Archive for June, 2011
If you’ve wanted a magazine theme for your blog but haven’t found just the right one today’s new theme might just do it for you. It’s called Delicious Magazine and it’s the latest in a series of terrific magazine themes from WooThemes.
The Delicious Magazine Theme
If you love using images to draw your visitors into your writing, you’ll love Delicious Magazine. Right away you can see how it uses Featured Images to build an elegant area for highlighting groups of select posts on your home page. And just like the other premium magazine themes available on WordPress.com it’s packed with features that let anyone easily customize the design.
Delicious Magazine is available for the lifetime of your blog for $45. Read more about the Delicious Magazine features or preview it live on your blog from Appearance → Themes. It might be the magazine theme you’ve been waiting for!
If you’ve wanted a magazine theme for your blog but haven’t found just the right one today’s new theme might just do it for you. It’s called Delicious Magazine and it’s the latest in a series of terrific magazine themes from WooThemes.
The Delicious Magazine Theme
If you love using images to draw your visitors into your writing, you’ll love Delicious Magazine. Right away you can see how it uses Featured Images to build an elegant area for highlighting groups of select posts on your home page. And just like the other premium magazine themes available on WordPress.com it’s packed with features that let anyone easily customize the design.
Delicious Magazine is available for the lifetime of your blog for $45. Read more about the Delicious Magazine features or preview it live on your blog from Appearance → Themes. It might be the magazine theme you’ve been waiting for!
Today we’re excited to bring you Custom Design, a powerful new tool that combines easy to use, code-free font selection from Typekit and a beautiful CSS editing interface with world-class support from our famous WordPress.com Happiness Engineers.
You’ll find both new features—Fonts and CSS—under Appearance → Custom Design in your dashboard. Custom Design costs just $30 a year, and both features include a free preview so you can try them out first.
Example of Custom Design landing screen.
Fonts Made Super Easy
The Font Editor provides a visual preview of your blog with over 50 gorgeous premium Typekit fonts—from foundries like Mark Simonson, exljbris, FontFont, and the League of Moveable Type—and allows you to easily modify the size and style of your fonts. It works with all themes, no coding skills required!
Example of choosing fonts with the Font Editor.
We worked closely with Typekit on this new tool—incorporating their long experience with delivering beautiful fonts on the web—to create the best experience possible. With the Custom Design upgrade comes the ability to manage all your Typekit fonts settings from within your dashboard; you no longer need to make a roundtrip to Typekit and back to update the fonts on your blog.
If you are already using Typekit fonts on your blog, you are grandfathered in—meaning your fonts will continue to display as they do now but you’ll have limited editing and functionality. To take advantage of all the new features, we encourage you to upgrade to Custom Design.
CSS Backed by Expertise
Our popular CSS editing tool received a visual refresh with its merge into the Custom Design upgrade. If you know your way around a cascading style sheet, you can use the CSS Editor to really put a personal touch on your blog and create an entirely new design.
CSS editor in action.
If your site already has custom CSS enabled, it will continue to work as it does now, and visitors will see no changes to your design. Furthermore, you’ve been upgraded to the new Custom Design package for free, so you now have full access to all the new features, including the Font Editor.
Along with the CSS Editor updates we’re making the WordPress.com CSS forum officially supported by the WP.com Happiness team. Bring your CSS customization questions to the forum and you can get expert help.
From your feedback—and by seeing your cool customizations in use all over WordPress.com—we know that design tools on WordPress.com are put to good use, so we hope you love this new upgrade. Fonts are now incredibly easy. We’re now helping you craft your CSS. Let’s make something beautiful.
If you’d like more details on the new upgrade, head over to Custom Design.
Today we’re excited to bring you Custom Design, a powerful new tool that combines easy to use, code-free font selection from Typekit and a beautiful CSS editing interface with world-class support from our famous WordPress.com Happiness Engineers.
You’ll find both new features—Fonts and CSS—under Appearance → Custom Design in your dashboard. Custom Design costs just $30 a year, and both features include a free preview so you can try them out first.
Example of Custom Design landing screen.
