For almost 20 years, WordPress.com has been committed to providing a user-friendly and stable platform where anyone with a story to tell can do so freely and securely. Many of our customers have been with us from the beginning, and we’re proud to have been a partner in their digital journeys.
Now, we’re thrilled to announce something truly new and exceptional: a plan designed exclusively for those seeking the ultimate in security and longevity for their digital presence.
Safeguard your online legacy with the 100-Year Plan. This brand-new offering is for:
Families who wish to preserve their digital assets—the stories, photos, sounds, and videos that make up their rich family history—for generations to come.
Founders who want to protect and document their company’s past, present, and future.
Individuals seeking a stable, flexible, and customized online home that can adapt to whatever changes the future of technology will bring.
WordPress.com has played an integral role in creating and stewarding the software that powers nearly half the web and remains the most trusted CMS on the planet. Our managed hosting provides blazing fast load times, airtight security, privacy protection, and everything else you’ve come to expect from a top-of-the-line host. Those elements remain our north star and are a crucial foundation for the millions of customers who trust us with their online presence.
But the 100-Year Plan transcends conventional hosting. Included in this unique offer:
Century-Long Domain Registration: A domain is your most valuable digital asset. While standard domain registrations last a decade, our 100-Year Plan gives you an opportunity to secure your domain for a full century.
Even MorePeace of Mind: As guardians of your life’s work, we take our duty seriously. At the platform level, we maintain multiple backups of your content across geographically distributed data centers, automatically submit your site to the Internet Archive if it’s public, and will provide an optional locked mode.
Enhanced Ownership Protocols: Navigate life’s milestones with ease. Whether you’re gifting a site to a newborn or facilitating a smooth transfer of ownership, we’re here to assist every step of the way.
Top-Tier Managed WordPress Hosting: The very best managed WordPress experience with unmetered bandwidth, best-in-class speed, and unstoppable security bundled in one convenient package.
24/7 Premier Support: The WordPress.com 100-Year Plan includes dedicated, personalized support that begins with your interest form submission.
The 100-Year Plan isn’t just about today. It’s an investment in tomorrow. Whether you’re cementing your own digital legacy or gifting 100 years of a trusted platform to a loved one, this plan is a testament to the future’s boundless potential.
If you’re interested in learning more, fill out the form found here:
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, featuring beautiful new options for bloggers and creators of all stripes.
Negai (which means “hope” or “wish” in Japanese) is a bold blogging theme built on unadorned simplicity and minimalistic elegance. With monochromatic hues and oversized headlines, its straightforward and unapologetic style stands out in a world saturated with visual overwhelm.
Negai comes in nine color variations if blue/white isn’t the style you’re looking for.
Sten is a minimal blogging theme with a simple, straightforward homepage that displays a headline-only list of posts. Pages and posts are similarly spare, displaying a text-forward style that will appeal to writers and readers alike.
Overlaid is a theme that displays large titles and post excerpts that scroll over an image on the homepage. Text over an image doesn’t always work, but we solved that with large, center-aligned, and capitalized headings. Its blog post pages are crafted especially for users who want their writings to be simple yet beautiful.
Reverie is a theme inspired by the work of Mark Rothko. It features four style variations, one for each season—Spring (default), Summer, Fall, and Winter. Use it to illuminate your prose, poetry, stories, photos, and more. Reverie is based on WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg’s site at ma.tt, which was designed by Joen Asmussen.
DOS is a blog theme designed for the nostalgic creators of the ’80s and ’90s, as a tribute to the folks who invented computing as we know it today. With its monotype font and contrasting hues of green or amber over black, you’ll be transported back to the early days of coding when anything on a computer screen was inviting and exciting.
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 Premium plan or above. Partner themes are third-party products that can be purchased for $79/year each.
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:
Ever wished you could seamlessly guide visitors from one domain to another? That’s precisely what domain forwarding does.
