Making your posts more beautiful
Here at WordPress.com we care about making things look good. Automattic, Inc., our parent company, invests heavily in design: every engineering team has a full-time designer. We know making things look and feel great is important and we love making things people love to use.
Over the last few weeks we’ve studied the most popular features people add to their blogs. Things like Sharing, Likes and Ratings. Previously when you turned them on it made your blog look cluttered, defeating the purpose of the features themselves. This made us sad.
After much research, prototyping and testing by Beau and Hugo, we’ve released a simplified, more attractive design. These features now appear as friends, lining up in orderly columns, sharing attractive styles and working together to get you the activity from your visitors you want to have.
You may notice the designs for individual buttons have changed. One specific difference is now the ‘smart button’ setting is now global (renamed “Official Buttons”) and not per button. If you had mixed buttons before, you’ll now have them unified. This was a necessary tradeoff to make the larger design changes possible.
We think you and your visitors will appreciate this new design. If you haven’t used features like Sharing before, now is a great time to turn them on.
Aug 11th at 10:23 pm
Good work! Like it.
Aug 11th at 10:26 pm
Excellent addition. The simple change is so very effective.
Aug 11th at 10:32 pm
Is it just me or you can’t “like” with Facebook anymore?
Aug 11th at 10:36 pm
Looking at your blog at http://annjoo.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/anytime-for/, The Facebook like button is there, right where it should be, and works fine.
Aug 11th at 10:35 pm
Aug 11th at 10:39 pm
Aww! Please don’t be sad! The improvement is truly beautiful.
Aug 11th at 10:39 pm
It looks beautiful, thank you!
Aug 11th at 10:50 pm
“like” button is not working on my blog anymore. It has turned into an ordinary Facebook button which only shares posts. Why???
Aug 11th at 11:26 pm
If you switch to “Official Buttons”, then the button is now a Like button. In the text/icon only modes, it’s a standard share button.
Aug 11th at 10:52 pm
Much nicer now than before!
Aug 11th at 10:52 pm
Looks good – except the Google+ button. That one looks out of place with the rest.
Aug 12th at 12:01 am
Indeed. Sometimes its hard to get all the buttons to get along. We’ll get this fixed soon.
Aug 11th at 10:55 pm
Its very good! It really is beautiful.
Aug 11th at 10:58 pm
I love the way that changes happen before your eyes, this is a definite improvement – thanks!
Aug 11th at 11:04 pm
It looks great thank you!
Aug 11th at 11:04 pm
Only problem is the Google+1 does not align properly with the Facebook and Twitter buttons which have a different button height.
Aug 11th at 11:58 pm
Hi Linear: You have a good eye. We’re aware of this small problem and will fix it soon. Thanks.
Aug 11th at 11:10 pm
About time, glad to see you guys looking out for these small details wrongly presented and correcting them. Thanks
Aug 11th at 11:10 pm
Much more aesthetically pleasing! A bit confusing when I first saw them w/o the benefit of having read this post, but much nicer than it was before. One suggestion: I think that in your mention of the “unified” buttons, you should mention the button styles available & where to find them. I’m not sure I would have understood how to change the different button types if someone else hadn’t mentioned it in a forum post. To display smart buttons, go here: Settings > Sharing > Button style > Official buttons.
Aug 11th at 11:22 pm
Great work! I always thought the sharing scheme was too cluttered before…this is a big improvement. Thanks!
Aug 11th at 11:22 pm
Yep, that’s a keeper!
Aug 11th at 11:39 pm
Yeah it looks nicer.
Aug 11th at 11:42 pm
Nicely done. Thank you!
Aug 11th at 11:42 pm
Thanks to MMadfan for a few instructions! I was just wondering when I read your input. Yea!
Aug 11th at 11:48 pm
Beautiful sure, but there’s not the ‘Facebook like’ button anymore nor the ‘tweets counter’ button.
Aug 11th at 11:55 pm
Hi Nick: If you have the official buttons on, you’ll still see the Facebook Like and the tweet counter on. I looked at your blog (itsvnews.com) and it looks to be working just fine.
Aug 11th at 11:49 pm
I’m probably out of line here with this reply. I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I’m new to blogging and so… If the above is designed to show people something and if I missed the boat here, well sorry for this but I just wanted to respond to the words within ‘This is for you’ So I’m so warned but I don’t think my world is so precious that I must monitor and maximize each and every second of it. The other things I can do are nearly infinite. So! My life is rich and full. I’m am the only judge who can adjudicate that fact so just leave it alone. What are you talking about when you say there are things I’m supposed to be reading? Where is this rule book of yours which would tell me what to read, and why? As to your comment regarding thinking thoughts I’m supposed to think? What the hell is that all about? I don’t need to read any thing at all. Ask the newspapers how many are reading their products. Don’t you know people just don’t read much anymore…
Aug 11th at 11:51 pm
Ok, it seems I can’t read. Sorry
Aug 11th at 11:58 pm
I love this! So clever.
