Archive for the ‘Online Betting’ Category
If you’ve ever wondered where on Earth all the visitors to your site are coming from, this feature is for you!
Mosey on over to your My Stats tab on the WordPress.com homepage:
…and check out the brand new “Views by Country” panel.
Now, you can see at a glance exactly which countries comprise your audience:
When you click on or hover over a country name, the map zooms in so you can really get a feel for all the parts of the planet your content has reached:
The Summaries page shows you country stats for the previous week, month, quarter and all time, but keep in mind this feature is new and views by country are not available prior to March 2012:
We are tremendously excited to be working on new features like this for your WordPress.com My Stats tab. Stay tuned for the next evolution!
Today we’ve got two great new free themes for you: Sunspot and Triton Lite.
Inspiration for Sunspot came from one of our older and beloved classics, Sunburn (and perhaps a bit from the recent solar storms). A sharp theme with subtle grid lines and sun-splashed accents, Sunspot is a great all-purpose canvas for your blog, especially if you prefer a dark color scheme.
Sunspot offers two arrangements for posts on the front page: single-column (default) or double-column (pictured above). Additional features include a small, logo-sized custom header for the top left corner, a custom background, two optional widget areas, and a responsive layout that adapts gracefully to smaller screen sizes. Read more about it on the Theme Showcase, or head over to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard and take it for a spin.
Next up is Triton Lite, a clean and simple—yet versatile—theme designed with photographers in mind. Its home page and archive pages offer truly dynamic layouts that snap to both the heights and widths of all available content on a page, thus creating tight and tidy post arrangements that beautifully showcase your images.
Designed by Towfiq I., Triton Lite comes bundled with three different widget areas, a featured post slider, custom accent and link color options, and a full-width page template. As usual, read more about Triton Lite and its features on the Theme Showcase, or, if you want to start using it right away, visit Appearance → Themes to activate it on your blog.
The process of publishing new posts just got simplified big time. Starting today, any time you’re logged in to WordPress.com, you can create and publish new posts without the leaving the page you’re on. So instead of having to visit your blog’s dashboard each time you want to publish a post, now you can start a new post the very second you’re inspired to create one.
Simply click the New Post button on the right side of the toolbar, and you can instantly start a new post with the editor that slides down from the top of the screen:
First, select the type of content you want to share (text, photo, video, quote, or link).
Use the Write a Post tab if you want to include multiple images in your post (or if you want to write a text-only post). If you just want to quickly share a single photo, select the Post a Photo tab.
When the post is ready, add some tags if you like, then choose the blog you want to post to (if you have more than one) using the drop-down menu below the post editor:
When you’re done, hit Publish Post, and you can go right back to whatever you were doing before you started the post.
Note that if you have a theme that supports post formats, posts published with the Post a Photo, Video, Quote, and Link tabs will be displayed on your site with a nifty, visually distinct post format:
An example of the Esquire theme's video and quote post formats.
Lastly, there’s also a New Post tab on the WordPress.com homepage for quick access to the new post editor:
Keep in mind that if you want to add categories to a post, preview it, or schedule it to publish at a later time, you can still create and edit posts with the dashboard editor by going to Posts → All Posts.
So what do you think of this new way to publish posts? Leave your feedback in the comments below.
I’m excited to introduce a brand new free video theme brought to you by the team here at Automattic.
Despite its minimalist design, Sundance was crafted with clean, elegant typography and close attention to detail.
The home page offers a featured video carousel where you can highlight a maximum of ten posts that are assigned to the video post format. In the sidebar, you can add your social network links — Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Flickr — so that your readers can stay connected.
Sundance is designed with responsive design in mind. It provides a tailored layout depending on the device you are using. This makes your blog look good not only on desktop browsers, but also on devices with smaller screens, such as the iPad and iPhone.
Sundance supports an optional widget area in the sidebar, a custom background, and custom header image. As always, you can click on over to the Theme Showcase to read more about Sundance.
