Our community team recently traveled to Bangkok, Thailand to meet with longtime WordPress.com customers Karin and Nok Phisolyabut. They’re the owners of Yarnnakarn, a small arts and crafts studio that specializes in telling stories through contemporary ceramic pieces.

Part of why we love this studio, in addition to their beautiful work, is because Yarnnakarn espouses a deep commitment to sustainability and supporting their community. They continuously explore and experiment with new techniques to reduce their impact on the environment, including working with local materials and craftspeople. Rather than focusing on uniformity and quantity, they seek beauty in the flaws and imperfections innate to each natural ingredient, creating truly unique pieces.

Yarnnakarn’s work can be found all over the world and we’re thrilled that WordPress.com has helped them in that journey. Watch the video below to tour their shop, hear their story, and find out how they use their website to grow their reach.

Visit WordPress.com/customers to get 30% off your first year of the Business plan, or click below:

Whether you want a simple blog that highlights recent posts, a visually stunning portfolio, or an online home for your small business, your website should be just as unique as you are. That’s why we’re excited to introduce a new site design tool that guides you through the process of creating a memorable custom homepage. 

Our designers have put together a library of hundreds of patterns, colors, and fonts that you can mix and match for whichever distinctive vibe you’re going for. 

Try it out today by clicking the button below:

Create your own design

When you create a new site at WordPress.com, you’ll now find the option to start from a Blank Canvas. This is where you become the designer (with a little help from us): We’ll guide you through decisions on layout, colors, fonts, and more. No matter your goals for your site, we have the building blocks to help you turn your creative vision into reality. 

Pick the perfect palette 

Paint your patterns with the click of a button, applying custom color palettes to your entire page via our global styles feature. Our simple tools allow you to take the artistic lead on your site. Are you Blueberry Sorbet? Midnight Citrus? Perhaps a moody Charcoal? We have dozens of colorful options to set a mood that works for you and your audience.

Find a fitting font

Whether something stately and classic or sleek and modern, the typeface you use sets the tone for everything you’re trying to do with your site. Our thoughtful and engaging one-click font pairings will have you feeling like an expert typographer in no time.

Edit with ease

Patterns? Check. Colors? Check. Fonts? Check. You’ve got the basics of your site set up. Now it’s time to harness the power of the Site Editor. Bring your page to life by adding images, content, products to sell, and more. As you get comfortable, continue to experiment by adding or removing patterns, playing with colors and fonts, and making your site look and feel exactly the way you want it to. 

Click below to get started with our DIY site assembler:

Learn more 

Need some extra help? Our new Quick Launch course will guide you through what to include on a compelling homepage, and how to tie it together with our new DIY design assembler. Additionally, here’s a few more resource to get you started with designing on WordPress.com:

• Create additional pages with Page Layouts
• Using block patterns
• Global styles
• Using the Site Editor

On May 27, 2003, co-founders Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little announced that WordPress was available to the public. Their vision, as you can still read in their original post on WordPress.org, was to foster a means by which anyone could easily share and discuss their ideas with the world. 

What started as a humble open-source blogging platform is now the driving force behind over one-third of the internet’s most popular websites, including The New York Times, Salesforce, and Disney. But the non-profit WordPress project continues to further its mission of democratizing publishing for the entire world. Just as Version 0.7 was available as a free download under the General Public License (GPL) 20 years ago, WordPress remains free today — at Version 6.2 and counting. 

Automattic — the parent company of WordPress.com, Jetpack, Tumblr, and other web platforms and services — didn’t yet exist when Mike and Matt launched WordPress. But since its birth in 2005, the two organizations have worked hand in hand. Through the Five for the Future initiative, Automattic commits 5% of our company’s resources — including over 4,000 employee hours per week — to the open source WordPress project. In turn, we benefit from the amazing work they do in improving WordPress and ensuring the best possible experience for building and maintaining your website, no matter how small or large.  

It’s a symbiotic relationship for which we have a deep appreciation. The WordPress community often uses a saying that we love: “A rising tide lifts all boats.” A healthy and thriving WordPress project benefits all of us. 