We frequently use it here at WordPress.com. For instance, when you type in ownyouridentity.online—a catchy and memorable URL, if we do say so ourselves—you’re taken straight to our page at WordPress.com/domains.
Today, we’re happy to let you know that domain forwarding is available and easily accessible on WordPress.com.
This feature is perfect for folks who want to utilize a unique domain name that will lead visitors to a specific site or page. Forwarding can be used for a number of purposes:
E-commerce Campaigns: Launching a product? Secure a catchy domain and point it directly to your product page.
Rebranding: If your long-established domain isn’t snappy, mask it with a more memorable one.
Social Media Simplification: Make it easy for people to find your Facebook or LinkedIn by redirecting a unique domain straight to your profile.
Set up domain forwarding in minutes
You can use a domain already registered at WordPress.com, transfer a domain from an existing registrar (like Google), or purchase a brand new domain.
To set up domain forwarding today, follow these three easy steps:
Use WordPress.com for all your domain needs. If you’re looking for a Google Domains alternative due to their recent sale to Squarespace, we’re offering seamless transfers to WordPress.com and paying all your fees (which also extends your registration by one year).
Out of the box you’re getting:
A faster domain than you’ll get at GoDaddy, DigitalOcean, or Google
If you haven’t yet tried out Blaze, our incredible advertising wizard that helps to promote your blog posts across the WordPress.com and Tumblr networks, there’s no better time than now.
The beauty of Blaze lies in its automation capabilities. Our tool effortlessly creates the initial ad draft for you, making use of your blog post’s title, its featured image, and a short excerpt of the post.
But to get the most out of Blaze, it’s worth taking a couple extra minutes to make sure the ad is compelling enough to be worth a visitor’s click. Blaze ads are fully customizable, allowing you to tailor them to better reach and resonate with your audience.
Let’s explore five proven ways you can maximize your ads’ impact.
1. Use your audience’s language
It’s not enough to know who your audience is; you must also understand their language. By language, we mean the specific jargon, phrases, and expressions your target audience uses. Incorporating audience language into your Blaze ads makes them more relatable, thus increasing engagement.
For example, if your blog is about fitness, use phrases like “HIIT,” “macros,” or “strength training.” These are terms your audience will be familiar with, and seeing them in an ad will likely grab their attention.
2. Add a unique image
While Blaze does an excellent job of selecting your post’s featured image for your ad, it doesn’t know the whole story. If you have a more impactful, compelling image, don’t hesitate to swap it out. Remember, a picture can speak a thousand words and can often be the difference between a user clicking on your ad or scrolling past it.
3. Create a compelling headline
Blaze automatically uses your blog post title as the headline for your ad. However, you might want to consider creating a new, more compelling headline specifically for the ad. This headline doesn’t need to match your blog post title exactly; it just needs to capture attention and entice readers to want to learn more.
For instance, if your blog post title is “Top 10 Gardening Tips,” a more enticing ad headline could be, “Transform Your Garden With These Expert Tips.”
4. Craft a convincing call-to-action
While the post snippet gives readers a preview of your blog content, a strong call-to-action (CTA) can encourage users to engage further. For example, using words that imply exclusive benefits, such as “secret” or “new,” makes readers want to know more. In our gardening example, a CTA like “Discover the five simple secrets to a lush garden that only the pros know,” is enticing and gives readers a good reason to click on your ad.
5. Test and learn
Lastly, always remember the importance of testing different ad variations. Blaze’s customization capabilities allow you to try out other headlines, images, post snippets, and CTAs. You can even select different audiences to see which respond more favorably to your ads. See which combinations work best and refine your approach based on your learning.
Blaze is an incredibly powerful tool for boosting your blog post promotions, and with these customization tips, you can ensure your ads make the biggest splash possible. Don’t just set it and forget it—use Blaze to its fullest potential and watch your blog’s reach grow like never before.
