WordPress.com: Our Labor of Love — 2012 in Review
For us, WordPress.com is our labor of love — we’re continually releasing new themes, upgrades, and features to help you create the best website and/or blog you can. In addition to great tools, we publish articles, prompts, and writing and photo challenges to inspire you to start posting and keep posting. While we’re never, ever done making WordPress.com better, we wanted to look back at some of the goodies we brought you in 2012.
We’ve got the look: 65+ new themes in 2012
We released themes at a rate of more than one a week in 2012. These beautiful themes look great no matter which device your visitors use to see your content. What’s more, if you’re a musician, restaurateur, bride-or-groom-to-be, or a civil servant looking for a simple way to share information with your audience, we’ve got you covered.
Custom Design puts you in charge
Have design chops or an eye for contrast, color, and composition? With the Custom Design upgrade, you can tinker with your site’s CSS, compose a unique color palette for your site, and choose from among some awesome Typekit fonts to create the specific look you desire for your online home on the web.
New and improved for 2012
No matter whether you’re just starting to blog or are a seasoned web designer, here’s a sampling of how we made WordPress.com better for you in 2012:
- We doubled the space we offer in the space upgrade.
- We introduced SASS and LESS for those who’ve got the Custom CSS upgrade.
- We added unique visitors and countries to all WordPress.com stats pages.
- We created importers to help you bring your Tumblr blog or your Splinder site to WordPress.com.
- We released tiled galleries that allow you to get creative with photos on your blog.
We made a lot of progress in 2012 and we’re already working on bringing you more awesome in 2013. Happy New Year from WordPress.com!
- January 2, 2013
- Better Blogging, Features, Import, Themes, Verticals
Thanks Krista! I’m a new blogger and loving it.
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Wonderful. It has become lighter too. I just have one suggestion –
In the stats section, where in you have some wonderful changes implemented this year, I would like to have a (next/prev) button or arrow hyperlink which can take you to Yesterday’s stats and tomorrow’s stats. Considering today is a mid-day. For now users have to “return to stats” every time.
Thanks. Proud to be on WP.
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I am new and appreciate so much the things that are available to me as I learn the process. Thank you, so much.
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The more support I see you add, the only thought I have is “Why did I not look for you sooner????”
jkrjr
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Thanks for providing such a great free service!
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You are wizards! Labor of love or not, all that you do takes time, thought, and effort. Thank you for all your hard work. Happy New Year!
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Keep up the great work, WordPress! It’s been an impressive year! Happy New Year to you all!
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We bloggers appreciate your attention to making the experience so positive for us.
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Brilliant work!!! Thanks for all of the friendly and competent support and enhanced features; WordPress and VideoPress ROCK!!! All the best for 2013 🙂
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THANK YOU!!!! I love WordPress and appreciate the great features and new themes. You all do a great job!!!
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Thanks! My favorite two are Academica and Blaskan. They both have great readability and functionality…. I have found that readability is way more important when it comes to blogs than all the glitzy, distracting things. After all, that’s what people do is read! 😉 The only thing I do not care for in many of the free blog formats is the gray font..it is less easy to read..so I have to change it to black all the time. Great stuff though! Thanks!
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What a great service you have. I love it! Keep up the great work and Happy New Year to the whole team 😀
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I’m very happy blogging here at WordPress, and appreciate all of your hard work! Here’s to another great year!
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I want to commend WordPress for all the excellent work its done on behalf of its bloggers. Thank you.
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Thank you! You make writing a blog possible for so many of us who would have no idea how to do it otherwise! And it is so much more with all these possibilities.
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Thank you. I have enjoyed the additions. I love the new themes available as well. I actually wrote something today about the addition of the “unique visitors” and “country” stats. A lot of people didn’t seem to understand how to utilize the stats vs. just see them.
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How/where can I go to learn about all things WordPress? How everything works… back end, plug ins, updates, etc., etc., etc.??
Thank you!
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We recommend http://learn.wordpress.com as a resource for learning about WordPress.com.
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Great 2012!! I have thoroughly enjoyed WordPress. It’s like you read our mind. The moment I tell myself “I wish the would …” I wake up one day and its done. And then there are those features that we don’t even know we want until you give them to us. You make blogging fun … And beautiful!