Aug 12th at 12:03 am
Looks good!
Aug 12th at 12:11 am
Thank you for the email. Look forward to the ever improving workpress
I would say an overall success!
Aug 12th at 12:22 am
This is great; it looks so much better!
Aug 12th at 12:42 am
Very neat. I really like it. Thanks
Aug 12th at 12:47 am
I LOVE IT!
It looks so much better.
Thank You and keep up the good work!
Aug 12th at 1:02 am
Every day I’m more impressed by WordPress. My only request would be to have the new, cleaner buttons while retaining the counter. The counter is a subtle way of showing readers that there is some activity on the site. I’d like the best of both worlds, the new buttons and the counter..
Aug 12th at 1:03 am
Is it possible to get an option in the Top Rated widget where the blogger can select which tab to show as a default?
It used to show Today as the default tab until you introduced All as a default first tab. I had to stop using it because my blog is a fast moving blog and I have no use to keep All as a default tab for this widget. This also made me remove Rating stars because it was useless.
Aug 12th at 1:05 am
nice
Aug 12th at 1:10 am
looks better,smaller less cluttered.
Aug 12th at 1:14 am
That looks really nice. Thank you!
Aug 12th at 1:22 am
Great work, thank you very much. Now it looks much cleaner.
Suggestion on the print button, could you think the way you print to print only the text of the article?
Aug 12th at 1:43 am
This is pretty cool.
Aug 12th at 1:49 am
Nice! Practical and simply labeled makes it easy to choose.
Aug 12th at 1:52 am
This is useful 4 me,thanks
Aug 12th at 1:53 am
you could have written something of value that would uplift people, an then their time would have been well-spent. A thought?
Aug 12th at 3:58 pm
Next time I promise to pick something sure to make everyone smile.
Aug 12th at 1:56 am
Not to be a Debbie downer, but I don’t get it.
Aug 12th at 1:57 am
I dosent works. In my Blog is writen only: Rate, but not Share. So the whole does not appear uniformly left-justified! It looks more mess than before!
Aug 12th at 2:01 am
I have solved the problem. But i still like it more how it was before. Now there more lines, more unrest, more words…
Aug 12th at 2:03 am
Love it. Beautiful. Thank you!!!!
Aug 12th at 2:04 am
that’s more of an eye candy now..
thanks! 
Aug 12th at 2:07 am
Sweet. Thanks for all your hard work!
Aug 12th at 2:21 am
Hi Scott, thanks for at this. I too have social buttons at my blog posts, but they do not seem to be aligned properly and look cluttered. Please tell me some solution. Here is the address to my blog:http://cellcustomize.com
Aug 12th at 3:48 pm
Raakaysh: This update is for WordPress.com – It doesn’t appear your blog is hosted by us.
Aug 12th at 2:34 am
I don’t have Sharing listed under my settings. What am I missing? Still learning how to use WordPress.
Aug 12th at 2:36 am
I like it, but I don’t see the change in my page
Do I have to do anything or is it automatic?
Aug 12th at 5:14 pm
Hi Honduras:
You currently have Sharing set to only appear on posts and pages, not on your main (index) page. If you go to any specific post, you’ll see them:
http://honduraspositiva.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/expresa-tus-sentimientos/
If you want Sharing to show on your main page as well, go to Settings, Sharing and set “Show buttons on” to be Posts, pages and index pages
Aug 12th at 2:38 am
Never mind. Retract last statement. Figured it out. Installed Sharedaddy.
Aug 12th at 2:47 am
Looks really bad on the K2-Lite theme :/
Aug 12th at 2:57 am
Hi. Great looks! But…
1) My “LinkedIn” button isn’t loading, all the rest do, or maybe my connection is slow. 2) With these new changes, does the difference between normal buttons and smart buttons still exist? i.e. when people click, are these new buttons registering the clicks in the stats? Thanks
Aug 16th at 12:16 am
Hi Rhonda: You can turn on the official buttons, which have the counts, by going to Settings, Sharing, and setting Button style to official.
Aug 12th at 3:07 am
Nice and organized! Beautiful
Aug 12th at 3:13 am
Thaks !! It’s great
Aug 12th at 3:14 am
I like I like….keep up the awesome work
Aug 12th at 3:14 am
WP.com is Great! Thanks!
Aug 12th at 3:25 am
This improvement automatically fixed a bug in WPTouch mobile theme. When viewing with my mobile browsers, I did never see any sharing buttons on the posts or pages , however in general(nontouch) mobiles, in which WordPress Mobile Theme by Alex King works, there buttons were shown. Now, everything is okay and I can tweet, share via my touch phone because these beautiful buttons are there. I have a doubt, when I tweeted one post from my blog, ‘via @wordpressdotcom’ was suffixed with the tweet. Can I change or eliminate it?