Fonts Made Super Easy
The Font Editor provides a visual preview of your blog with over 50 gorgeous premium Typekit fonts—from foundries like Mark Simonson, exljbris, FontFont, and the League of Moveable Type—and allows you to easily modify the size and style of your fonts. It works with all themes, no coding skills required!
Example of choosing fonts with the Font Editor.
We worked closely with Typekit on this new tool—incorporating their long experience with delivering beautiful fonts on the web—to create the best experience possible. With the Custom Design upgrade comes the ability to manage all your Typekit fonts settings from within your dashboard; you no longer need to make a roundtrip to Typekit and back to update the fonts on your blog.
If you are already using Typekit fonts on your blog, you are grandfathered in—meaning your fonts will continue to display as they do now but you’ll have limited editing and functionality. To take advantage of all the new features, we encourage you to upgrade to Custom Design.
CSS Backed by Expertise
Our popular CSS editing tool received a visual refresh with its merge into the Custom Design upgrade. If you know your way around a cascading style sheet, you can use the CSS Editor to really put a personal touch on your blog and create an entirely new design.
CSS editor in action.
If your site already has custom CSS enabled, it will continue to work as it does now, and visitors will see no changes to your design. Furthermore, you’ve been upgraded to the new Custom Design package for free, so you now have full access to all the new features, including the Font Editor.
Along with the CSS Editor updates we’re making the WordPress.com CSS forum officially supported by the WP.com Happiness team. Bring your CSS customization questions to the forum and you can get expert help.
From your feedback—and by seeing your cool customizations in use all over WordPress.com—we know that design tools on WordPress.com are put to good use, so we hope you love this new upgrade. Fonts are now incredibly easy. We’re now helping you craft your CSS. Let’s make something beautiful.
If you’d like more details on the new upgrade, head over to Custom Design.
Here at Automattic we feel really lucky to be able to interact with so many WordPress.com users through our awesome Happiness Engineers in Support, meeting WordPress users and lovers at various global WordCamps, and even Matt runs into WordPress users when he’s on a plane (is there a better way to get Support? We think not. But let him sleep a little).
One of the most common questions we answer is, “Can I have my own domain on WordPress.com?” The answer to that question is a resounding YES!
We are happy to give you a free website at WordPress.com (something like anyaddress.wordpress.com) but if you want to also use your own domain, you can do that very easily.
You don’t need to create another site – you simply need the inexpensive Domain Mapping Upgrade. In layman’s terms, domain mapping just means pointing example.com to your anyaddress.wordpress.com site, so when your friends visit example.com they will see your super-cool site hosted at WordPress.com, and example.com will remain the visible address.
That’s it!
- It doesn’t matter where you registered your domain – you can still map it to your WordPress.com site. Check out How to Map an Existing Domain.
- Still need to get a custom domain? You can do it all through WordPress.com. Check out How to Register and Map a New Domain.
- Have a domain already, but want to put your WordPress.com site on a subdomain (like blog.example.com)? We can do that, too. Read How to Map a Subdomain.
After you map your domain, make sure you Update the Primary Domain to your shiny new personalized domain so when people visit your example.com site, that’s the address that stays visible in the address bar. Instructions for doing that are in each of the above posts, or you can find it under Upgrades > Domains on that blog’s dashboard after you’ve completed the domain mapping process.
Oh, and we’re not jealous, either. If you ever decide to transfer the site off WordPress.com, you can take your domain with you, too. Check out How to Transfer a Domain and if you prefer one of our super talented Happiness Engineers to move your entire website for you to a self-hosted WordPress solution, check out Guided Transfer.
Spread the Word!
Here at Automattic we feel really lucky to be able to interact with so many WordPress.com users through our awesome Happiness Engineers in Support, meeting WordPress users and lovers at various global WordCamps, and even Matt runs into WordPress users when he’s on a plane (is there a better way to get Support? We think not. But let him sleep a little).
One of the most common questions we answer is, “Can I have my own domain on WordPress.com?” The answer to that question is a resounding YES!
We are happy to give you a free website at WordPress.com (something like anyaddress.wordpress.com) but if you want to also use your own domain, you can do that very easily.
