Feed: Tips for German Shepherd Owners - AggScore: 11.9

Notifications, Refreshed

Stuff happens all the time on WordPress.com. You’re blogging, commenting, liking, and following like never before. Every hour a record is broken and someone’s day is made. We’ve always known about your love affair with stats. We like watching numbers grow, too. And we also like to see the events that the numbers represent. We think of Notifications as a magnifier for Stats: you can zoom in to see exactly who did what and then connect with them.

The original Notifications menu first appeared in the WordPress.com toolbar as a small orange button and a stream of activities related to your blogs and comments. It was a good start but we’ve had bigger plans all along. Today we deployed a new toolbar button and, more significantly, a new tab on the WordPress.com home page.

The New Button

The first thing you’ll notice is that there is no number. We axed it out of compassion. It all boils down to how people feel about inboxes. In giving you a notifications stream, the last thing we wanted to do was cause more stress! So we dropped the unread count and now the orange color simply means there are new notes since you last looked. An icon shows the type of your latest notification.  The icon now also refreshes while you’re on a page, no need to reload a page to see new notifications.

You might also notice that unread notes are still white until you open them, which turns them gray. We didn’t entirely remove the concept of read/unread; we just stopped counting them. Feel free to turn them all gray if that’s your thing, or let some notes stay unread. Either way, we won’t pester you with a number.

The New Panel

In case you like to browse back through older notifications, we built a page that lets you do that. Just go to the WordPress.com Notifications panel and scroll to your heart’s content. Are you proud of a certain achievement from last month? Relive old glories as often as you like.

Other than letting you scroll to older notes, the new panel isn’t much different than the one in the toolbar. That will change soon! We have a list of features to add, as well as new notifications to send, that will make the new panel one of your favorite places on WordPress.com.

Today we’re sending one thousand notes every minute (ten million per week) but we want to send more. We have lots of ideas for new notifications. What kind of things would you like to be notified about?

Small Print

These changes are not compatible with Internet Explorer versions earlier than 9. We will devote some time to maintaining backwards compatability as long as it doesn’t delay the development of new features for modern browsers, but we encourage you to upgrade. Meanwhile, the old version of the toolbar will be displayed for older IE browsers.

7 Food Blogs to Follow This Summer

With the official first day of summer right around the corner, now is a great time to start collecting recipes for your favorite warm-weather treats.

You’ll find endless inspiration by browsing through topics like recipe, grilling, and summer in the WordPress.com Reader, and discover tons of great ideas by exploring our collection of recommended food blogs.

Here are seven mouthwatering recipes from a handful of fantastic blogs that are sure to delight all summer long:

The Patterned Plate

Mango and Coconut Ice Cream

We Call Him Yes! Chef!

Grilled Skirt Steak and Artichokes

The Faux Martha

Strawberry Shortcake

In Pursuit of More

Kale Veggie Slaw with Sesame Miso Dressing

Just Homemade

Raspberry Meyer Lemonade

Love + Cupcakes

Mandarin Orange Creamsicles

The Craving Chronicles

Salty Sweet Strawberry Crisp with Lazy Basil Ice Cream

Do you have an all-time favorite summer recipe? What new recipes do you hope to try out this season?

Photo Blogging 101, Part 2

Now that you’ve been snapping away, you’ll want to build your photographic following. WordPress.com has an excellent photo blogging community, which you can tap into by following these tips and tricks.

Tags, topics, and phloggers, oh my!

Tags work to connect your blog to the larger WordPress.com community, so you can see others who are writing, or photographing, the same subjects as you. By tagging your post as “Photography” or “Black and White,” your posts will be included in the respective Topic page so that other viewers can find your site. If you haven’t added tags to your posts before, you can learn how to do so here.

However, tags can be used for more than just bringing traffic to your site, but as a networking tool as well. As your photo blog grows, taking some time to look at other photo blogging sites can both help you to find inspiration, tips and tricks, and new ideas, as well as put you in contact with your fellow photo blogging compatriots.

You can start following new topics in your WordPress.com reader by going to the WordPress.com Reader and inserting “Photography” or any related tag into the “Add a Topic” text box.

The Photography topic page from the WordPress.com Reader

Building Connections

One of the best ways to boost readership and build a following is to do the same in return. This means that when you see a photo blogger that you like, comment on their post! Comments and pingbacks help to create connections between bloggers and their readers.

