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Dika Fei, like most founders, had a couple ideas that failed before hitting just the right note when he started his web development company, Jelly Pixel Studio. With a team of seven, Jelly Pixel Studio specializes in crafting unique and illustrative websites for a variety of clients worldwide. 

I had the chance to talk with Dika about why he loves WordPress.com, a few of his favorite tools, and examples of projects he’s most proud of. 

If Dika’s high praise convinces you to give WordPress.com another look, you can learn more about our specs and get started at WordPress.com/hosting. 

1. How long have you been working with WordPress and WordPress.com?

I’ve been working with WordPress for about 10 years now. When I first started, it was a bit like jumping into a lake and hoping there were no crocodiles! Back then, it wasn’t as obvious which CMS to choose. Joomla and Drupal were still pretty big, and it wasn’t clear that WordPress would be the best option. But we chose WordPress because it seemed more straightforward, and I’m so glad we made that decision. It was the right one. 

2. What do you like most about using WordPress.com for your clients?

If I knew nothing about it, I’d say WordPress.com works like magic! The uptime of websites on WordPress.com is often 100%, which really surprised me, especially compared to other hosting servers. It’s incredibly stable and scalable at a price point that’s hard to beat. 

Jelly Pixel is also part of Automattic for Agencies, and it’s impressive how the system scales, like running 10 CPUs that can go up to 100 when needed.

It’s a true “set it and forget it” experience in the WordPress industry. Let me know where you get your magic pixie dust from! 

3. What are your favorite tools or themes to use in your projects?

I love using GeneratePress and Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). 

GeneratePress is a lightweight theme that supports different approaches to web development, including full site editing. It’s a great starter theme for developers. 

Advanced Custom Fields is a well-known plugin, and I particularly appreciate how it now allows you to create Gutenberg blocks easily, handling the backend UI for you.

4. What recent WordPress features or updates are you excited about?

I’m really excited about the Interactivity API enabling more dynamic and interactive site features, akin to what we see with React. It’s still in its early days, but I think we’ll see more adoption soon.

5. What’s most important to you when building a WordPress site?

Stability and security are my top priorities. One of the biggest factors there is having a secure hosting environment. Many security issues come from improperly configured hosting, but with WordPress.com, you don’t have to worry about that. The secure server setup handles every vulnerability for you, which is a huge relief.

6. Can you share a few of your favorite client sites? Why do they stand out to you?

Ambient Lounge Japan, for its amazing product customization feature.

Workprint LA, for its overall design.

CNIB Access Labs, as a fully accessible and beautifully designed site. 

Get started at WordPress.com today

Beyond our customization options and extensability, what keeps Dika Fei and Jelly Pixel Studio using WordPress.com are our rock-solid security and performance specs. Those foundational aspects of developing and hosting sites can get overlooked amidst glitzy marketing campaigns. If you’re as impressed with our uptime as Dika, get started building today: 

The WordPress.com team is always working on new design ideas to bring your website to life. Check out the latest themes in our library, including great options for dog lovers, engaged couples, and interior design aficionados.

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Bark

Bark is a pawsitively perfect theme for pet care pros, striking the perfect balance between professional and playful. With sections tailored to showcase your services, testimonials, and even a map of your service areas, Bark helps make your business the leader of the pack. The typography adds a touch of modern charm, while the warm color palette and rounded corners brings comfort to every page. And with four color schemes available, Bark has all the tricks to make your site fetch some serious attention.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

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Vows

Vows is the perfect theme for engaged couples who want to tie everything together in style. Inspired by the timeless elegance of wedding stationery and photography, Vows acts as a sleek, all-in-one link hub, making it easy to coordinate your big day. From centralizing information to sharing event details and visual themes, this theme does it all with grace. With sophisticated font pairings and style variations, Vows sets the perfect tone for your celebration.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

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Cottage

Cottage is the perfect theme for anyone who wants to share the warmth and charm of their home or interior design sensibilities with the world. Inspired by the cottagecore aesthetic, this theme wraps your content in an earthy, cozy color palette that feels like a warm cup of tea on a rainy day. With a stunning gallery page to showcase your space and a delightful background pattern that adds a touch of whimsy, this will be your go-to design for all things homey and beautiful. Whether you’re blogging about decor or sharing your latest design inspiration, Cottage makes your site feel like home.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

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Hola

Hola was built for bloggers and newsletter creators who want their words to shine. A sleek variation of the Hey theme, Hola keeps it simple with a text-forward design that highlights your latest posts in a clean, straightforward layout. The striking header is created by adding a black-and-white image to a Cover Block with a preset duotone—an effect also applied to featured images, avatars, and the site logo.

