5 Tools You May Not Know About

New to WordPress.com? Or been around for a while? If you poke around your settings, you may be surprised to come upon features you didn’t know existed! Here are five tools and settings that you may not know about.

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“Stick” a blog post to your front page

If you have a blog, your posts are displayed in reverse chronological order on your homepage, with your latest post at the top. Sometimes you may want to showcase a specific post or resurface an old favorite; in this case, you can “stick” the post to your front page so it stays at the top. Some themes use special styling for sticky posts, so try it out on your site to see how it looks. (And don’t forget to unstick the post when you’d like to remove it from the spotlight!)

To mark a post as “sticky,” look to the right of your post editor under Post Settings, click the down arrow next to Status, and toggle the option next to Stick to the front page.

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Display (or hide) sharing buttons

Sharing buttons, which often appear at the bottom of posts and pages, are handy when you want to encourage readers to share your site content on their social networks. You can display sharing buttons in various styles (text only, icon only, text and icon, or official buttons), or remove them entirely from different areas if you have a minimal static website or prefer a cleaner look.

To tinker with your sharing buttons, go to My Site → Sharing → Sharing Buttons. As you configure the settings, you’ll see a live preview of how the buttons will appear on your site. You can also specify where to display them under Options.

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Make your site private

Your viewers must have a WordPress.com account (or sign up for one) for you to authorize them to see your site.

Do you want an online diary or need a private space to compile your writing? Or, maybe you’ve decided over time that you want a more intimate readership made up of family and close friends. If so, you can make your site private and viewable only to you and specific people. You can also make your site private if you redesign it and want to work on it behind closed doors.

To adjust your privacy settings, go to My Site → Settings → General and scroll down to Privacy. Once your site is Private, its landing page will resemble the one below.

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Create password-protected content

What if you want to make only parts of your site inaccessible to the public? By setting a password on certain posts and pages, you can create private, exclusive, or members-only content for certain people. You can see this in action on the District Cafe & Eatery‘s website — its “Staff” menu tab leads to password-protected content for restaurant employees only.

To password-protect a piece of content, open the post or page, go to Status on the right, click on the down arrow next to Public, and select Password Protected. In the field that appears, type in the password you’d like to set, then click Update.

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Display separate portfolio projects

With the portfolio feature, you can highlight notable projects in a dedicated space that’s separate from your blog posts. Some of our image-focused themes are designed with portfolio projects in mind and have this feature turned on by default, but if you’re not using one of these themes, you can activate the feature manually. For inspiration, view Roberth Jordan’s site to see how he showcases architectural sketches and plans, then learn to activate the portfolio feature on your own site.

To get started, access your portfolio settings at My Site → Portfolio. If you’re not using a theme with the feature built in, activate it in My Site → Settings → Writing → Content types and switch on the Portfolio Projects option.

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