So, to our friends in the WordPress open source community, we extend a heartfelt congratulations and thank you. Happy 20th anniversary! We can’t wait to see what the next two decades — and beyond — will bring. 

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.

Iotix

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:

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! 

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.

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

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.  

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

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 PDT
• Wed May 10 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST
• Thurs May 11 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Compelling 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 PDT
• Wed May 17 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST
• Thurs May 18 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Site 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 PDT
• Wed May 24 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST
• Thurs May 25 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Your 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.

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: 

1. Starting in your dashboard, go to Settings → Hosting Configuration.
2. Scroll down to the “Staging site” module.
3. 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.

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.

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. 

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 PDT
• Wed Apr 19 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST
• Thurs Apr 20 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

Site 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 PDT
• Wed Apr 26 at 7:00pm AEST | 2:30pm IST | 11:00am CEST
• Thurs Apr 27 at 9:30pm IST | 6:00pm CEST | 12:00pm EDT | 9:00am PDT

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!

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 limits
• A high-performance, secure web hosting platform
• A host managed and maintained by WordPress experts
• Reliable 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 client
• Removing worries about performance or speed
• The platform’s development by the same team behind the open-source WordPress application
• Clients feeling confident enough to manage their own site, knowing they’re protected by Jetpack backups, activity logs, and backed up by excellent WordPress.com support
• Giving 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

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.

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.

On April 3, Twitter suspended WordPress.com’s access to the Twitter API without warning. As a result, Jetpack Social — the built-in tool that we use to auto-share your posts to social media — is currently broken for Twitter. This means that auto-posting to Twitter via WordPress.com is not actively working. 

Thankfully, this issue is isolated to Twitter, which means that Jetpack Social connections to other platforms are unaffected. Rest assured that you can continue sharing to Tumblr, Facebook, and LinkedIn without interruption.

You’re most likely to encounter this when publishing a new post. You’ll see this alert in the pre-publish sidebar:

Reconnecting won’t work at this time, nor will trying to establish a new connection.  

We want you to know that we’re on top of this and working hard to find a solution. We’ll keep this post updated as we get more information. 

In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out Tumblr recently, now is a great time to do so! While some social media companies have made recent decisions that adversely affect users’ experience, we’re constantly adding great new features and amping up what’s possible on Tumblr. 

We know that social sharing is vitally important for spreading the word about your work, and we’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes. Thank you for your patience as we work to get everything back up and running.

Are you taking your first steps in selling a product or service online and don’t know where to start? Be sure to register for our upcoming WooCommerce 101 webinar, where our expert Happiness Engineers will walk you through everything you need to know about setting up an online store with WooCommerce and WordPress.com managed hosting.

Webinar details

• Date: Tuesday, March 28, 2023 
• Time: 16:00 UTC  | 18:00 CEST | 12pm EDT | 9:00am PDT  
• Cost: Free
• Who’s invited: business owners, entrepreneurs, freelancers, service providers, store owners, and anyone else who wants to sell a product or service online.

What you’ll learn

Whether you’re an e-commerce veteran or this is your first business, join us for the inside scoop on launching a store that’s fully customizable, completely yours, and ready to grow from the start. In this live webinar, our Happiness Engineer will demonstrate how to:

• Instal Woo on your existing WordPress site
• Use the setup wizard to get up and running fast
• Set up simple products, basic shipping, and tax support
• Collect payments through WooCommerce Payments and other gateways

No previous e-commerce experience is necessary, but we recommend a basic familiarity with WordPress.com to ensure you can make the most from the webinar. A Q&A session will follow the walkthrough, so be sure to bring any questions you might have!
Seats are limited, so register now to reserve your spot. See you then!

Has your desktop been looking a bit drab lately? If so – or if you’d just like to show a little WordPress love – we’ve got just the remedy: 30 one-of-a-kind WordPress desktop wallpapers to breathe new life into your backgrounds.