The theme’s expanded color palette and four unique style variations bring a bit of personality to the mix, whether you’re vibing with cool blues, the vibrant magenta, or earthy tones. No matter your aesthetic, Hola offers a minimalist canvas with just the right pop of flair.

Click here to view a demo of this theme.

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To install any of the above themes, click the name of the theme you like, which brings you right to the installation page. Then click the “Activate this design” button. You can also click “Open live demo,” which brings up a clickable, scrollable version of the theme for you to preview.

Premium themes are available to use at no extra charge for customers on the Personal plan or above. Partner themes are third-party products that can be purchased for $99/year each on the Business plan and above.

You can explore all of our themes by navigating to the “Themes” page, which is found under “Appearance” in the left-side menu of your WordPress.com dashboard. Or you can click below:

Remember when commenting on blogs and interacting with other commenters was one of the core pieces of enjoying the web? Matthias Pfefferle is making commenting cool again with ActivityPub for WordPress, a plugin that seamlessly connects your WordPress website to the fediverse. 

In this interview, Doc Pop and Matthias talk about fediverse applications that apply beyond social media—and where the ActivityPub protocol can go in the future. 

Will you be one of those people? Federate your website today and get 25% off a WordPress.com Business or Commerce hosting plan by using coupon code federate25—or click below:

In this episode of the Fediverse Files, ‪‪Doc Pop talks with Bart Decrem, the co-creator of Mammoth, an open source Mastodon app for iOS.

Doc and Bart discuss how the walled gardens of modern social media platforms are finally getting some real competition from a better, and more open social web. The rise of the fediverse signals a return to the original promise of the web: that anyone can find a home, their own place on the internet, and connect with whomever they want without getting trapped in a single platform. 

Whether it’s through a newsletter, a podcast, or a publisher’s website, Bart’s goal is to get a million websites and a hundred million people onto the fediverse.

Will you be one of those people? Federate your website today and get 25% off a WordPress.com Business or Commerce hosting plan by using coupon code federate25—or click below:

Automattic recently welcomed Beeper, an all-in-one messaging app, to our umbrella of life-improving apps. (If you haven’t yet, check out Day One, Pocketcasts, and Tumblr, too!)  

Since Beeper joined a company best known for its world-class WordPress hosting and plugin solutions, we knew our special projects crew would love creating a shiny new blog for the messaging team. 

With blog.beeper.com, our team showed off what can be quickly done with a minimalist framework. In this post, we’ll give you a short tour of the new site, including some design inspiration as well as before and after shots. 

Take a look at Beeper’s new blog and remember to download the app today on iOS, Android, or desktop. 

Maintaining Beeper’s clean and colorful aesthetic

Beeper’s design sensibility has always been fun and playful, featuring a blue-purple color palette, simple icons, and friendly imagery and messaging. We knew we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel on that front, so we maintained the overall aesthetic while giving the new blog a clean background that’s ideal for reading and absorbing content. The Beeper homepage, in comparison, offers a colorful, sparkly background that’s perfect for immediately drawing in visitors. 

Rather than complicate the design with a noisy layout, the team quickly decided that a one-column, minimalist structure using the popular Livro theme would be best for this project. The only custom flourish we’ve added is a simplified “Featured” section that the Beeper team controls and edits.     

Breaking free of Substack’s constraints  

We transferred Beeper’s 7,000+ subscribers and all their archived content from Substack to WordPress.com. Our system beautifully handled those moving pieces and even ensured that all the links worked properly at their new home. 

Moving Beeper off of Substack and onto WordPress made this project unique for our team. Along the way, we realized some of Substack’s constraints, like styling and layout restrictions, and were glad to be able to move beyond them.