You don’t need to create another site – you simply need the inexpensive Domain Mapping Upgrade. In layman’s terms, domain mapping just means pointing example.com to your anyaddress.wordpress.com site, so when your friends visit example.com they will see your super-cool site hosted at WordPress.com, and example.com will remain the visible address.
That’s it!
- It doesn’t matter where you registered your domain – you can still map it to your WordPress.com site. Check out How to Map an Existing Domain.
- Still need to get a custom domain? You can do it all through WordPress.com. Check out How to Register and Map a New Domain.
- Have a domain already, but want to put your WordPress.com site on a subdomain (like blog.example.com)? We can do that, too. Read How to Map a Subdomain.
After you map your domain, make sure you Update the Primary Domain to your shiny new personalized domain so when people visit your example.com site, that’s the address that stays visible in the address bar. Instructions for doing that are in each of the above posts, or you can find it under Upgrades > Domains on that blog’s dashboard after you’ve completed the domain mapping process.
Oh, and we’re not jealous, either. If you ever decide to transfer the site off WordPress.com, you can take your domain with you, too. Check out How to Transfer a Domain and if you prefer one of our super talented Happiness Engineers to move your entire website for you to a self-hosted WordPress solution, check out Guided Transfer.
Spread the Word!
In the game of poker you need to be able to adapt your strategy as needed while playing the game. Think of it like shifting gears in a car you change gear to adapt to the speed and terrain you are driving on – the same applies to the game of poker. Being able to adapt is one of the most crucial skills you can learn and use to your advantage. Lets back up a bit and explain why it’s so important so you can judge for yourself the necessity of adapting. In any poker game the situation is always changing – you will be dealt different hands and so will your opponents, you will bet differently and so will your opponents and perhaps most importantly your opponents will always be changing so the game will never be the same twice. Being able to adapt means altering your mindset to fit the particular game you are playing and the players you are playing with – as the situation changes you need to be able to adapt accordingly if you expect to make money with poker.
Now you may be thinking you have a strategy that always works, maybe it’s a “style” you like to play, a certain attitude you like to portray? If this is the case then why adapt to each new game? There are two primary reasons why you may need to adapt your play the first is exploiting certain circumstances you may be faced with. For example, lets say you are playing a game of online Texas Holdem and you are dealt a hand that would normally be an automatic fold for you. The difference this time is that the only person on the table who has bet has a strong tendency towards bluffing – this might be a golden opportunity for you to adapt to a situation and play to your potential benefit knowing the information.
The second reason you may need to adapt your play is so you don’t become predictable (like the player that always bluffs in the above example). Being difficult for other players to read is a huge advantage in any poker game – why give your opponents any advantage over you? If your moves can be predicted then you will have a pattern that your opponents will learn to follow and capitalize on as they counter your moves. It won’t take long for other players to learn when to call, raise or fold when playing with you no matter what hand is dealt. If you are willing to adapt to the situation at hand then you become less likely to predict and other players won’t be able to take advantage of any holes in your game.
While the above are the primary reasons for adapting play there are a few other advantages. This may seem obvious but you should be adjusting your play based on how you are doing in a particular game. The obvious being if your bankroll is running low you should tighten up your play in order to protect your chips. And vice versa is true – if your bankroll is looking rather healthy then maybe you should use that to your advantage as an intimidation tactic. You can often steal blinds by making large bets. And to state the obvious – if you have the right cards and you are making large bets then you stand a good chance of taking down chips even if you’re called you still could win the hand.
The final piece of advice I have to share about adapting to play is based on who you are playing with and the number of players you are playing against. The concept is simple, the number of opponents you are playing against will impact the odds of winning your hand. Simple math – your odds will change depending on how many players are in the pot one, two, three, etc. Who you are playing against is also very important – the expertise and habits of your opponents should play a factor in how you adapt to play. Try and identify patterns of play – are they an aggressive or reserved player? Do they have a tendency for bluffing? Is there a pattern to their betting? And any other tell factors you may pick up on and use to your advantage.