Blogging is about community and sharing, and this sets the tone. Just recently, I wrote a blog post inspired by a post on 1000AwesomeThings.com. I linked back, and hopefully turned a bunch of new readers onto the site. Because there was a decent amount of traffic sent to his blog, or maybe because he received a pingback, Neil Pasricha then came and commented on my blog! This is the author of two #1 International Bestselling books! I was so thrilled. I emailed Neil to thank him, and that began a back and forth, where I was able to ask him his blogging tips.

From Bestselling Author Shares 3 Tips for Building Your Blog Audience

In browsing other photo blogs, you may see that many photographers add information about their camera and set up to each post. Generally, photo bloggers will include the camera they used to shoot the image, the aperture and f-stop information, and the lens. This is a great way to explain both the tools you’re using as a photographer and another method of contributing to the photo blogging community by sharing your experiences.

The Duotone theme automatically pulls your digital photo information and displays it in the left sidebar.

Protecting Your Work

Through consistent posting, commenting on other blogs, and tagging your posts, you can continue to build your photo blogging readership. As you get your work out there, it’s also important to make sure that it’s protected. For photo bloggers on WordPress.com, we recommend that you watermark your photos. This means adding a copy right, such as “© Erica’s Photography,” directly to your image with a photo editing program. Watermarking your photos helps to prevent others from taking your images and pretending they’re their own.

If you’re interested in licensing your work as well, the Creative Commons license is an excellent way to both protect your work, while still contributing to the photographic community as a whole. Creative Commons licenses establish you as the owner of your product, but still allow for others to use your work. For example, among the various Creative Commons licenses, you can state that anyone is allowed to use your work as long as it’s attributed to you and they’re not using it for commercial purposes. Better yet, they can follow all of the above rules, and may also build on your work, similar to sampling when it comes to music beats.

Now that your photo blog is well on it’s way, don’t forget to stay tuned for more tips and tricks with our final post on Photo Blogging 101. (Missed the first post? You can check it out here.)

Look Before You Leap

Trying out new themes is fun, isn’t it? I think so! The thing about changing my blog’s theme that has traditionally bugged me, though, is the 10-15 minutes right after you click “Activate” when you have to rush through uploading a new custom header, maybe resetting the background, fiddling with a new sidebar configuration, and other transition adjustments so that people won’t see your site in a half-switched state. Maybe I’m overly sensitive to that — I don’t like to leave things half-painted either — but luckily for me we’ve just finished a new feature to improve this very thing. It is my great pleasure to introduce you to our new theme customization tool* and say good-bye to half-painted websites.

The customizer provides a live preview as you play with Appearance settings, and can be used to customize a live preview of a new theme before you activate it, or to make changes to your existing theme. It allows you to edit the site title and tagline, custom headers and backgrounds, navigation placement, front page selection, and other options that vary by theme. It works with both free themes and premium themes. Shall we take a test drive?

Imagine you want to change themes. As you are browsing on the Themes screen, notice the new “Live Preview” link and click it.

You’re taken to the customizer. As you make changes, the preview in the right-hand part of the screen updates live so you can get things just right.

When things look the way you want them, click the Save & Activate button in the lower left (or Save & Purchase if it is a premium theme) and boom, your new theme and custom settings are live!

You can also use the live preview feature to customize your existing theme. On the themes screen in your dashboard, you’ll now see a “Customize” button that launches the previewer.

And don’t worry, you still have access to the regular screens for adjusting these and other features. Just use the navigation for the Appearance section like you always have.

So, please try it out, and let us know what you think in the comments! I hope you like  it as much as we do. If you hit any snags, let us know in the forums so that we can help.

But wait, there’s more!

Yes, more! Here are a couple of smaller additions also aimed at making it easier to customize your site and make it look just the way you want it.

• When choosing a custom header image, you can now choose from your Media Library. I looove this, because I have uploaded the same header image at least a dozen times to re-use it when I changed themes.
• For themes that support it, custom headers now have a recommended size rather than a fixed required size, so you can be flexible with the height and width of your header images. I love this too, because sometimes I really like a theme but the header image I want to use is taller or shorter than the theme design allows. Now, the power is in your hands to decide! The goal is for as many themes as possible on WordPress.com to support this feature, but you can see if we’ve added it to yours yet by checking the list of supported themes.