If you haven’t heard about this incredible deal and are one of the millions of folks looking for a Google Domains alternative, here’s why you should make the switch to WordPress.com ASAP:
We’re paying transfer fees for the first million domains that move from Google to WordPress.com
In addition to that transfer fee is an additional year of domain registration
Free privacy protection — your contact information will stay private
You’ll get a free SSL certificate if and when you choose to host your website with us
We’re matching (or beating) all of Google’s prices for the long haul
No website or hosting plan needed, ever, to keep your domains on WordPress.com
Don’t take our word for it, though. Here’s what folks are saying:
To be clear, there’s no catch! WordPress.com has been a domain registrar for over a decade.
(By the way, we’ve made a bunch of improvements to the Reader in the last handful of months. Check it out!)
It’s not just customers who are taking notice. The domains industry is weighing in too. DomainInvesting.com noted:
“I would imagine there are many Google Domains customers who use WordPress for their website, so this offer makes sense.”
WPTavern, an outlet that covers WordPress news, commented:
“WordPress.com is putting the heat on with a new offer to pay transfer fees and an additional year of registration for the first million domains moved from Google Domains. WordPress.com is also guaranteeing Google Domains customers the same pricing or lower for 400+ top-level domains.”
Yes, registering a domain with WordPress.com is very low priced, matching the low prices that Google Domains charges.
GoDaddy charges $21.99 per year for registering a dot com domain.
WordPress.com only charges $12 per year for the same dot com domain.
If you’re a Google Domains customer, be sure to move to WordPress.com today to take advantage of this incredible deal. If you’re not a Google Domains customer, we hope you’ll consider WordPress.com for your domain(s) management. You won’t find better long-term prices or support anywhere.
Earlier this year, WordPressers around the globe united to celebrate 20 years of community and innovation. There were parties, blogs, videos, and social media posts aplenty. And, of course, the trending hashtag, “#WP20”.
Throughout April and May, community members reflected on their journeys – what brought them to WordPress and its personal meaning. The stories, tweets, and videos were inspiring, nostalgic, and even humorous at times. There was swag, and the cakes were epic.
WordPress celebrates 20 years tomorrow. It's grown from a comment on a blog post to a web spanning phenomenon. Thanks to an outstanding community and the freedoms of Open Source. Happy Birthday, WordPress! #WP20#WordPresspic.twitter.com/fght4XMJXb
I'm sure you've seen by now, but today is WordPress' 20th birthday! Thank you to @photomatt and @mikelittlezed1 for following through with a seemingly wild idea. I don't think anyone could have predicted we'd end up where we are today. Happy birthday @WordPress! #WP20pic.twitter.com/tAZRlYThuS
A WordPress event is not complete without a Wapuu, and not only was there one, but there was a whole campaign to color it in! Thanks to Em DeRosia for creating the commemorative Wapuu!
The Marketing team ran an interactive campaign, From Blogs to Blocks, a series of prompts across 20 days for WordPress enthusiasts to celebrate all-things WordPress.
Additional campaigns took place on social media and included prompting folks to share their favorite WordPress memory and most cherished WordPress swag item, to highlight the 21 contributing teams, and even to share a birthday greeting.
The WordPress Site Editor has come a long way since it was first introduced in early 2022. In the last couple of months alone, the WordPress project has added a handful of game-changing features that give you even more control and convenience in customizing your site to be exactly what you need.
Below, we lay out how you can manage, create, and edit your content and design directly from this handy tool.
Easily view and organize your menus
When you click the “Navigation” tab in the Site Editor, you’ll get a great high-level view of your menus with the ability to preview, edit, and switch between each as you’d like. From here, you can organize menu links by simply dragging them with your mouse into the desired order.
You can also click the three-dot menu and organize your navigation that way; from there you can also click through to the individual post or page that you’re moving around, in order to make changes on the fly.