For nearly thirty years, ArLynn Presser avoided leaving her neighborhood in Winnetka, Illinois, as she would experience debilitating anxiety and panic attacks when visiting public places and interacting with people outside her home.
But once she turned fifty, the romance writer decided that she was tired of living in isolation, and ready to face her greatest fear. On December 31, 2010 she started a blog at ArLynnPresser.WordPress.com and wrote in her first post, “My New Year’s resolution is to meet every Facebook friend I have.”
And so she spent 2011 visiting friends all over the world (and meeting some for the very first time). Her son Joseph accompanied her on the journey, recording video clips for ArLynn to share on her blog, which she’s been updating regularly since announcing her resolution on New Year’s Eve 2011. By the end of the year she had been to 13 different countries and met with 292 of the 325 friends she had as of January 1, 2011.
“Without WordPress.com, this project wouldn’t have happened,” she says. We set up an interview with ArLynn to learn more about the role that blogging played in her mission to face her agoraphobia. Here’s what she had to say:
Had you ever blogged before New Year’s Eve 2011? Why did you choose WordPress.com to share your resolution?
ArLynn: I had never blogged. I wasn’t sure I had anything to say. And I’m not sure blogging necessarily was about speaking to an audience so much as me creating a record of my experience. I chose WordPress.com because it was easy to use and allowed for customization.
What role did your blog play in the project?
ArLynn: It was absolutely vital. It gave me the discipline to say, “I will blog about every friend and publish posts nearly every day.” So that kept me moving forward. I could have made a diary of the project using Facebook or Twitter, but that would not have allowed for the kind of reflection that comes with blogging. A blog requires me to think about what I’ve done, what I’m going to do, and what I’m going to write.
How did it feel to put yourself “out there” on your blog for the world to see? What was the actual writing process like?
ArLynn: It took me all day today just to figure out how to encapsulate my experience with Facebook friend #298. I like to bring out the best parts in people I meet so I really choose my words carefully. As for putting myself out in the world, I think the only thing we can do is embrace being vulnerable and hopelessly flawed. I’ve learned to say, “Sure, I’m a total screw-up, but I accept it. If you want to read about it, fine by me.” I’m now fifty-one years old so it’s time for me to be liberated from worrying about what others think of me.
What advice do you have for people who are thinking about using a WordPress.com blog as a tool to help them achieve their goals?
ArLynn: I truly believe that if something doesn’t at first appear to be impossible then it’s not worth doing. I advise people to blog every day or nearly every day. It won’t just push you to reach your goal, it will completely overtake you. Last year changed me completely.
Do you still consider yourself agoraphobic?
ArLynn: Yes, but it’s gotten easier for me to leave the house and travel. I used to be terrified of getting on planes, and sometimes just thinking about leaving the house could induce a panic attack.
What are you up to now?
ArLynn: This year, I continue to travel and see friends, but I am focusing more on meeting those who have trouble getting out from behind their computers, whether because of agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, or other anxiety disorders. You can find out more by checking out my blog at ArLynnPresser.WordPress.com.
Thanks for sharing your story, ArLynn!
I’m pleased to announce the latest addition to the ever-growing collection of free themes here at WordPress.com. Retro-fitted by Justin Tadlock mixes subtle textures with clean lines and shadows to create a beautifully balanced composition perfect for all types of blogs.
Retro-fitted can be personalized in a variety of ways. Customize the look of your blog by uploading a header and background image. Take control of you navigation by configuring the dropdown menu. Add widgets to the sidebar for a two-column layout or leave it empty for a single column design.
Check it out in the Theme Showcase.
A few months ago we added Notifications to the WordPress.com Toolbar and recently we released a Chrome extension so that you can always keep up with the activity on your blog. Today we’re adding comment notifications, complete with comment moderation and reply functionality. When your post receives a comment, you’ll get a Notification that looks something like this:
If you’re using threaded comments, you’ll see if someone responded directly to you, right in the notification.
