3 New Ways to Attract More Twitter Followers from WordPress.com
We love to create new features on WordPress.com, but we also like to make it easier for you to connect your site with other popular services. We’ve teamed up with the folks at Twitter several times over the years, and we’re thrilled to help them unveil the new Follow Button to the world for the very first time today.
The new Follow Button makes it easy for your readers to follow you on Twitter without ever leaving your WordPress.com site. Here are three ways to incorporate it on your site:
1. Add the new Follow Button to posts, pages, or text widgets. You can even show a count of your followers, customize the colors, and display a link to your Twitter page. Check out the Twitter Follow Button support document for all the details.
Here’s a working example of what the new Follow Button looks like:
2. Embed fully functioning Tweets on your posts and pages with Twitter Blackbird Pie. The new Follow Button will appear in the upper right hand corner of the Tweet.
3. Activate the Twitter Widget on your site’s sidebar to display the Follow Button below a list of recent Tweets.
We hope the new Follow Button will help you to boost your site’s reach and exposure. Don’t forget that there are additional ways that you can integrate Twitter with WordPress.com:
- Add a Twitter sharing button to the bottom of your posts or pages with the Sharing feature
- Tweet new posts automatically to your Twitter account with Publicize
- May 31, 2011
- Features, New Features, Social
WordPress.com News 
Ooo. I like the tweet embedding. I use tweets in my posts about social media a lot. Cool frickin’ beans!
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Pretty cool, WP!
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Wow! This is great.
I’m gonna try it out and hope it’ll work!
Thanks for this nice feature! 🙂
Twitter tweets “twank” you 😉
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Awesome! Is there any way for us to use our own custom image for the twitter button?
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There is not a way to use a custom image.
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Wow. I love this newest addition. Simple to implement, easy for vistors to use. You guys rock!!
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Thanks for the tips! I love learning these new gadgets…
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I LOVE social media integration. I really like this new addition. Perhaps Facebook and LinkedIn integration next?
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Too bad i don’t tweet. 🙂
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w00t! That is REALLY useful!
Now I can finally, uh, well, post the clever things I tweet on my blog. YEAH.
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You people on WordPress.com are absolutely fantastic! I moved my blog from Microsoft Spaces, and have never fully understood what some features are about.
But today, I’ve been on here awhile checking FAQ and other documentation. I’m still trying to understand a full explanation to Read-o-matic.
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Now I’m gonna start tweeting!
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Cool cool cool. I’ll try this. It would be useful i think. B-) i like twitting!
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Wow…. I love this feature. The button appears automatically. I just realized it.
Thanks, keep up the good works 🙂
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Brilliant! Now I can get rid of my workaround. Thank you!
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Bring on the hits!
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Is there something similar for Facebook?
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Not at this time.
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Good going guys. Like it alot. There is just one “but”: the “display follow button” tick doesn’t actually do anything. Follow button is always displayed.
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Whoops. Fixed now.
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Very nice new feature and easy to use. Thanks.
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This is really nice. Too bad my tweets are so dead boring; so dull in fact, I discourage my readers from following me. Have you got a button for that?!!
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What about facebook intergration?
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What type of integration would you like to see?
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Very cool. I shall put this to use next time I give the blog a good going over.
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Cool and very useful. Yet another move in the right direction. Thanks guys
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Wohoo! I like it. Well, I often connect my blog to Twitter. Now, I can replac the words i used before ‘you can follow me on Twitter’ with a simple button ‘follow’. 🙂
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Thanks WordPress! I’m glad you’re making more integrations with Twitter than Facebook. I love the former than the latter. 🙂
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Very cool…will have to explore this further.
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Like it! I’m going to add this one.
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Nice new widget! But it would have been nice to have everything in one widget, twitter follow button with and without tweets. Thanks.
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If you don’t want to display your Tweets in the sidebar you can use the Twitter Follow Button in a text widget.
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Neato! I don’t have twitter – yet – but when I do get twitter I’ll sync it first thing. They say writers are supposed to have a good handle on social media, after all.
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More good news from the WP. Congratulations!
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You might think about adding the same feature to comments beneath our posts. For example, I write articles (or posts) periodically, and then update them with continuing comments, as well as the comments of others. I would like the comments to be “tweeted” too, but this is not possible now.
Thanks so much. 🙂
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Thanks!! Will be sure to explore this further..
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Looks great! Will this work on WordPress.org too? I’m new to Twitter and love the integration ideas.
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Not yet. We’ll release it in Jetpack.
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Very informative…thanks!
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Looking forward when you guys will work out a cooler more modern version for our non self hosted WordPress blogs. Meanwhile I’m thankful for this simple one too.
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This feature is for WordPress.com, not self-hosted yet.
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Sounds very cool! No Twitter here yet either. Another reason to figure out what the heck it’s all about.