And one last thing…
If you know HTML, you can now add links and a little bit of formatting to your image captions. This is great for people who want to link a photo credit to the photographer’s blog or to a Creative Commons license, or want to make some text bold or italicized. At some point in the future we may add a WYSIWYG option, but for now you’ll just need to learn some basic HTML tags if you want to use this one. Just type the HTML right into the caption field in the image uploader, and your links will appear like magic. So this:

becomes this:

You can adopt adorable kittens at your local Humane Society.
Make a new friend and save a life today!
Photo by Jane Wells, saver of kittens

I’ve been wanting this feature for four years now, so I’m really excited.

Have fun with these new features!

*Fun Fact: While this feature was in development, it was originally conceived as a wizard, or guided walkthrough. We codenamed it Gandalf.

New Theme: A Simpler Time

There’s something about this time of year that always makes me wistful for the good old days—the simpler times, if you will—when all that mattered were family, friends, and a whole lotta blogging about everything under the sun. I miss those days, don’t you?

Fear not, my fellow blogging friends. We’ve got you all covered today with a theme that will make you want to stop time and write about everything in your lives until you can’t write anymore.

A Simpler Time, designed by Denise Chandler, is a theme that’s beautiful, bold, and memorable—pretty much exactly like the types of stories you’ll be writing alongside it on your WordPress.com blog:

A Simpler Time: Single Post

It’s a traditional blog theme in the sense that it offers everything you’ve come to expect from a WordPress theme—widgets, custom menus, and custom headers, and more—and it also looks incredible. If you’d also like to mix it up with different colors and fonts, try the Custom Design upgrade. You can do all of that and more.

A Simpler Time is a premium upgrade for your blog; read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Stay In The Conversation

Update (May 17): Since this feature went live we’ve had a bunch of feedback and it looks like following comments by default is not a good fit for a lot of bloggers (and their readers) after all. We looked at a few different options, but for now we’ve just changed things back to how they were before. To follow a conversation, make sure you check the box when you post a comment.

It’s now much easier for you and your commenters to keep track of the conversations you’re involved in across WordPress.com. Some recent tests have shown that by subscribing commenters to new comments by default, they are more likely to stay engaged and come back and comment more on your blog. With that knowledge, we’ve changed the default comment following behavior to help you get more conversations going on your blog.

We made the initial changes last week and after great feedback from you we just launched an update. Here’s how it works:

• By default, posting a comment will now subscribe you to receive follow-up comments via email for that specific post, keeping you updated on the conversation. This is indicated by the checked box in the comment form.
• If you have a WordPress.com account, you now have a global setting to change this so that by default you will not be subscribed. If you don’t have an account, then you can create one over here.
  
• If you don’t want email notifications for a thread, just uncheck the box when you post your comment. If you’ve disabled the feature, you can also subscribe to a specific thread by checking the box in the comment form.
  
• There is also a link at the bottom of every notification email that will allow you to change your subscription options.
  

If you’d like to find out all of the details about how this works, we’ve also updated our support documentation about following comments.

Look at These Gorgeous Blogs

We’ve added a user showcase where you can view stunning customizations made by people just like you. From complete redesigns with CSS to adding pizzazz with Custom Fonts to clever use of options like background and header, this showcase will spark your imagination and inspire creativity.

Discover details about what each showcase blog is doing with WordPress.com themes and customizations by clicking a thumbnail to see a colophon-style list of credits on the left.

We’ve also updated footer links so blog owners can show off the types of customizations they’ve made and visitors can learn more by clicking the “Customized” link in WordPress.com footers. A “Customized” link will appear next to the theme name for blogs that are using Custom Design tools like fonts or CSS.

Things we like to see when looking for showcase-worthy customizations are blogs with good traffic, beautiful design, well-written articles or stunning images, recent content updates, and involvement helping out in our CSS Customization forum.

Be inspired, customize your blog and make it that perfect place for your creations.

Photo Blogging 101, Part 1

Spring is in the air. With the weather warming up, now is a great time to get started on a photo blog. Creating a photo blog is a wonderful introduction to blogging on WordPress.com or an opportunity to refresh your current site. Ready to get started? You can sign up for a new blog right over here.