You will see Approve, Spam, and Trash links in your comment notification if you have permission to moderate comments, allowing you to moderate the comment from within the notification:
Clicking Reply automatically approves a comment and displays an area for you to type a reply in. When you’re done, just click Reply and you can get back to whatever you were working on, without having to navigate to the dashboard to manage your comments.
You can still manage comments in your dashboard, but we hope you’ll find the comment notification a convenient shortcut.
For more information about comments and comment moderation: Comments, Manage Comments.
Happy Tuesday! We’ve got two unique free themes for you today, and they are quite a study in contrasts.
Our first theme, Splendio, dazzles with an unconventional yet stylish design from Design Disease that pops out of the box — literally.
How you use this theme is limited only by your imagination! It comes loaded with features: six widget areas (one in the right sidebar and up to five in the footer), featured header images, and a custom background. In addition, there’s a showcase page template (pictured in the screenshot above) that includes a featured slider for sticky posts, and a nifty compact listing of your latest posts. For details on how to set up the Splendio theme on your blog, consult the Theme Showcase.
Our next theme, Suburbia, is as orderly and minimalistic as Splendio is eccentric and playful. Designed by WPShower, Suburbia’s attractive arrangement of posts inside a grid make it an excellent choice for magazine-oriented sites.
Suburbia makes use of featured images to display your posts in a clean, refined style. If you’d like a post to have a larger featured image, mark it as a sticky post. In this manner, you can highlight your most important content. In addition to featured images, Suburbia supports five optional widget areas (four in the footer and one in the sidebar on single posts and pages), a custom background, and custom header image. As always, you can click on over to the Theme Showcase to read more about Suburbia.
We look forward to seeing how you use these two great themes.
Would you like to post videos to your blog while you’re on the go? Are you interested in a photography theme that’s also video-friendly? Well, look no further, because we have some news for you.
The VideoPress upgrade, which allows you to upload and embed your own videos on your blog, now comfortably handles videos from iPhones and iPads. You can shoot vertically or horizontally, and we’ll take care of rotating it for you so that your video looks great when it’s published on your site.
If you don’t already have VideoPress on your WordPress.com account, head on over to VideoPress.com, we’ll get you up and running in no time. And don’t forget to install the free WordPress App on your iPhone or iPad!
Duotone: Now Video-Friendly
If you’re a photoblogger, you’re probably familiar with the cool Duotone theme, which changes color to match the first image in every post and page. The big news is that Duotone now seamlessly supports VideoPress videos, so now you can engage visitors with photographs and videos!
Learn More about VideoPress
If you use VideoPress on your self-hosted WordPress site, keep an eye on the VideoPress Blog – we have some exciting annoucements coming out soon, just for you!
You can find more details about VideoPress by checking out the following resources:
Today, I’m excited to introduce the latest additions to our collection of premium themes.
Designed by Andy Rutledge, Currents, is a responsive, minimal yet attractive premium theme from WooThemes.
Currents is perfect for news driven sites. The phrase, “less is more” couldn’t be more true. This clean and minimal design maximises your reader’s focus on the content. Having said that, the theme is packed with many customization options — a wide featured post slider, custom news areas, six alternative color styles, and more. Together, all of these features help you to control how to present current events you want to share with your readers.
Think your readers might check your site on a mobile device? No problem! Currents makes your site look great on an iPad, iPhone or any other mobile device.
This is not all about this great theme, Currents — so be sure to read about it on the Theme Showcase.
Next up is Debut – a beautifully designed theme by Luke McDonald of Press75.
Debut is a mobile-ready theme custom tailored to present your content in a professional and eye-catching manner. Five beautifully designed post formats provide you the flexibility needed to display media of all types. Musicians may be specially interested in the audio post format which expands into a multi-track playlist. Highlighting specific content couldn’t be easier with Debut’s Home page template which includes an innovative, customizable content slider as well as a featured area that can display in both grid and list styles.
Read about its features in detail in the Theme Showcase!