Aug 12th at 3:33 am
Excellent work – Keep it coming!
Aug 12th at 3:34 am
I like it
Aug 12th at 4:01 am
It’s so better than earlier.
Aug 12th at 4:12 am
good job. keep working hard ^_^
Aug 12th at 5:12 am
Awesome!
Aug 12th at 5:18 am
Great job!
Aug 12th at 5:20 am
Great, looks so much better!
Aug 12th at 5:24 am
we are….. god team……oke
Aug 12th at 5:48 am
…Se nota que el equipo de WordPress se preocupa por mejorar cada día. Great work!!!
Aug 12th at 5:49 am
I really like this. It looks so much cleaner.
Aug 12th at 5:54 am
How can I insert these features in my blog?
Aug 12th at 5:55 am
Thanks again wordpress I really love this new feature. You are right – it does streamline the page and looks much better.
Aug 12th at 6:04 am
it’s look very nice.. thanks
Aug 12th at 6:21 am
Hi Beau, Many thanks – looks great. BTW – the friends are aligned in rows, not columns
Aug 12th at 6:22 am
All very nice and good thinking. But its a very weird piece of text that comes along with the change….. couldnt you have picked a better text instead of “You just wasted 2 seconds bla bla. Is your life that empty bla bla…”
Aug 12th at 6:29 am
Pretty organized! Loved it
Aug 12th at 6:48 am
…yes,thank you for the email…
Aug 12th at 6:48 am
Certainly adds beauty to a blog. Go tmine turned on and loving the effect. Thats great
Aug 12th at 6:56 am
Like this. Posts look more neat now. First I got a shock when I found this on my homepage, too, in a place where I did not care to have it at all, but then remembered that I can still switch it off for a specific page so everything is just perfect right now.
Aug 12th at 7:05 am
Thank goodness. I really didn’t like the way the ‘share this’ stuff looked when I put all the ones I wanted on there, so I felt I had to limit my selections for the sake of beauty. Now I can enable sharing with reckless abandon and no concern that beauty will suffer. Well done!
Aug 12th at 7:08 am
Neat, Tidy, clear, AND aesthetically pleasing – win!
Sarah
Aug 12th at 7:14 am
Thanx for sharing this info =)
Aug 12th at 7:16 am
YES! Thanks!
Aug 12th at 7:18 am
Looks better than the previous one.
Aug 12th at 7:19 am
Very nice! I just noticed this today before I received this message and was really please. I appreciate these small but aesthetically pleasing changes! Thank you.
Aug 12th at 7:31 am
Beautiful, but how i can add “Rate This” to my blog?
Aug 12th at 6:25 pm
Howdy, check out this support doc on how to enable ratings: http://en.support.wordpress.com/ratings/
Aug 12th at 7:43 am
thanks for sharing!
Aug 12th at 7:51 am
Hi,
Gr8 work… Looks pretty cool than earlier… thanks! but font for “Rate this”, “Share this” & “Like” is increased automatically, which I couldn’t resolve in anyway… Plz help me out..
Aug 12th at 8:10 am
Thanks for your efforts in polishing the already well-polished WordPress even further! I would like to ask if the option for Facebook “Like” button (with counts) and Twitter counts will be available again. These two features are quite important for us. Many thanks!
Aug 12th at 4:04 pm
They are available – Just go to Settings.Sharing and Set Button style to Official Buttons.
Aug 12th at 8:13 am
Unfortunately it screw up the font size for the ‘share this’ text.
Aug 12th at 8:14 am
And google+1′s button it’s horizontally aligned.
Aug 12th at 8:17 am
Good change. Many thanks
Aug 12th at 8:24 am
I like the looks. But miss the numbers of twits on the page and find a little cheecky to have add /via @worldpress on all twits!!
Aug 12th at 8:29 am
Much better! I like it.
But there is minor issue in my theme. there is no label “Share This”
for example
http://goosetea.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/2514/#respond
Aug 12th at 5:26 pm
If you go to Settings, Sharing you can change the ‘Sharing label’ to say whatever you want. For some reason yours is currently blank.
Aug 12th at 8:36 am
Please change the color of lines in dark color scheme.
Aug 12th at 8:39 am
I noticed the changes but thought it had to do with something else, like my version of windows or internet explorer. I love it! K
Aug 12th at 8:47 am
>>> If you switch to “Official Buttons”, then the button is now a Like button. In the text/icon only modes, it’s a standard share button.
Thanks for the tip, Beau! I was crazy trying to enable the FB Like.
Aug 12th at 9:02 am
I should try this, thanks!
Aug 12th at 9:15 am
You’ve convinced me. Just hope I can find out how to do it.