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Once again, many thanks for the great initiative and for anticipating what might be useful for WP users.
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Awesome. The power of WP and Twitter. Marvellous!
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Thanks, the Twitter Blackbird Pie is really great – and so easy to add! Compliments!
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Good job! I am going to use this feature. Thank you.
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Hi Nick!
I love the minimal look of the Twitter Follow Button that I used it on a Text Widget on my sidebar. For aesthetic purposes, I’m trying to center align the button, but to no avail. Could you suggest a shortcode command for this?
Thanks very much, WP!
Cheers!
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Sorry, there is not a way to center at this time.
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Do real men “twitter”? No wonder this country is in the bad shape that it is in, with all the “tweets” from the “twitterers. It’s enough to get a “real man” sick.
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I’ve used it. That’s Great!
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Awesome! Many Many Thanks for this. Also consider an option of adding my Twitter name, when someone share my post on Twitter via tweet button.
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Funny to see this. i just added the Twitter plugin some days ago. It’s fantastic!!
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Awesome! Gonna give it a shot right now on my nyc photo blog.
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Nice – I do notice that intermittently Twitter.com doesn’t respond, so when my blog comes up there is an error: “Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.” Is that just a traffic issue, or technical glitch, or ???
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You should rarely ever see this on a WordPress.com blog because of caching. Please contact support if you run into problems.
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WordPress.com is getting awesome day by day..
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I’d been doing Blackbird Pie the old-fashioned manual way. This is great and I can’t wait to try it. Thanks!
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This is great! Any chance this feature will be added to the Jetpack plugin?
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Yes, it will eventually be added to Jetpack.
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AWESOME! Quick question…
When are you going to allow us to edit when you can tweet at a post from the bottom button and have it tag us in post when people share, and then have the option to follow after pressing tweet when sharing. I hope that makes sense…
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We have options for that. Check out https://wordpress.com/support/sharing/
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Excellent. I did it in 2 minutes and it’s working smoothly. Nice!
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Wonderful! Going to add it right now! Thanks!
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Just recently started tweeting, though my blog is well established…looks like it’s about time to become a bit more Twitter-centric.
Thank you for this cool integration!
🙂
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Maybe a status message display from the Facebook profile for those who would like to have it.
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Thanks alot Nick , I did it 🙂
I wanna ask about something plz , how can I put the share button beside every post ?
such a button that enable anyone to share the post on his profile anywhere!!
🙂
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Check out https://wordpress.com/support/sharing/
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Any plans to include the new Google +1 button announced today (6/1)?
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Nothing to announce at this time.
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Thanks alot Nick 🙂
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I’m grateful for this widget as well and have been noticing the same error code as mentioned above. Will see if it continues to happen. . .
Looking forward to being able to use custom Twitter images at some point on WP.
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I gotta try this out. Thanks!
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Will be trying that right now–even if it takes me hours to understand how to do it! Thanks a mil!
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Twitter widget is really help me to promote my blog.
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This has been helpful! We will definitely be using it.
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Sweet. Would love to have a live follow button for facebook as well.
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Thanks! This post is awesome!
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Why is everybody obsessed with gaining more traffic and followers?
WordPress: Great service, but it’s been a while since I’ve posted and I’ve noticed a shift away from actual blogging and more toward self-promotion. The stats have had quite a bit of a makeover and now there is a big push to advertise your posts. I just posted something and got the message: “Want more followers? Enable Publicize”, and then there are posts like these.
Maybe it’s because I’m not popular that I don’t understand the desire for this kind of fame, but it seems so overblown.
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One of the greatest pleasures of writing is getting comments from readers. If you get more traffic, the result should be more comments. 🙂
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I’ve been waiting for this follow button feature. Thanks a million.
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You couldn’t have been waiting for long. We released it 10 minutes after Twitter announced it. 😉
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I always post links to my blog on facebook and Twitter, but I will have to try this too. Thanks!
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Can this be automatically added to future posts with some bit of code, and if so, how would that be done? The way you’ve outlined it above, you’d have to manually re-use the code in each new post.
It’s a cool idea because I do a lot of social networking…
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It can’t be automatically added to posts. I would suggest using a text widget in your sidebar instead.
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This is an amazing idea! I love multi-tasking, and now my blog can multi-task on its own 😉 I can’t wait to try this out!
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Thanks for sharing really helpful. It works and and rocks.
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One of the best features ever!
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Interesting… but I don’t use Twitter.
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Cool – I don’t really like the way the widget currently renders, but the follow button I like a lot. Just a thought: it may be nice to support multi-author blogs in the widget by allowing multiple Twitter accounts to be added.
Nice work, it’s always good to visit this blog and see the new stuff you’ve cooked up. I am predicting Google’s +1 button will be next 😛
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You can actually add multiple Twitter widgets to you sidebar.
