Making your posts more beautiful
Here at WordPress.com we care about making things look good. Automattic, Inc., our parent company, invests heavily in design: every engineering team has a full-time designer. We know making things look and feel great is important and we love making things people love to use.
Over the last few weeks we’ve studied the most popular features people add to their blogs. Things like Sharing, Likes and Ratings. Previously when you turned them on it made your blog look cluttered, defeating the purpose of the features themselves. This made us sad.
After much research, prototyping and testing by Beau and Hugo, we’ve released a simplified, more attractive design. These features now appear as friends, lining up in orderly columns, sharing attractive styles and working together to get you the activity from your visitors you want to have.
You may notice the designs for individual buttons have changed. One specific difference is now the ‘smart button’ setting is now global (renamed “Official Buttons”) and not per button. If you had mixed buttons before, you’ll now have them unified. This was a necessary tradeoff to make the larger design changes possible.
We think you and your visitors will appreciate this new design. If you haven’t used features like Sharing before, now is a great time to turn them on.
WordPress.com News 
Is the count lost? Before there was an indication of how many people tweeted, or shared it on linked in.
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If you head on over to Settings, Sharing, and set button style to official, you’ll see the counts.
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looks very nice. good work
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again….you guys over at WordPress seriously rock! Thanks…for a great platform and for making fab little changes like this that make my blog even better!
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Excellent!! What an awesome improvement! LOVE it!
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Great additions to WordPress! 🙂 But I might still use the old ones for a few months.
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IWCのパイロットはクラシックウォッチ
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Excellent!
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I just pressed the “like” button to see how my avatar looks among the other 280
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Am I right in thinking that the ‘Like’ is still only available in the Comments section? It is useless there, but under the Post – like in your example e-mail – it would be superb.
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The example shown is from a live blog – so yes, the like button appears with the post, not the comments.
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I am not happy at all with the new design! In the old design it was visable for my visitors how many people (for instance) tweeted my blogpost. That seems to be gone. With this the ‘herd-effect’ is gone too. Quite silly that nobody seemed to think about this!?
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If you go to Settings->Sharing and set button style to Official buttons, you’ll see the counts for each button.
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Thanx a lot for your efforts and testing, this new arrangement of buttons is well done. I appreciate the efficiency and esthetics of it. WP does it better 🙂
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WordPress, you guys are the best!!! Thank you so much for always making great services – you’re the best online. Would never change.
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Cool….my blog will look better now!
http://www.starreviews.wordpress.com
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Hi! That looks great! it was a little bit ‘mess’ before and now look nice in order!
Thank you for thinking us and making all the time new great things!
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🙂
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I used the awesome screenshot to show the problems I’m having http://awesomescreenshot.com/06figzqe2
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Great post – thanks for the tips!
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I am aware of the efforts WordPress takes in order to make every blog look impressive. I think the new features will definitely make blogging easier. It seems to be more user-friendly in this way.
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b4 the print button turned purple and I new someone had printed a blog. what about now
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Sweet! Thank you.
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I like the new design, however, I can’t see how many times people retweeted my post. People have shared my post in the past and the number of those retweets aren’t there.
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If you go to Settings, Sharing and set button style to official buttons, the numbers will appear.
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I agree the change looks good from an aesthetic viewpoint, but now no one can tell how many times my blog posts have been tweeted! I’ll have to use the tweetmeme app again to keep track.
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If you go to Settings, Sharing, and set button style to Official, you’ll see the counts in Facebook and Twitter buttons.
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Thanks! I think?
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Thank you! This looks SO much better now! 🙂
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Great: Creativity along with insight and don’t forget luck is a good thing.
Things sometimes change for the better just a little slow.
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Hi, on my theme (Enterprise) there seems to be extra line space below the icons and above the HR line. I am comparing to your post above which looks perfect. Please check.
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Sorry, I meant to say that the extra empty line is only showing up in Index page and not on specific blog post.
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How Can i make the More button ?
