P2: The New Prologue
Update: Check out this dedicated site for P2.
Today we’re extra-pleased to introduce you to a new theme that reinvents what it means to group blog on WordPress.com.
We call it P2 (in the style of K2, the update on the classic Kubrick theme), and it’s an extensive revamp of Prologue, the brainchild of last year’s winter retreat.
Prologue broke ground when it brought microblogging to WordPress.com. Now it’s cooler, faster, sleeker, and ready for 2009 and beyond:
Live notifications, comments on the homepage, and in-line editing are just part of what makes P2 revolutionary. With these features, you never have to refresh, and rarely need to visit the dashboard. Everything you need to communicate with other users on your blog (and your readers, too), is right there on the front page. We like to think of it as a really cool version of Twitter for groups.
P2 is the perfect theme to use when you’re collaborating with remote teams and far-flung friends. It’s also a great tool for school projects, as a class or as a group. We Automatticians use it internally to keep each other up to date, both on a company-wide level and on a project-by-project basis.
It’s also a fun way to post and share total nonsense, as some of us have for this demo:
Leave a comment on P2 to see it in action!
Check out this video narrated by the illustrious Sheri to see more:
Here’s the overview of what’s new in P2:
- Threaded comment display on the front page.
- In-line editing for posts and comments.
- Live tag suggestion based on previously used tags.
- A show/hide feature for comments, to keep things tidy.
- Real-time notifications when a new comment or update is posted. (If you have a Mac, you know what we mean when we say it’s Growl-like.)
- Super-handy keyboard shortcuts: c to compose a new post; j to go to the next item; k to go to the previous item; r to reply; e to edit; o to show and hide comments; t to go to the top; esc to cancel.
- Helvetica Neue for you modern font lovers.
- Plus more to come! Keep an eye on the news blog for updates.
And as always, there’s:
- Hassle-free posting from the front page.
- RSS feeds for everything: the entire prologue, each author, each tag, and any search.
- A feeling of supreme awesomeness because you’re using a sweet theme custom-made by Automattic.
Just like other themes, you can find P2 under Appearance > Themes in your dashboard. Those who are into the self-hosted version of WordPress can keep an eye out for P2 in the Themes Directory in the coming week.
Plus a note: Don’t forget to change your time settings for Daylight Savings Time if the time in your region “sprung forward” this week!
WordPress.com News 
Looks great! I’m pretty new to WP, this is in addition to a normal WP site or can it be part of one?
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P2 is a theme that can be selected for a WordPress.com site, and it will be available to download from the WordPress.org Theme Directory soon.
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nice one! but is there a word limit we can post?
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There is no character limit or word limit in posts or comments in P2.
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WOW! 😀 Will check it out later. Today is a festival in India (Holi, the festival of colours), so kinda busy playing with colours (and playing with themes will resume tomorrow)! 😀
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So, when we gonna get an update and more info on Prologue Projects theme I ran across in the SVN repo? Hmmm? Looks wildly cool.
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P2 is coming to the Theme Directory soon.
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nice! very nice! ;D Keep it up~!
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yay more blog themes… keep em coming! and no word limits!!!!! =D
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A lovely piece of work, this strikes me as the perfect theme to apply as the default for the blogs users receive upon signing up to a BuddyPress because it would clearly encourage the blog owner to post more frequently and encourage visitors to leave more comments, all adding to the stream of activity, as reported on the BuddyPress site’s home page.
I have suggested as much on the BuddyPress forums:
P2: The New Prologue – a perfect default theme for BuddyPress
How soon can we rip it off? 😉
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Looks great!
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hmmmm..!
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Nice theme but not really digging the bold font. P2 is defentily
a step up from the first Twitter like theme.
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great ^^!
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…I have a feeling blogs are going to be even more painful to read in the near future 😦
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Thanks for the reminder about Daylight Savings.
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looks good. though I would prefer to stick to the current one i am using!
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it’s nice ^_^
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yes the including good.
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It seems a good idea, well implemented for what’s intended to do; short messages in a sort of exclusive twitter
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Does the new theme have some difficulties in case I have scheduled posts? after every minute or even shorter I get note of new updates in my blog … 😉
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Yes, there were some problems with scheduled posts. If you are still having trouble with that, can you please contact WordPress.com support directly?
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im waiting for some killer lookin themes…wherr r they hiding??
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Just keep an eye out here. New themes will be announced as they get added.
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So does this bridge into Twitter and/or Identi.ca?
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Not at this moment in time, no.
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cool, I’ll try it out on a test blog 😀
Have not tried prologue, or twitter yet
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Great, you read my mind 🙂
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Wow, this one looks cool! Thanks!
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sound’s great..
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very nice !
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P2? That’s Propaganda Due, a secret society. 😉
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I am still waiting for an Orange Theme 😀 But this one is cool!
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It’s looking nice! Any chance we can get all these fancy features in the old Prologue layout sometime in the future?
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The old Prologue will stay as it is. If you like these features, check out P2!
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Wow. A new better feature indeed.
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Looks like Twitter.
I KID.
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How does the tag suggestion work? Sounds interesting but I am a little confused. Thanks.
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When you start typing a tag, any tags that are already saved in the blog will appear in a list below the tags field.
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Very cool, this would be great for keeping tabs on a projects work flow… college students rejoice!