I hope this article helped you see all the beneficial ways that being able to adapt play can mean the difference between winning or losing. Flexibility is important when playing poker – especially online as your opponents can change more frequently. Learn to adapt and you will stay ahead of the competition, if you don’t then it will be difficult to make money with poker playing online. It’s evolution – the poker players that adapt will survive and profit.
Tony Edwards is an online poker player and product reviewer. Learn more about how you can make money with poker by visiting his blog www.makemoneywithpoker.org.There are some great resources available to teach you all the ways to make money with poker.
To show our support for IPv6, and as part of our IPv6 migration plan, we have enabled dual stack connectivity on our blog on this occasion of World IPv6 Day. If you view this site over IPv6, you will see a visual indicator confirming access from IPv6:
What’s IPv6?
For those of you who don’t know, IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol, which offers a large number of IP addresses, 296 (= 79228162514264337593543950336) times of what IPv4 has to offer. A typical IPv6 address looks like 2001:db8:cafe::1, compared to an IPv4 address 192.168.148.1. IPv4 space is quickly becoming exhausted, necessitating the migration to IPv6. You can read more about IPv6 in its Wikipedia entry or in the free book, The Second Internet. You can use IPv6 tunnels if your ISP does not offer IPv6 connectivity yet. Using http://test-ipv6.com/, you can verify IPv6 connectivity.
Behind the Scenes
This is powered by 2 load-balancers running nginx, and connectivity to IPv6 internet is through IPv6 6in4 tunnels provided by Hurricane Electric Tunnelbroker, as our datacenters have not enabled IPv6 yet.
Plans
This is not the end. Once we have native IPv6 connectivity, we are planning to roll out IPv6 connectivity for all sites on WordPress.com, and maybe all Automattic sites as well. Stay tuned for more IPv6 announcements…
To show our support for IPv6, and as part of our IPv6 migration plan, we have enabled dual stack connectivity on our blog on this occasion of World IPv6 Day. If you view this site over IPv6, you will see a visual indicator confirming access from IPv6:
What’s IPv6?
For those of you who don’t know, IPv6 is the next-generation Internet protocol, which offers a large number of IP addresses, 296 (= 79228162514264337593543950336) times of what IPv4 has to offer. A typical IPv6 address looks like 2001:db8:cafe::1, compared to an IPv4 address 192.168.148.1. IPv4 space is quickly becoming exhausted, necessitating the migration to IPv6. You can read more about IPv6 in its Wikipedia entry or in the free book, The Second Internet. You can use IPv6 tunnels if your ISP does not offer IPv6 connectivity yet. Using http://test-ipv6.com/, you can verify IPv6 connectivity.
Behind the Scenes
This is powered by 2 load-balancers running nginx, and connectivity to IPv6 internet is through IPv6 6in4 tunnels provided by Hurricane Electric Tunnelbroker, as our datacenters have not enabled IPv6 yet.
Plans
This is not the end. Once we have native IPv6 connectivity, we are planning to roll out IPv6 connectivity for all sites on WordPress.com, and maybe all Automattic sites as well. Stay tuned for more IPv6 announcements…
Last year on WordPress.com we introduced the world to the first new WordPress default theme in 5 years — the first annual default theme — Twenty Ten. Now it’s our pleasure to introduce you all to its successor, Twenty Eleven.
The Twenty Eleven Theme
It might look familiar. 
Yep, Twenty Eleven started life as the Duster theme before it made the theme big leagues. But it’s not just a renamed Duster. There are tons of really cool improvements and features packed into it — more Post Formats, beautiful new header images, alternate color schemes and layouts, even custom link colors. All those features add up to the best part of Twenty Eleven: just how customizable it is. It looks great as a blog, a showcase of all your posts, and even a tumblelog or photoblog.
If you want to know more about the cool new features in Twenty Eleven we’ve made a page that outlines them all on the Theme Showcase. You can read up on Twenty Eleven there and check out a live demo or just simply activate it on your blog and start experimenting! And if you have a self-hosted installation of WordPress you haven’t been left out of the fun. You can wait to give Twenty Eleven a shot when WordPress 3.2 is released in about a month or try it out right now with the beta version and upcoming release candidates. We’re looking forward to seeing how you use Twenty Eleven on your blog.
