remove “.wordpress.com” from your blog’s URL.
- Change the language of your dashboard and blogs, contribute translations to WordPress.com using GlotPress. We have support forums in Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
Share and Read
We’ve built in some cool sharing and reading features so you can easily let people know about your new posts and also see what other people are blogging.
- Publicize your blog using:
Email subscriptions for posts and comments
Twitter
Yahoo! Updates
RSS
- Subscribe to other blogs using:
Email subscriptions for posts and comments
The Tag Surfer
Readomattic
Jabber
Twitter
We’re working on much more for you in 2010. In the meantime check out Support for an updated list of features, and tips on making the most of your blog. Thanks for making WordPress.com amazing.
Jan 13th at 1:43 am
So, here we have all we need in one post! I remember how shortcodes tips were useful to me!
thanks for everything!
Jan 13th at 1:45 am
Good job! Thanks!
Jan 13th at 1:47 am
Hi, thanks for all your info. I am fairly new to wordpress and find your info easy to follow. I am not computer whiz and if I can do it…anyone can. Thanks
Jan 13th at 1:57 am
I have moved from blogspot to wordpress.com, and .org
.
I also love the iPhone app, it lacks features though like review spam comments, and reply to comments but besides that its fantastic.
Jan 13th at 2:06 am
I missed some of these ‘long the way. Thanks for this!
Jan 13th at 2:17 am
It surely rained new features in 2009 on WP!
Jan 13th at 2:19 am
Now that’s what I call a “meaty” blog post … lol
Jan 13th at 2:26 am
Nice round-up of all the WP features. Seriously, you guys make it so easy. I’ll be one year with my WP blog in Feb and I started knowing nothing. But the interface was so user-friendly, I got the hang of it in no time!
Jan 13th at 2:28 am
I’ve just connected my blog to Yahoo! Updates and added the subscriptions widget. Thanks!
Jan 13th at 2:36 am
You guys are great! Thanks for all you do.
Jan 13th at 2:37 am
Yeah, it’s all cool! I’m just getting started with WordPress, but it’s been huge in starting up a new nonprofit community web site, can’t wait to learn more ins and out — but I miss the snowflakes.
Jan 13th at 3:31 am
Matt, is that you, almost didn’t recognize you with that hat on! lol. Thank you for taking the time to send out this newsletter! Because along the way we sometimes or in the beginning we don’t know which feature to use. So by having this it gives us some guidelines with more detail of how a feature works. Thanks again for your time! Mona
Jan 13th at 3:41 am
i think more freedom to customise wordpress layouts or add your own without having to pay for the css upgrade would be nice..
Jan 13th at 4:20 am
Thank you Matt & WordPress.
Jan 13th at 4:45 am
Thanks for everything..:)
Jan 13th at 4:55 am
Something to keep in mind!
Jan 13th at 5:01 am
you are all so awesome! thanks for making WordPress the BEST!
Jan 13th at 5:20 am
:O nice TIPS!
Jan 13th at 5:24 am
You’ve all done a great job.
Let’s see if 2010 brings us some cool stuff under our Posts. Still very empty there.
Cheers
Martin(IQ)
Jan 13th at 5:31 am
Many thanks Matt. I think I understand Post by Email now. You’ve helped me confront my initial “OMG this is hard – avoid, avoid…” psyche default setting! Shall use it later today. Regards, Richard
Jan 13th at 5:38 am
Thanks so Much Matt and the Fantastic Team WordPress!
Fuerza y Exitoso 2010 para TODOS !!!
Best regards…
Jan 13th at 6:19 am
I wished everything worked as slick as they say it does, but it doesn’t. The edit page doesn’t show the exact way the words appear on the site. When I edit it, and then publish and then view it, things are much different. I am trying to put guitar notes above the words to songs, but the spacing between the notes get distorted between edit and publish. It is very frustrating.
Jan 13th at 6:43 am
Thanks a lot matt..
Cool and great..
Jan 13th at 6:44 am
WOW!! You guys are awesome… simply awesome!
Jan 13th at 6:54 am
That is a comprehensive list!
Awesome work WP
Jan 13th at 8:16 am
Thank you for the hints!
Jan 13th at 8:23 am
thanks wordpress! the features are all awesome!
Jan 13th at 9:23 am
It’s good that you guys are tooting your own horn. This is a great platform and quite frankly I just don’t get why anyone would use any other provider. It’s easy, its fun and I have the entire month of January dates already written. I can sit back and let them get posted automatically because of your scheduling feature. If something comes up and I want to add an extra post on my off days (I post every other day), I just quickly write it and bam, another post!
Thanks. I didn’t really want to blog in the beginning. It was kind of a dare but now I enjoy it and don’t foresee myself stopping. WordPress is the best.