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Not a twitter user (yet), but what are the advantages of P2 over twitter?
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P2 is geared toward working as a group, so it can be more focused. It’s a better view of the conversation with comments inline. You get live updates without doing a thing. No extra apps needed. And, there is no 140 character limit. 🙂
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Interesting. I hope more themes will be on the way in the near future. 🙂
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Great! keep on doing the good work 🙂
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Would it be possible to make Prologue a part of another theme? With a more standard blog, with prologue as a smaller part; widget-like
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Thanks for the suggestion. We’ll keep that on our list, which is reviewed regularly.
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Awesome
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Great!
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Wow, looks better…Hope to see more upgraded versions of popular themes.
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Tweet
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Cool theme 🙂
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Twitter is like crack… adding it to a blog would be sweet!
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would it work well with my blog,or can the feature be added to it for me to take advantage of it?
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It’ll work great with you blog as-is, you can just change over yout theme to P2 by going to Appearance > Themes and choosing it from the list.
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cool…i’m gonna try it out…
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It’s really cool… thanks you guys for the hard work you do… you’re really the best… and I’m thinking of using it in my new blog.. thanks a lot 🙂
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hmmm,
Cool work 🙂 we really need that kind of stuff…..
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Goody goody 🙂
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More graphic themes needed..why are there so many rehashed themes coming out?..new ones please!
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it’s great… i hope more themes will be on the way in the near future
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That’s really awesome, many of us were waiting for something like this.
Thanks!
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Cooliiooo! Sweet!
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attractive 🙂
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nice work.
but I think there is too “square”, hehe
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THX, I ‘ll try it
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nice info. hmmm.. faster blogging… yeah and fast comments too… your eye wont sore =)
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Wonderfull
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Great stuff, keep up the good work.
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Is there any non-microblogging theme thats more bloggy but only uses tags in the theme and not categories?
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I’m not sure what you’re asking. You can use only tags in any theme that you like. You can preview as many as you like to see what works for you under Appearance > Themes.
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Sounds good. Why not just come up with another twitter widget or have that integrated into the system? Oh well. I’m behind anything you guys do!
Jordan.
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Twitter skin/style ! Nice 🙂
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funny one!
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Looks fantastic…can I, and if so how, link a conversational blog to my existing article feature blog?
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There isn’t a way to combine the two, but if you want to promote one on the other, you can create a new blog with that theme by clicking on “register another blog” on WordPress.com when you’re logged in. Then you can add that blog to your blogroll under Links in your first blog’s dashboard.
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You know what would be great!?? If I could use this theme for a separate page on my current blog (using vigilance) so that my staff members could have conversations- similar to a message board. Then create a log-in procedure to make it private. My staff have WP user accounts, but I wouldn’t want just anyone who came to the blog to see it.
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You can create a separate multi-user blog and make it private under Settings > Privacy.
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Nice, Keep it up!
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Wow. Very nice!! It’s gonna be a good trip. Welcome on board!!! 😉
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Sound’s great. Even though I’m a new one using WP, but I think it’s can make the blog cooler than before.
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There is one problem I’ve found with the new P2 fast blogger. It is an excellent concept, but there’s one thing that I think could be implemented :p
If a user is scrolling through the posts with the ‘J’ or ‘K’ hot keys, and then presses ‘R’ to reply, but then decides not to reply and ‘esc’-apes out of it, P2 doesn’t remember which post you were last viewing when you go back to pressing ‘J’ or ‘K’, it instead starts you from the top or bottom, relative to which key you press. It would be nice to see some memory of last viewed post 🙂
Very good job on the concept and design though, I am very impressed 🙂
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Very nice! I can’t wait to try it out!
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So wait, does that mean that anyone can post a comment on there?
Because I would love to be able to set up another blog specifically geared toward commenting my blog (real time).
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As the blog owner, you control whether anyone can post a comment or not. See the WordPress.com help page about Discussion Settings to learn more.
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lets try this out, why not
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One of the reasons I love WordPress is that you guys have the greatest themes available.
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this is really an awesome idea and great example of what a theme itself could do to the way of blogging
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Holy cow. I didn’t read the full feature list, so when it live updated, I was taken aback. When is this thing going to be available to all us .org users as well? It’s way cool.
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that’s really cool, good job! however im going to stick with vigilance =]
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Ooh, an orange theme would be nice. Good idea.
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Psst: http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/p2/ 😉
If you know what to do you with that you can use P2 now for self-hosted WordPresses!
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P2 will be released properly in the Themes Directory in the next week.
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It’s not fun enough. You guys should add things to the top-portion of the pages in themes since users have got less variety there..
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NICE….NICE…
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That’s pretty cool! 🙂
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Twitter is not enough :), wordpress rocks.
Expecting H1 title on permalinks pages, on P3.
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when exactly can we expect to have this theme in wordpress directory for self-hosted and would you provide support for customization?
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I’m not sure of the exact date, but P2 will be added to the WordPress.org Theme Directory soon. You can get help for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs in the WordPress.org support forum.
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No word limit! I can’t wait to see if it will work for our new book-in-progress blog! Would that work?
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Why not!
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Very nice, though I like most the other new theme, that one called “Vigilance”.
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Gerat job..!!
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Look’s cool.Kinda looks like a forum lol.
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Awesome! I might try it out soon!
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