The wallpapers

Download and install

To add a wallpaper to your desktop:

• Click on any image to open a fullscreen carousel
• Right-click the image if you’re using Windows or Linux, or command-click on a Mac
• Save the wallpaper to your favorite folder
• And set it as your desktop wallpaper (Windows / Ubuntu / MacOS)

About the wallpapers

The wallpapers are a homage to some of our favorite artists, with a nod to the freedom, innovation, and creativity of open-source software. 

We put these together with an entirely open-source AI tool called Stable Diffusion. Like WordPress, Stable Diffusion is all about helping more people to create, experiment, and share, while having the freedom to access and contribute to the code making it all happen.

Over to you

We’d love to hear what you think, and if you have any favorites. Of course, please feel free to remix, use these on your blog, or share your work in the comments!

One of the biggest benefits of our Business and Commerce plans is that you can add additional WordPress plugins to enhance the functionality of your website.

Below, we’re highlighting two of the newest additions to our plugin marketplace, now available at a hefty exclusive discount for WordPress.com users.

Create courses with Sensei Pro

Automattic, the same company behind WordPress.com, creates Sensei LMS. We’ve collaborated to bring our Learning Management System and course creation tools to WordPress.com sites in one seamless experience.

With Sensei Pro, you can create online courses with quizzes, certificates, cohorts, and detailed student reports. Lessons are edited just like WordPress posts or pages, so you will already know how it works.

You can enable the distraction-free Learning Mode to provide students with an optimized mobile-friendly learning environment that keeps your course content front and center.

Learn more about Sensei Pro.

Sell courses with WooCommerce integration

Selling courses can be a lucrative way to generate revenue for your blog or business. Sensei LMS integrates deeply with our WooCommerce suite of tools to make selling access to a course a breeze. 

You can also take advantage of WooCommerce extensions to handle coupons, memberships, subscriptions, and more. 

Learn more about WooCommerce and Sensei integration.

Publish interactive and private videos

Videos are often a big part of online courses. WordPress.com sites also come with our VideoPress service, which lets you upload videos directly to your site without dealing with a third-party tool or embed codes. Especially important for video courses, you can mark a video as “private” to ensure it won’t be downloaded or linked to, and will only be available to course students.

Even better, with Sensei’s Interactive Videos block, you can create pause points with additional content to any video. For example: 

• Add a quiz question in the middle of a course video. 
• Add a contact form to the end of a sales video.
• Show links to additional resources to a blog post video.

Add Interactive Videos to any WordPress page or post. They are not limited to courses or lessons.

Learn more about Interactive Videos.

Engage with interactive blocks

In addition to the Interactive Videos, Sensei also comes with interactive and educational content blocks, including:

• Quiz questions
• Accordions
• Image hotspots
• Flashcards
• Task lists

Using these blocks, you can craft compelling content that captivates and keeps your readers engaged. Whether writing an educational blog post or creating a sales landing page, you can add these blocks to any WordPress page or post. 

Learn more about Interactive Blocks.

Getting Sensei Pro and Sensei Blocks

For existing sites on WordPress.com, you’ll find Sensei’s plugins in the plugin marketplace. WordPress.com users receive a 30% discount on Sensei Pro automatically.

• Sensei Pro — all course creation tools and interactive blocks included. Get Sensei Pro here.
• Sensei Interactive Blocks — interactive videos, accordions, image hotspots, flashcards, and task lists. Creating courses is not needed to be able to use these blocks. Get Sensei Interactive Blocks here.

Or, create a brand new site with Sensei Pro bundled here.

We’re excited to announce that Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com, has acquired the popular WordPress plugin ActivityPub. 

This innovative plugin brings a whole new level of social networking to your website by integrating it with the wider federated social web. When installed, the plugin allows you to easily share your content and interact with users on Mastodon and other platforms that also support the ActivityPub protocol. 

Just as Automattic aims to do with all of our products, this plugin helps to decentralize the web, break down silos, and foster a more connected online ecosystem. 