On the design front, for example, Beeper appreciated having more freedom than Substack’s pre-built, busy-looking magazine layout. And while there was some customization available, little details like the “Subscribe” box or even a “Download” button couldn’t be styled with Beeper’s branding aesthetic. These details do a lot to present a distinct and cohesive message. 

While it’s a subjective measure, we’re comfortable in saying the new design just feels better and more authentic to Beeper. 

Start using WordPress.com today 

If you’re impressed by what our team did with Beeper’s blog, consider moving your blog or newsletter to WordPress.com today. With our convenient importer tool, you can click a button, sit back, and dream about just how high your content can fly when not constrained by a platform’s built-in limitations. 

And if you’re curious about using WordPress.com to build sites for your clients, click below to learn more about our world-class hosting and development features:

If your WordPress website is hosted somewhere other than WordPress.com, we’d love for you to ask one simple question: Why? 

Maybe you started there because of a stellar pricing deal on hosting and just stayed put for years. Maybe their offering was cutting-edge at one time, but now it seems outdated. Are all those paid add-ons starting to look a little bloated? 

The WordPress.com of 2024 is vastly reimagined from what you may have encountered a couple of years ago. Our SEO tools, security features, unlimited bandwidth, and developer tools are world-class and built right in at no extra cost. 

And for a limited time, we’ll move your existing WordPress site from any host to WordPress.com for free. 

Let us do the work for you. We’re here to help and ensure that you’re getting the very best WordPress experience out of the box. 

How it works

The migration process takes only a few minutes, with no downtime involved. (Read those last four words again, because they’re very important!) Once your site is migrated, you’ll connect the domain and your site will be ready to go. Here’s how it works:

1. Head to WordPress.com/move and enter the URL of the WordPress site to migrate.
2. Select the option to create a new site, or select the existing WordPress.com site where you’ll move the old site to. 
3. Select “Migrate site” to move all of your site’s content, themes, plugins, users, and customizations. (This selection requires our Business plan. More on that below.)
4. Select “Do it for me” to get our team to review and handle your migration for you. Again, this option is 100% free for a limited time. 

Why move to WordPress.com?

Migrating to WordPress.com enhances your entire online presence with better security, improved performance, unlimited visitors and bandwidth, and reliable support. Here are some of the benefits:

• Rock solid reliability: With a 99.999% uptime guarantee, your site will always be available, fostering more trust, sales, and peace of mind.
• Blazing fast performance: Our 28+ location CDN ensures your site loads at lightning speed, leading to happier users and higher conversion rates. Plus, WordPress.com is the top WordPress hosting provider per Google’s Core Web Vitals.
• Top-tier security: Our advanced protection measures keep your site safe from hacks and DDoS attacks, protecting both your business and your customers.
• Always up-to-date: You’ll always have the latest WordPress, PHP, and plugins, complete with new features and security updates.
• Complete control and customization: Use our extensive library of themes and design customization options to create a site that truly reflects your brand.
• Scalability and support: Ready to grow? We’ve got your back with advanced scaling to handle traffic spikes at no added cost. Plus, our managed hosting means we take care of updates and maintenance, allowing you to focus on what you love.

Get all of this and more by choosing the hosting platform built from the ground up by WordPress Core’s biggest contributors: WordPress.com.

The best place to WordPress

Our Business plan supercharges your WordPress website with plugins, third-party (or custom) themes, and everything else you need to host a professional website:

• Plugins: Access over 50,000 plugins or upload/build your own.
• Third-party themes: Upload any WordPress theme or custom design.
• SEO tools: Access advanced SEO options and install plugins like Yoast Premium.
• Custom code: Add custom JavaScript, iframe, and header code for services like Google Adsense and Mailchimp.
• Backups: Ensure site safety with daily backups and easy one-click restorations.
• Uninterrupted performance: Improve user experience and load times with our multi-data center support, real-time replication, and global caching.
• Enhanced security: Use Jetpack Scan for malware and security threats.
• Advanced developer features: Use the development tools you know, love, and rely on like staging sites, WP-CLI, GitHub deployments, SFTP/SSH, database access, PHP version switching, and more.