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Really, I love this widget. Nice. Thanks for sharing this.
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It all sounds pretty good but don’t you have to be ‘on twitter’ to take part? I haven’t a clue what to do about that. I think I am a bit long in the tooth to try and grasp anything else and keep up with it.
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This is great, thanks. But how can i get the actual Twitter “follow” icon/button, instead of just text? I feel like my whole twitter widget is so much text and not enough graphic. I’ve thought that since i started using it.
Thanks so much.
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Check out https://wordpress.com/support/twitter-follow-button/
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Thanks a lot Nick! An option to integrate Facebook “like box” too – please.
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Great Information. I am just starting to blog and tweet. Very Helpful.
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Awesome! I love tweeting and this is gonna be so useful for me! Thanks.
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This is great stuff. Kudos to WP! I’m loving my blogging experience…
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It’s amazing how fast you guys deployed the “Follow” Button. Great job!
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It would be even nicer if we could use the official twitter app, I know its Java script and won’t run on WP, the twitter app is configurable and can match to the blog colours rather than that clunky thing. Also the FB connect doesn’t work, it won’t cross post.
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Great Info. Love reading all the comments! Keep em coming!
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I just don’t get Twitter. It’s like Facebook without all the stuff that makes Facebook cool.
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This sounds nice; except I am not an active tweeter. So, there is no reason for following me. Here is what I’d like to see implemented. I’m already taking advantage of tweeting my posts via Publicize and have my site set to enable sharing via Twitter. How about automatic tweets sent to Twitter? Here is what I mean. When I click on “Publicize”, a single tweet is automatically sent to my Twitter page. Why not schedule a tweet to occur up to a max of 3 to 5 times a day and at specific time period.
My problem is, I have been tweeting my blog posts updates for quite some time. I have only 175 followers. I’ve seen very little traffic coming from Twitter and yet I get plenty from Facebook. My thought is, I’d like to increase the visibility of my blog update tweets. Hence, the request for multiple sending of tweets. Love to hear of other solutions, though.
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Very nice integration and I love the options. Perfect timing too since I just built my blog and haven’t locked in my layout. Keep the updates coming!
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i can’t believe how easy it was to add this to my blog, thank you so much WordPress. You’ve made me fall in love with you all over again.
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That’s awesome, but when can we display some of our twitter followers in the sidebar?
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Nice new enhanced Twitter link. Well done.
Still waiting for the link that very many of us need to Facebook. We need to update those fan pages/business pages in Facebook. Been waiting a long time…don’t you know how much us guys pay you for WordPress (oh forgot you’re free). 🙂 TY for all you do.
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Question – does WP currently allow users to use follow buttons (and other buttons) from outside sources such as this: http://shabbyblogs.com/?page_id=110
I’ve been trying to use the Image widget but the url disappears every time. I like the addition of the twitter follow button and I’ve got it on my site now but I’d really like to use some additional buttons and badges from other sites. Is that possible?
Thanks.
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All of the codes given on that page are invalid HTML. Add a space before the /> of the img tag and they’ll work.
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Good info, the only problem I have had is very few responses from Twitter. I have gotten responses from some other sources but Twitter has been fairly poor.
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It was so easy – a couple of clicks and that was it, done. I like Barry Brindisi’s idea re multiple publicizing for every tweet (e.g 3 or 4 times/day)). This will hit more time zones. I know you can do it through some apps but I don’t like the way they ask for so much control on your account.
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Just saw a comment about the Google +1 button. I would like to chip in a request for a WP fit for that too. I’m fairly niche with my cancer nutrition and recipe blog so I need all the help I can get. Thanks!
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I love these upgrades. Thank you, WP team.
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Where the heck is the Twitter widget? PLEASE, PLEASE make instruction clear and from STEP ONE before you post stuff like this. I could tear my hair out when a writer assumes I’m supposed to automatically know something instead of making it clear.
Smoke rising from brain now.
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We provided a link to the Twitter Widget support doc in the post. Here it is again: https://wordpress.com/support/widgets/twitter-widget/
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Wow. That actually helps me a lot . 🙂 Thank you.
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Why can’t we do this for Facebook without plugins? Or can we?
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We don’t have a feature to friend someone on Facebook.
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Hi Nick! I’ve added the new twitter widget to my blog. However, I`d really like to use twitter`s widget (http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets/widget_profile) because it has more options for personalizing the appearance. I`ve tried it and it`s not working, the only thing showing on the blog is the source code itself. Is there anything I can do about this? Thanks!
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You won’t be able to use this on WordPress.com because it’s a script. See https://wordpress.com/support/code/
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I’ve been wanting this. Thank you!
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Oh great, this will definitely come in handy. Thanks WP!
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