Jan 13th at 10:04 am
Thank you for all the work put in – WordPress has to be the best free blogging platform around. It’s great to feel part of such a large community, and to utilise a tool that is constantly evolving and improving. I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us next!
Jan 13th at 10:18 am
i’m looking forward to lots more of great features in 2010! thanks for making 2009 a great year, wordpress team!
Jan 13th at 10:30 am
You have certainly been very busy for us, thank you all.
Can’t wait to see what you’ve all been up to for 2010.
Jan 13th at 10:34 am
Thanks for putting all those support links into one post, Matt.
Jan 13th at 11:30 am
I can firmly say that WordPress is the best platform to host a blog. You guys are great!
Jan 13th at 11:37 am
Some of us have been rather busy.:) Thx guys!
Jan 13th at 12:14 pm
WordPress truly is the best blog platform. Thanks a lot for all those updates!
Jan 13th at 12:30 pm
Sweetness! Thanks for the handy summary!
Jan 13th at 2:08 pm
WordPress team … you are the best!
Thank you 
Latina
Jan 13th at 2:27 pm
I absolutely agree you have done it easy for everyone who want to start and use a blog.
I really love WP.
I’ve tried to start a blog many times before but haven’t succeeded until I meet you, WP.
So thank you very much for a very easy but great blog!!
Jan 13th at 2:46 pm
yo wp is the best platform!! i have always maintained it!!! cheers
Jan 13th at 3:18 pm
thanks, guys!
Jan 13th at 3:35 pm
Love wordpress and really rate it as a blogging platform.
If I could add things to my wishlist, it would be that you gave it some of the funkiness of tumblr. I love how in tumblr your post is ‘templated’ based on whether you’re posting music, a quote, text, a photo. It seems so intuitively sensible. Also, the bookmarklet seems to work a LOT better in tumblr vs WP.
The other issue that I’ve never been keen on with WP is the age-old issue of java. To this day I don’t know why blogger allows java widgets but wordpress doesn’t. I know it’s to do with ‘safety’ but even so, I don’t get it. Does that imply blogger is ‘unsafe’? If you allowed java-enabled widgets this would be a true step-change that would make WP the undisputed blog platform of choice, imo.
Having said all that, I do love wordpress so keep up the good work.
Jan 13th at 4:14 pm
Awesome post! I actually missed the option that allow to show my posts on Twitter automatically! Excellent!
Thanks and good work
Jan 13th at 4:25 pm
Without a doubt, everyone at WordPress is doing a marvelous job and always thinking ahead. Thank you for continually considering the needs of the bloggers and for keeping up with the constantly changing technologies. There is so much to push forward with and you guys and gals are doing wonderfully well at it. Thank you very much for caring.
Jan 13th at 4:36 pm
GRACIAS A TODAS LAS HERRAMIENTAS QUE NOS HAN DADO, SE LOS AGRADECEMOS MUCHO.
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡ GRACIAS WORDPRESS !!!!!!
Jan 13th at 4:57 pm
It’s you guys who make WordPress.com amazing – I’m really happy to be part of it – thank you.
Jan 13th at 5:02 pm
I have a tip – if you want to get a ton of views tell everyone you’re going to strip…and then don’t do it.
Fun for everyone really – except for maybe your husband…he might yell at you.
Jan 13th at 5:03 pm
keeps getting better and better
Jan 13th at 5:15 pm
wp IS fantastic. I’m on my wordpress.com blogs/sites every day.
I don’t know what I would do without it, but like most users I have one or two tweaks/features I would like to see added. The biggest would be an “Upcoming Events Calendar” … something that readers could click on to get details about upcoming shows/events/readings etc. I have tried the various “link your google calendar to your wordpress blog” solutions ….but none of these looks good or works elegantly…
I have submitted this question almost since day one and have always gotten the same response, basically: “we’re not currently working on that, but we’ll look into it.” This is especially odd since wordpress.ORG users have several ‘events calendar’-type plugins or widgets to choose from…. but we wp.COM users have none? …is there really that much of a technological difference between the two?
That is really my only gripe. Keep up the great work.
Stay Strong Everyone. Thanks for the great platform.
TOC
Jan 13th at 5:33 pm
Great features and tips, keep it up Matt {^o^}
Jan 13th at 6:01 pm
Thanks to WordPress for making my job nice and easy.
Jan 13th at 6:39 pm
i hope we can also publicize our blogs on facebook sometime soon
Jan 13th at 7:34 pm
Thanks for all the upgrades. However, I can’t get the publicize feature to update either Twitter or Yahoo. Don’t know why. Yahoo just wants me to upgrade my profile and Twitter says “whoops, go back to the original site” or something like that.
However, you can always burn an RSS feed to either site. Works for Facebook too, btw.
Jan 13th at 8:28 pm
Great as always – thanks.