Getting started

Photo blogs, sometimes called phlogs, use pictures instead of words. While many photo bloggers choose a type of photo that they want to focus on, such as portraits, others use their photo blog to document their life’s events. Photo blogs come in a variety of styles, including those that focus on vacation photos or even snapshots of friends. With images, we can capture moments in our life in a way that sometimes words cannot.

When starting a photo blog, you’ll want to choose a theme with a wider content area to help to showcase your photos at full size. Similarly, choosing a theme that is minimalistic helps to reduce any noise that may detract from the focus on your photography. Popular photo blogging themes on WordPress.com include Nishita, Duotone, and Modularity Lite. Looking for some inspiration? Be sure to check out the photo blogs below or more of our recommended photo blogging sites for examples of photo-friendly layouts.

The Unknown Project, a WordPress.com photo blog using Anthem.

Tracey Capone Photography, a WordPress.com photo blog using Twenty Eleven.

Tomorrow Never Knows, a WordPress.com photo blog using Comet.

Want to add photo flair to your site without starting a whole new blog? Adding a photo blogging category to an existing blog is a great way to revamp your site. In fact, you may consider doing “Friday Phlogs” or a similar weekly special to help incorporate these tips consistently into your current site.

Tools of the Trade

What do you need to get started? Nothing but a camera and an internet connection. Photo blogging with a smart phone is growing increasingly simple, particularly with the Quick Photo button in the WordPress for iOS and Android apps where you can point, shoot, and publish. If you’re already a pro at the WordPress apps, you may be interested in taking a look at Camera+ and Flickr, which allow you to automatically share your photos to your WordPress.com blog.

On the left, QuickPhoto in WordPress for Android and on the right, QuickPhoto in WordPress for iOS.

If you choose to use a more traditional camera, there are few tips to keep in mind when uploading your photos to ensure they represent the full quality of your original picture.

• Don’t resize your photos after uploading them to WordPress.com. Instead, leave your images at full size so we can see your work in all of it’s glory. WordPress.com will automatically generate the appropriate dimensions for you.
• Make edits to your photos before uploading them.
• Save your photos as JPEGs. JPEGs are the best format for photos online. You can also use PNG if you’re looking to add a transparent image to your site.

Welcome to our series on photo blogging! Stay tuned for more tips and tricks over the next few weeks.

New Themes: Just Desserts and Oxygen

Happy Thursday! We’ve added some exciting new themes to our ever-growing collection, and we’re happy to tell you all about them.

First out of the oven is…Just Desserts. Yep, that’s a theme! Designed by Andy Rutledge, Just Desserts is a deliciously stylish premium theme that’s perfect for blogs centered on food.

With its responsive, single-column layout and unique presentation of images and posts on the front page, Just Desserts gives you a delectable canvas on which your mouthwatering photos and text can really shine — even when viewed on smaller mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.

There’s much more to be said about Just Desserts, and we’ve provided all of the tasty details on the Theme Showcase.

If all of the dessert goodness left you breathless, we can supply you with some…Oxygen. Yep, that’s also a theme. Although, it may also leave you breathless because it’s simply stunning.

Designed by DevPress, Oxygen is a minimal yet beautifully crafted free magazine theme. With the help of your amazing images, the crisp and well-balanced design will transform your blog into an online magazine that looks sharp and professional.

Oxygen contains many features and customization options, including a showcase page template with a featured slider, featured images, seven widget areas, and a carefully tailored responsive layout. To read about these features and more, you know where to head — the Theme Showcase.

Happy blogging! We look forward to seeing what you bake, photograph, and write, armed with these great new themes.

Find Friends Who Use WordPress

Are you curious to see how your friends are using WordPress? Give the new and improved Friend Finder a try to connect with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google contacts who have WordPress sites!

After authorizing WordPress.com to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to find your friends (don’t worry — none of this account information is saved!) you’ll see a list of people you know who have WordPress sites.

Click Follow and each time your friend publishes a new post it will show up in your Reader under Blogs I Follow.

If you have multiple blogs, make sure to set the Primary Blog in your Settings so the correct blog is shown to friends when they find you.

If you’re interested in finding more cool blogs to follow, browse our collection of Recommended Blogs and try adding some topics to follow in your reader using the box in the bottom left.