Happy New Year!
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Thank you for all you do to make WordPress such a great place to have a blog. 🙂
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Pretty, just now trying to keep up with the differences in layout 😡
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Blogging has opened a whole new world for me, and I thank WordPress for being so user friendly and accessible. Happy New Year!!
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Thank you, WP, for all you do.
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Thank you… It’s great to be part of the WordPress family.
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The WordPress Reader is like a high-quality Twitter. Have you considered adding more interactivity, such as giving blog owners the option of publishing followers or even encouraging them to do so? If privacy is a concern, there could be a public/non-public box for each blog one follows, with non-public as default if need be,
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Thank you for all that you do, and ask so little for in return. My blog has completely changed, if not saved my life, and of course it would have never turned out this way without WordPress to begin with. You’ve touched so many lives, and this is still just the start. Wishing you the happiest 2013 possible!
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Enjoying my blogging adventure…thanks for making it possible!
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My #1 New Years Resolution is to develop my writing skills. I signed up thinking how steep the learning curve would be even tho’ I have a few computer skills. A great delight to find how easy and intuitive the WP program is. I am going to enjoy this journey. Well done.
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Thanks for all the hard work! I think you helped my Blog look lovely 🙂
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I started blogging on 1st of January 2012 so I’ve spend the whole 2012 with WordPress. It’s a great platform, thank you for everything
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Thanks for a good WordPress year 2012 – It is a pleasure to work with the tools that are present and I am sure that WordPress can meet the year 2013 with great serenity and dynamism.
Kurt Lykke Lindved
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Thanks for free service that wordpress provide…
Bravo for tiled galleries. Love this improvement so much…
Best regards,
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Thank you WordPress for providing such a fantastic free service! This year I’ve especially loved the new ’tiling’ for photos. Happy New Year.
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Thanks for all your love and hard work…Have a Happy New 2013 and keep on the good work.
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Thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate all of the tips and updates that are given to help me navigate through areas that I’m not real comfortable with. Hopefully, it will become easier the more I use it! I’m looking forward to a great year with WordPress! 🙂
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We can help a lot of volunteer-organisations with your CMS. Thank you very much.
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I’m a first-time WordPress user, Krista. I”m amazed just how powerful all the tools are, even on a free template. Looking forward to what WordPress has in store for 2013!
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Thank you for the highlight.
WordPress is getting better and better and it’s very attractive for the beginners like I am 🙂
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I’d really like to know where in the countries the hits are coming from … so maybe an option to show city/country or even IP address … Just having US as a country doesn’t tell me much.
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I am someone who knows just enough to mess things up. Royally. I may not be able to figure out how to do all the things I would like to do on the blog, but at least I can share the writing, and that’s the most important thing to me. Thank all of you for making that impossible dream of mine possible. May 2013 bring even more inspiration to your already inspired minds.
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I’m really lucky to know & use word press since 2011 it has changed my life completely as web designer .. great wishes for more success in 2013
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Thanks for the love. I’m a huge fan of your blogging annual reports.
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I really appreciate all the work you all do! I’ve used other blog sites before, but when I switched to WordPress, I fell in love with the ease of use, lovely designs, and immediate sense of community. I’m never using anything else. Thank you so much for creating such a wonderful space!
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Thanks for all your hardwork and ingenuity in providing us with such great incentives free of charge. May 2013 be a brighter year in every aspect and initiative gearing towards growth for the wordpress family.
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2012 seems to have added most of the things I was looking for – well done. It seems a little smoother and slicker and more complete. Speeding up the interface and looking at Google+ integration are on my wish list for 2013. But really guys you seem to have most of the bases covered now.
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Thank you so much for 2012 and part of 2011. I blogged and used many forums of WordPress for my new book. All this is free, what an opportunity to start advertising, and communicating with people of interest.
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Who the heck is Tae Phoenix? She seems to be giving me the eye.
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She is a singer-songwriter and pianist, you can find her site here: http://taephoenix.com
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Thank you! It’s awesome to have this kind of support.
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