How do those features translate to a better experience for you? Here’s what Michael P. had to say about the experience of migrating to WordPress.com::

“After migrating to WordPress.com our site is faster, easier to use, more secure, and technical support is nearly instant. The level of competency and understanding is a far cry from GoDaddy’s WordPress offering. It was a relief to work with a company that really knows how to manage WordPress!”

Want to migrate three (or more) sites?

For those of you who are managing multiple sites for others, our new Automattic for Agencies program may be a good fit for you. 

Through Automattic for Agencies, you can access agency pricing, referral earnings, premier support, and cutting‑edge tooling like WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, and more. Joining is free, and signing up today will grant you early access and provide you the opportunity to shape the program.

Make the move

Being part of Automattic, the primary driver of the WordPress project, we are a uniquely positioned host to the core software development. Our commitment to the open-source community is unparalleled, with substantial engineering time and expertise dedicated to enhancing WordPress. As a WordPress.com customer, you directly benefit from this relationship through exceptional reliability, early access to innovative features, and support from the most skilled systems team in the industry.

Move your site to WordPress.com today, for free.

In this episode of the Fediverse Files, Doc Pop talks with ActivityPub co-creator Evan Prodromou. ActivityPub is a fediverse technology that’s akin to what RSS is for podcasts and blog feeds; it’s the foundational element that connects platforms and allows them to communicate with each other. 

Doc Pop and Evan discuss the past, present, and future of ActivityPub and the fediverse.

Ready to take the leap? Federate your website today and get 25% off:

Gravatar, short for Globally Recognized Avatar, is a powerful service from Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. For over two decades, Gravatar has been the driving force behind billions of avatar views across the web. Beyond WordPress, you’ll find Gravatar powering user profiles on platforms like ChatGPT, GitHub, Slack, and many more.

But Gravatar is far more than just a profile pic that follows you around the web. Let’s dive into seven key features that make Gravatar an indispensable tool for WordPress users.

From a WordPress avatar to a profile for everywhere

When Gravatar was first integrated into WordPress way back in 2006, it solved two critical problems:

1. WordPress lacked native image editing capabilities.
2. Most servers hosting WordPress sites struggled with image resizing and performance.

Gravatar elegantly addressed these issues while offering users the convenience of uploading their avatar just once for use across multiple sites and blogs. Today, you’ll find Gravatar profiles integrated across the web.

It was, and still is, a win-win!

Put a face to a comment

Gravatar is what provides profile pictures on all the lovely comments on your blog. That simple addition—a photo where there might otherwise be a bland icon—dramatically increases reader engagement. Users with Gravatars are more likely to comment, and their contributions tend to be of higher quality. This can lead to more vibrant discussions on your blog, fostering a sense of community.

Increase engagement with hovercards 

Hovercards are an often-overlooked feature that can also significantly enhance user interaction. When enabled, hovering over an avatar reveals a snapshot of the user’s profile information.

To activate hovercards:

• Go to Settings > Discussion in your WordPress dashboard
• Look for the “Gravatar Hovercards” option and enable it
• Note: If you’re not on a WordPress.com hosted site, you’ll need the Jetpack plugin installed

Get verified 

Gravatar’s Verified Accounts feature lets you link your profile to services and social media platforms like Instagram, GitHub, TikTok, and Threads. This verification process confirms your ownership of these accounts, adding a layer of authenticity to your online presence and making your interactions more trustworthy.

Your link-in-bio solution

Did you know that Gravatar was the original link-in-bio service? Every Gravatar account comes with a free, customizable profile page that’s perfect for sharing:

• Your bio and interests
• Important links
• Social media accounts
• Payment options
• Contact information

It’s a versatile hub for your online identity, all in one convenient location.

Own your name on the web

Instead of using gravatar.com/username, you can now have a custom web address that truly represents you. This personalized domain isn’t just for vanity; it opens up new possibilities, such as using it as your username on emerging platforms like Bluesky.

To kick off custom domains, we’ve partnered with .link to offer you a free domain for the first year. This limited-time offer lets you personalize your Gravatar profile URL, making it more memorable and shareable.

Here is a video about why you should own your name as a domain and what it can unlock. 

More TLDs and domain options will be available in the months to come.

Innovate with profiles-as-a-service

For developers looking to enhance user experiences, Gravatar’s new REST API offers exciting possibilities:

• Enrich customer profiles
• Customize onboarding processes
• Add delightful touches to user interactions

The best part? It’s completely free to use. 