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If you go to Settings, Sharing you’ll see all the choices for sharing services. If you add enough so they don’t fit, the more button will automatically appear.
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Very cool, but the Google+ button needs some work to be standardized with the others.
Nice feature anyway!
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What A BIG WOW! 😀 Great great… Thanksss…! It`s on the right place now just to make my post beautiful.
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What are these ill-tempered lectures about wasting time? A human is always a human, a statistic is merely a human construction. Sometimes we have to research. Only the smug would object.
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Just having some fun – its a reference to the film Fight Club. I promise next time to use something as an example that’s more fun for everyone.
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Yeah it looks really nice..:)
http://www.on-firerecords.com
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But now how is possible to check the number of shares?
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If you go to Settings, Sharing and set Button Style to official buttons, you’ll see the numbers for likes and tweets.
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Mine shows up in a pull-down menu instead of lined up across the page. Is it because I put so many on the page that they won’t fit in one line?
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If you go to the Sharing page in your Dashboard under Settings, you can see a live preview of the sharing options you’ve set. If you have too many to fit, the rightmost buttons will appear under more.
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Thank you for fixing this issue! Yes, my blog definitely had the cluttered look and I hated it! Way to keep listening to your clients/customers and giving us what we want!
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I just noticed the LinkedIn icon isn’t showing for mine. What’s up with that?
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I am clueless on how to add a Google+ button to it. There isn’t one available in my settings so I assume I have to add it myself.
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If you are using WordPress.com and not a self-hosted WordPress install, go to Settings, Sharing. You’ll see Google+ as one of the choices.
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Thanx a lot!
http://www.mittw.com.tw
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Share buttons are missing from the Settings | Share page. I suppose this has to do with the changes ya’ll are making but it’s frustrating that there seems to be no way to work around this issue.
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All the Sharing buttons you need to turn this on or adjust settings are working. Go to Dashboard, Settings, Sharing.
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Any ETA for a WordPress-designed Google+ button?
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Hi
Please using Tahoma Font because this font isn’t readable in Persian or Arabic language .
Best Regards , …
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I agree that this is a slight aesthetic improvement, and I’m happy for it!
Now, if only you could make these huge, garish, *truly ugly* facebook/twitter buttons below the ‘reply’ box go away. Or at least make them opt-in. Since y’all care about design and theme-consistencies. These buttons ARE horrible, and definitely should not be mandatory.
What do you say?
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What I’m finding strange is that if I switch to Official Buttons, the Facebook like will only post a like on my profile and not the newsfeed. However, if I use Icon+text, the button effectively becomes a share button that’ll post to both the newsfeed and my profile. I know that Facebook has been switching things up the past few days, so are they to blame?
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Thanks, the new design looks great. Now if only the Google+ button could be changed. I removed it because it didn’t look right with the rest of the new buttons.
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I like! But is there a chance “StumbleUpon” might be added soon?
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StumbleUpon is actually already available as a service, you just need to drag and drop it into the Enabled Services section on Settings > Sharing within your dashboard.
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It makes my site display in mobile view much better. It looks more modern and current. MANY THANKS
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Before they were shattered, now you have arranged them in a nice style, good work
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simple and beautiful. I like how simple changes make such a huge difference.
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Can you a Google+ and LinkedIn share button too? 😀
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Google +1 and LinkedIn buttons are already available, you just need to add them into your “Enabled Services” section by dragging and dropping them on the Settings > Sharing page within your dashboard.
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I really like this change–definitely reduces visual clutter. One thing I don’t like is on The Morning After theme, the ratings used to not appear in the Featured Posts on the front page. Now they appear but with a big space between the rating and the featured post. This creates a longer Featured Post area than I had before, and it also is confusing since the Rating appears to go with the post beneath it instead of the post above it due to the space.
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Thanks so much…. this is exactly what I have been hoping for. It is so much more pleasing to the eye, and to have all of those buttons in close proximity.
Great job!!
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Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
This really bothered me when the post would look so nice and buttons looked so bad. This is a REAL improvement in looks to the posts. You all do a great job!!
