Note: WordPress Discover is not actively featuring blogs and sites at this time. However, all of our editors’ picks and resources and success stories are searchable in our archives.
Discover highlights great content across WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress blogs and websites. In fall 2015, it replaced the Freshly Pressed showcase.
Curated by the WordPress.com editorial team, Discover features editors’ picks and site recommendations. Occasionally, we publish user showcases, blogging and website-building resources, and interviews and profiles of interesting people and organizations using WordPress.
Discover showcases all kinds of original content — writing to photography to art and more — and from all types of users, from new bloggers to leading publications around the world. We feature only a handful of editors’ picks per week, which is a tiny sampling among the millions of posts published each day and massive number of sites out there. Please browse our site to get a sense of what we highlight.
Here are general guidelines and best practices for bloggers and other creators (whether you’re interested in being featured or not):
Publish original content. You thought it up; you wrote it out. It’s yours. You can reference other sites — in fact, we encourage participating in a larger conversation. But give credit where credit is due. Use quotation marks or blockquotes when quoting others, and include links to articles you mention.
Things not to include in your post: plagiarism, hate speech, fear-mongering, sexually explicit material, copyrighted images that belong to someone else, spam, or content that’s primarily advertorial in nature. Foul language is fine as long as it’s not gratuitous — go for impact, not shock value.
Offer a strong point of view. Sure, we care about the facts, but we can get the facts from hundreds of sites. We read your site because we want to know what you have to say. We’re more likely to be sucked into a post that has a strong point of view and makes a reader think and respond. Offer your perspective; support your work with research when necessary; and be thoughtful, assertive, yet respectful in your discussion. Don’t just rehash the conversation — add to it.
Embrace your voice and style. WordPress is a diverse global community of voices. We publish personal musings, essays, fiction, poetry, comics, longreads, and more. We write subtle and elegant prose; we pen opinionated commentaries on hot-button topics; we experiment with forward-thinking speculative fiction; and we publish academic research.
There are readers for all voices and styles. You could try to please everyone, but one, that never works, and two, that isn’t fun. Embrace who you are.
Use images when possible. While not every topic can be illustrated, most posts can and should have a visual element. (Most editors’ picks on Discover have featured images.) While images aren’t mandatory in your posts, they enhance your work.
We love when people display original photographs in their posts. If you don’t have your own, we recommend using the Free Photo Library, available to all WordPress.com users, using sites that compile free-to-use images that don’t require attribution, or sourcing Creative Commons images.
Make it easy on the eyes. It doesn’t matter how fantastic your post is — if it’s difficult to read, your reader won’t stay. Here are some key elements of readability:
- Breathing space. Break up your text and don’t let your paragraphs run too long. The line break is your friend.
- Readable font. Be mindful of your font size and color: don’t make your reader squint, and avoid distracting colors.
- Clean design. We encourage users to customize their sites and make them their own. Watch out for too-busy backgrounds and cluttered sidebars with inactive widgets and unnecessary links.
Practice better blogging. Add relevant tags and categories. Craft a great headline. Strive to be 100% typo-free. If you’d like more resources and examples of great sites, explore the archives.