WordPress site owners, keep an eye out for an upcoming WordPress plugin that will add even more Gravatar integrations to your site.

Get your free domain now

Don’t miss out on these powerful features and our exclusive domain offer. Visit the Gravatar blog to learn how to set up your custom domain and take control of your online identity. 

Learn WordPress has been growing as a hub of educational resources for WordPress since 2020. Now, it’s undergone a transformation in content focus and design with the introduction of Learning Pathways and a reimagined look.

The WordPress.org redesign continues

Learn WordPress is the latest section of WordPress.org to receive a design refresh, following other sections like the Showcase and Developer Resources. It brings a unified look and feel that’s modern, visual, and inviting.

Beyond its fresh aesthetic, the new Learn WordPress site prioritizes learners with a revamped user experience consistent with familiar modern learning platforms. It features a new navigation menu, eye-catching thumbnails, and search filters so you can explore and discover content quickly. The clearer and more structured layout helps you easily recognize the resources you need (courses, lessons, Online Workshops) based on your learning preferences.  

Introducing Learning Pathways

This redesign also highlights a new approach to Learn WordPress content, emphasizing what learners engage with the most. The introduction of Learning Pathways lets you grow your WordPress skills progressively. You can start with beginner essentials and then work your way through more advanced concepts at your own speed. This method lets you build a solid understanding as you move through each course. Learning Pathways are geared toward specific learners, like people using WordPress for the first time or those interested in development.

Four Learning Pathways are already launched and ready to explore:

• Beginner WordPress User
• Intermediate WordPress User
• Beginner WordPress Developer 
• Intermediate Theme Developer

You can look forward to more Learning Pathways in the User and Developer tracks soon. Two additional pathways, Designer and Contributor, are also on the roadmap. For more details about Learning Pathways, listen to episode 83 of the WordPress Briefing.

Get a guided tour of all the exciting Learn WordPress changes from the Training team’s very own Jonathan Bossenger, Wes Theron and Kathryn Presner. Sign up for one of their upcoming Online Workshops on Tuesday, August 6 at 14:00 UTC or Thursday, August 8 at 21:00 UTC.

Education for the future of WordPress

What started with the Training team’s effort to understand the needs and expectations of current and future learners became a push to create a dynamic learning experience. This next phase of Learn WordPress is an exciting move toward bringing more people into WordPress, whether new users just getting started or established developers looking to add more skills to their toolbox.

If you want to propose a change or report an issue, please do so in the Learn GitHub repository. If you love WordPress and want to contribute to making Learn WordPress an even greater resource, join the #training Slack channel. Want to make an immediate impact? Share Learn WordPress with someone you know.

Thank you (and props) to all involved

The new Learn WordPress couldn’t have been possible without the effective collaboration of the Training, Design, Marketing, and Meta teams.

@adamwood @agiljulio @arunshenoy99 @bsanevans @burtrw @cnormandigital @devmuhib @digitalchild @dufresnesteven @ervanyuffrizal @faisalahammad @fcoveram @hellosatya @huzaifaalmesbah @indirabiswas27 @ironnysh @itsmhrahman @jinalparekh @joedolson @joen @jominney @keithnoseworthy @kel-dc @lada7042 @laurahartwigdesign @laurlittle @markoserb @mustakim5 @nazmul111 @ndiego @nilovelez @noruzzaman @orangeambition @piyopiyofox @psykro @renyot @rfluethi @rjfrizz @rmartinezduque @ryelle @sakibsnaz @sfougnier @shsajalchowdhury @sierratr @sumitsingh @teuila_mau @webtechpooja  @west7 @zoonini

You’ve probably seen it on social media and in headlines around the web in the last few years: the fediverse. But what is it, really? A Boba Fett theme park? A Kevin Federline production? Some sort of cheese pun? In this first episode of our new YouTube series, the Fediverse Files, designer, illustrator, and fediverse expert ‪Doc Pop‬ explains exactly what the fediverse is so that you can jump in today to start building community and sharing content.

To kickstart your efforts, we’re giving you 25% off your first year on a Creator or Entrepreneur plan.