Why you should use the ActivityPub plugin

If you’re a blogger or content creator who wants to reach a wider audience, the ActivityPub plugin is perfect for you. Just as Jetpack Social – another one of our great plugins! – automatically shares content to large social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, ActivityPub automatically allows anyone on a federated network to follow your blog’s posts, which will show up in their Home feed. The federated networks include:

• Mastodon
• Pleroma
• Friendica
• HubZilla
• Pixelfed
• SocialHome
• Misskey

Responses on those platforms show up in your WordPress post’s comments, allowing you to interact directly with readers across the fediverse, streamlining engagement and creating a more cohesive online presence. 

Moreover, in using ActivityPub for WordPress, you’re supporting the open source movement, promoting transparency and collaboration, and empowering users to take control of their online experience and contribute to a more diverse and inclusive internet landscape.

How to install ActivityPub for WordPress

Installing the ActivityPub plugin is a breeze, even if you’ve never added a plugin before. 

1. From your dashboard’s left-side menu, navigate to the plugin marketplace and search “ActivityPub” (all one word). Alternatively, you can click here and go directly to the plugin page. 

2. Click “Install and activate.” 

3. Once activated, you can click “Manage plugin,” which allows you to choose the type of content that will show up in fediverse feeds — if you’re not quite ready for that, you can always access it later under “Settings” → “ActivityPub.” 

At Automattic, our philosophy has always been to democratize publishing and make the web a better place. In our acquisition of ActivityPub for WordPress, we’re doing that for the social web.  

WordPress.com is an organization — like others within Automattic — that is heavily invested in Open Source and the democratization of the web. We genuinely believe that everyone should have control over their presence, their data, and even their social experiences. That’s why we’re really excited about some of the work Bluesky is doing.

What is Bluesky?

We’re building a new foundation for social networking which gives creators independence from platforms, developers the freedom to build, and users a choice in their experience.

blueskyweb.xyz

Think about all of the different pieces tied to any one of your social accounts:

• Your username – how people identify you in that platform
• Your connections/network
• The content you’ve created
• The media you’ve uploaded
• The conversations you’ve had with others
• Your connections to influencers, brands, and businesses
• Purchases within a specific platform

Now, imagine being able to bring all of that with you when you get frustrated with changes on one social network and rediscover the magic of one you had *almost* forgotten about.

This is exactly what Bluesky is trying to accomplish with its AT Protocol, and we can’t way to see how it evolves.

That’s so cool! Why is that cool?

So glad you asked!

We’re all probably familiar with the “blue checkmark of officialness” used across may social platforms. It’s essentially a way for users to identify the real accounts for famous and notable people/brands/things.

Bluesky lets you claim a domain that you own as your username/handle, and they automatically verify it by checking your domain for a simple text record. That may sound complicated, but it’s actually quite simple — especially on WordPress.com.

Think of it like any kind of certificate you might get, which often requires a signature from you as well as from some sort of official before it’s considered a verified document. It’s just like that, except that instead of collecting dust, this unlocks a digital superpower: a consistent way for anyone to find the real you (potentially) anywhere on the web.

How do I add a text record to my domain?

I’ll cover some simple steps for those of you who manage your domains here on WordPress.com. If you have domains registered elsewhere on the web you will have to check that registrar’s documentation. If you’d rather just manage it here, you can check out the steps to transfer it over.

Note: You will need an invitation to join to the private beta of Bluesky before you can set up an account and use this feature.

6 easy steps

Step 1: Navigate to the site that your domain is associated with on WordPress.com — if you only have one site you can simply go to WordPress.com.

Step 2: Use the left hand menu to navigate to Upgrades/Domains.

Step 3: Identify the domain you want to use and click on the vertical elipses on the right. Click “view settings.”

Step 4: Click on the arrow to the right of “DNS Records” to expand the information. Click on “Manage.”

Step 5: Click the “+ Add Record” button at the top of the screen.

Step 6: Change the record type from “A” to “TXT.”

Step 7: Add the Bluesky information to your record.

• Add _atproto in the “domain name (optional)” field.
• Add the Bluesky “Value” in the “Text” field.

Step 8: Click the “Add DNS record” button.