Jan 13th at 8:58 pm
cool! awesome post Matt
Jan 13th at 10:42 pm
Thanks for the post – always good to learn how to make things easier and better!
Jan 13th at 11:17 pm
Great post. Sometime in the future I might use that mapping a domain feature for my blog. It just makes it look a bit more professional. :p
Jan 13th at 11:32 pm
WOW! There are so many great tips here. thanks for putting everything in one post for us. It seems the more I learn the more I find I need to learn…
Jan 14th at 1:24 am
Excellent – will be saving this and going through each item so I don’t miss anything!
WordPress is the Best!!! Thanks!
Jan 14th at 1:25 am
Easy to get all information at a single platform. WordPress is fantastic…. THANKS!
Jan 14th at 2:43 am
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Simple or complicated WordPress, let meeeah entertain yeeeah.
Jan 14th at 4:18 am
I like these tips: Schedule posts and pages
. Thanks for great CMS. It’s been 4 years until now and I still love to blog at wordpress.com.
Jan 14th at 5:00 am
This is great! Thanks for posting it! I’m so glad I joined WordPress, it’s been great posting and being able to fit everything to the customizations that I want.
Jan 14th at 5:38 am
Great keep on 2010 and beyond
Jan 14th at 5:59 am
Hey Matt. Thanks for all the hard work you and your group do.
Jan 14th at 9:25 am
Thank you, guys! Keep up the good work! You’re a blessing.
Jan 14th at 2:52 pm
Excellent tips. You are the best guys
Jan 14th at 5:00 pm
Since 2005 we are waiting to include the google adsense feature on wordpress.com blogs
Jan 14th at 5:15 pm
Thanks again to these tips and for the wonderful people i`ve met so far on WP, blogging just got cooler
Jan 14th at 5:49 pm
Ah – WP for BlackBerry – excellent!
Now if only I could check my stats through that ….
The Unexpected Traveller
Jan 14th at 6:29 pm
These are some great tips. You really have made things so much simpler with WordPress..Sounds like we all appreciate that. Hope to see more new things this new year.
Jan 14th at 6:38 pm
Thanks and keep up the good work…I consider this site to be the best for bloggers.
Jan 14th at 8:47 pm
Thanks for the perks, helps, forums, and Everything!. I need to bookmark THIS page so I can make constant improvements, just as WP has!
Jan 14th at 11:06 pm
Thanks for the great advice, looking forward to having fun with WordPress
Jan 15th at 3:51 am
great summary of the things made available to us~! i just joined wordpress to start my online blogging career and its been so easy to use. I must say a BIG thanks for this user friendly blog site
Jan 15th at 5:01 am
thanks very much… Mr. matt
Jan 15th at 5:27 am
this thing is really helpful, i just started blogging today and i really need to get familiar with wordpress display and functions, it made things better to express with.
Jan 15th at 8:07 am
Yes, ‘simplicity’ is the salt and soul of any innovation and we are getting it plenty on the WordPress platform, as always our thanks and cheers to the entire team there.
Jan 15th at 8:25 am
Hi, thanks for all your info. Thanks
Jan 15th at 11:40 am
PERFECT ADVICE! thanks so much.
Jan 15th at 1:27 pm
Thanks for the summary and your efforts with this software package. Have a great year.
Jan 15th at 4:14 pm
WP Rocks!
Jan 15th at 4:58 pm
ME and my class of communication v v much impress wordpress thank wordpress team,
MAQSOOD AHMED
FROM PUNJAB UNIVERCITY LAHORE PAKISTAN
Jan 15th at 5:54 pm
Thanks for all you do!
Jan 15th at 7:03 pm
I’m really looking forward to posting by email, especially trying out the “[nogallery]” Gallery feature for inline display of multiple images. (Would love to see that or something similar incorporated into regular posting too!)
Jan 15th at 8:05 pm
thanks for the awesome advice!!!!
Jan 15th at 9:45 pm
Thanks for the summary. Very helpful.
Jan 16th at 12:28 am
Great Mingus quote.
Jan 16th at 11:16 am
Thank you for the service in wordpress. I just want to give advice to filter blogs can create divisions among the community. if there are blogs that are considered dangerous to be removed please
Jan 16th at 1:31 pm
Thank you, guys! Keep up the good work! You’re a blessing.
http://www.2in4m.info
Jan 16th at 2:37 pm
I took a leap of faith about a year ago when I started my blog on WP because it was hard to believe that I could do something like this. But you guys made it easy and were so helpful whenever I needed help. Thank you so much!!!
Jan 16th at 6:01 pm
Thanks for these tips. Already applying them and hoping to see more results. WordPress is great!
Jan 16th at 8:30 pm
Thanks! WordPress is very fun and easy to use!
Jan 16th at 11:24 pm
Thank you! We are learning our way around!