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Thank you! I didn’t expect such a small thing to make a significant difference, but it really looks fantastic. It’s so much cleaner.
It was one of those things that you intuitively feel is making the page look odd, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.
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This is great! However, I’m using the Mystique theme and I can’t seem to get my buttons to move from under the share button. They are hidden under ‘share.’ Is this something with the theme I’m using?
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Hello, I am providing you two examples of empty space showing up after this change which does not look right.
Example 1 is the empty space under the publicize icons on the main index page.
Example 2 is the empty space under the Like button on individual posts pages, but here the publicize icons has no empty space (that’s how it should be).
Please correct this. There should not be an empty space under publicize icons on index page and there shouldn’t be empty space under Like button on individual post page. It is a wastage and takes up my valuable real estate on the site. Thanks.
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Thx for the specific bug report, and screenshots! Appreciate it. We’ll investigate.
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I assumed this was at http://www.akdn.org/Content/1064, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Can you report the theme, or give the actual link to the posts pictured?
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I have a blog biblemarathi.wordpress.com in which I do most writing in Marathi. I am allowed to insert a Marathi equivalent of ‘Share’ but I cannot do the same for ‘Like’. Can this be fixed?
R R Kelkar .
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Yes, the new design is really elegant and I love it. I also wrote an italian tutorial for the use of the “Sharing” function, because I think it very useful! Congratulations for continuing progress, I love this platform!
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Definitely like the new look, but I can’t seem to get the Like button to show on the index page, even though the other share buttons are there.
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Currently there is not an option to display the WordPress.com Like Button on your index page, but it’s on our list of things to do.
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Excellent change! Thanks for the upgrade. Those ugly old buttons were annoying me.
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As a writer who only uses ‘social’ sites to post links to my writing or poetry I am particularly pleased with anything that simplifies that process.
I already like the layout and user-friendly aspects of my WordPress site which can only mean enjoyment by the users.
Keep up the good work.
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Small changes make great improvements! Thanks!
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Thanks. I’ll look forward to it.
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Nice.
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Excellent work! You WP angels keep us coming back for more tender care… Love it. Thank you! 🙂
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It’s nice but to be honest I don’t know how to install it, is it automatic? help please. 🙂
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You can find details on enabling the sharing options here: https://wordpress.com/support/sharing/
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I saw the change but never really checked it out. I just did; I setup my shares and it was super easy. You guys are brilliant. Thank you for proving to me that hype about a certain other blog engine (tumblr) is just that… hype
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How do you get the Facebook like button?? For me its only Facebook sharing button…:(
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If you enable the Official Buttons mode (Settings > Sharing > Button Style) then the Facebook button is their Like button.
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Just applied these changes to my blog and love them. Thanks WP!
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I love it. up to me to work on trying it out now! thanks!!
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I just saw this post and then went and enabled sharing, AWESOME!
thanks for the heads up!
mark
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Cool! Now we look professional! You guys are great!
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The subliminal message of this post was great and (based on the audiance ) so effective. Good job. 😉
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For me, blogging with WordPress is a life-time achievement, associated with countless opportunities. Many thanks to the fella that introduced me to WordPress.
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This design looks so much nicer and more streamlined in appearance.
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Great! I will try it.
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Could you make more themes like Château? I particularly love it. Though this one is neatly done too.
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Thank you—glad you like it. We’re launching more and more themes all the time, so stay tuned for more.
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I use self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) is there a plugin that’s functionally equivalent, please?
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This update is exclusive to WordPress.com users for the time being, but you might want to check out Jetpack. It brings some of the same great sharing functionality to self-hosted WordPress blogs.
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Soooo helpful ! Good job ! I’m going to use it right now !
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Hooo, I think it will never change. I also think it was just an error that the Facebook button seemed cluttered itself (and looked different than what I saw in other sites).
And now that it’s fixed, it has a better view. That’s quite good work. To the WordPress team, keep paying attention on the details, as small as they could be.
Terima kasih. Thank you.
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defntly appreciate the design rework!!
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