I’m always pleasantly surprised by how fast our DNS is. In this case, I was able to verify the record in the Bluesky app less than 30 seconds after I saved it on WordPress.com. Here’s what the app looks like while you’re setting up, after it’s verified, and after you officially update your handle.

If you made it this far, you’re at least a little bit interested. Let us know what piqued your interest in the comments!

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. Our newest features go a little deeper into the settings, making them particularly suited to those who call themselves tinkerers. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a pro, get in there and play around anyway! You’re more capable than you think, and if you break something our team can always get it back — we’ve all been there. 

And in this case, a little experimentation can reap big rewards. All it takes is a small change or two to make a huge difference in how people see (and interact with) your website. 

Let’s jump in and take a look.

Make your site’s buttons pop 

Giving your buttons a shadow effect is an easy and powerful way to give your pages some extra panache. Now, new preset options available in the Styles menu let you apply that across your site. 

From the Styles sidebar, click “Blocks,” and then “Buttons.” From there, you’ll see four options for how to style your buttons. This feature is only available on block themes. 

When to use this feature: You’re a master of the CTA (call to action) and you put a button at the end of every blog post asking readers to watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast, or buy a book. You’ve been thinking that those buttons are looking a little stale and flat. Use the new shadow presets to invigorate your default buttons with a depth and freshness that wasn’t there before. 

Reuse a beautiful design 

Not only can you copy and paste text from one block to another, you can now copy the entire styling of a block — colors, typography, and anything else — and paste it to another block of the same type. 

From a block’s settings menu, select “Copy Styles.” Then once you add a new block, select “Paste Styles” from the settings menu to transfer all those design goodies.  

When to use this feature: You’ve spent some time playing with gradients and type settings to make a Quote Block look really nice, and it’s paid off — now you want to bring that primo styling over to a Quote Block on a different page. Rather than recreating the steps you took, simply use “Copy Styles”/”Paste Styles” and get a gold star for efficiency. 

Give readers a sticking point 

A “sticky” component on your website is a piece of content (often a header + menu, though not always) that stays stuck at the top no matter how far down you scroll through a page or post. It’s a handy feature for visitors to your site, especially on mobile, where scrolling back up to a menu can be annoying. 

There are other uses as well, such as an important announcement or promotion that you want visible at all times. 

However, only a group can be made sticky rather than any individual template part. So you’ll first wrap your desired sticky blocks in a group, select that group, then access the “Sticky” option from the settings sidebar. 

When to use this feature: Your website features long pages or posts that require a lot of scrolling. Maybe you’re a baby name consultant and have numerous lengthy lists of names. Utilize a sticky header and menu so that visitors don’t have to scroll all the way back up in order to quickly access the next category of names to peruse. 

Twice as nice: copy your entire site! 

Are you a professional in the web-building space? We’ve launched a new feature that allows you to easily copy the entirety of a site. Once you create your base template site, you’ll be able to spin up new client sites without starting entirely from scratch.

An important note: copying a site creates a new plan as well. For instance, copying a business site creates a new business plan at the same time.  

From the wordpress.com/sites dashboard, click the three-dot menu, hit “Copy site,” go through a couple confirmation steps, and you’ll be set. This feature is available on Business and Commerce plans with Hosting Features active.

When to use this feature: You’re a solopreneur website builder and you often use previously built sites as inspiration for current builds. If you’re working on a new site and thinking about using a framework or feel that you’ve already created, copy the site with a single click and start the project with some of the work already done. 

In Case You Missed It

If you missed our other recent updates, below is a quick snapshot.

A new mobile experience for WordPress.com

Our new and improved Jetpack mobile app offers everything you need to WordPress on the go.

Professional design, without a designer

This primer on Styles gives you the lowdown on making your website pop in just a few clicks.

A new home for WordPress.com courses

Our courses have a new home at WordPress.com/Learn. The best part? All the courses are totally free and there’s no registration needed.

A more diverse stock photo library

Cocoamattic ERG, an employee resource group at Automattic, partnered with Nappy.co to release a collection of 90+ beautiful photos of Black people interacting with technology.