Create new pages; edit existing pages
You can now also access pages from the Site Editor — whether you want to edit existing content or add a brand new page. When you first click into a page from the Site Editor you’ll see some data on the lefthand side (date published, word count, time to read, etc.) and the page itself to the right of that.
When you click the page, you’ll be brought into editing mode for that page with the option to edit the template as you’d like.
Change up your style
Not only is streamlined content management here, but so is design editing. There’s now a top-level Styles section in the Site Editor which allows you to experiment with and apply various color and font combinations, when they’re available for your theme. You can also open the Style Book from the Site Editor to get an idea of what various blocks look like with the different styles.
Style revisions are also now accessible from the Site Editor, at the bottom of the left hand column, allowing you to easily see and revert to changes you’ve made in the past.
Work in peace with distraction-free mode
The popular distraction-free writing mode has been available for editing posts and pages for some time and we’re excited that it’s now available in the Site Editor as well. Work on your home page and templates without other controls or menus getting in your way.
Distraction-free mode is accessible via the keyboard shortcut “Shift + Cmd + \” for Mac and “Shift + Ctrl + \” for Windows, or in the top right options menu.
Resize the editor for quick previews
If you’re curious about how all these changes you’re making will appear on various devices, WordPress has added the ability to resize the Site Editor. With a simple click and drag, you’ll see what your site looks like on mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. If you resize to engage the full screen, you’ll automatically be placed in Edit View to begin editing.
Try out the Site Editor and let us know what you think in the comments. We’re always listening to your feedback.
It wasn’t long ago that customizing your website meant outsourcing your design to an experienced developer or learning to code for yourself. Times are changing, though. With the new WordPress.com block editing tools, you’re able personalize all aspects of your site with point-and-click simplicity.
Learn how by joining us for August’s featured webinar: Site Editor vs. Page Editor: Using the Power of WordPress Editing Tools to Create Your Entire Site.
In this live tutorial, we’ll introduce you to the new WordPress.com Site Editor, which allows you to customize your website from top to bottom—no special coding skills needed.
Whether you’re a new or seasoned site owner, our experts will guide you through:
Distinguishing the site editor from the page and blog post editor
Locating and editing block theme templates
Assigning a new template to revamp your page or post appearance
This webinar is 100% free. All you need is a working knowledge of the WordPress.com dashboard and an eagerness to master site editing. Don’t forget to bring along your questions for our live Q&A session after the presentation!
We’ve prepared an exciting range of webinars this month to help you explore the vast potential of the WordPress.com editing tools and understand the importance of a custom domain for your website. These sessions are designed to arm you with the necessary skills to take your WordPress.com site to new heights!
Mastering Custom Domains
Establish a unique online identity that mirrors your brand and sets you apart from the crowd. Come along with us as we walk you through the process of selecting, registering, and associating a custom domain with your WordPress.com site. In addition, you will learn how a domain-specific email address can positively impact your email open rates.
This session will demonstrate how you can effortlessly craft an outstanding header without needing to write any code. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a zealous blogger, this webinar is intended to give you the ability to create headers that truly symbolize your brand and connect with your target audience.
Be a part of our WordPress.com live webinars, deliberately designed for both novice and experienced website owners. All our webinars are open to attend at no cost and wrap up with a vibrant Q&A session, allowing you to engage in meaningful conversation with our expert Happiness Engineers.
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, featuring beautiful new options with bloggers, diarists, and creators in mind.
Tenaz (“tenacious” in Spanish) is a classic magazine theme with a rich, dense homepage perfect for professional bloggers or small media networks. Customizable elements are somewhat limited for this theme, but the black and white color palette is versatile and timeless.
Takashi, the designer for this theme, was inspired by a visit to a design museum in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. Among the beautiful designs displayed there, the wall labels, written in both Japanese and English, also caught his attention. Takashi then started thinking about other examples of when dual language displays are needed, from road signs to posters in large immigrant communities. This theme, tomoni (“together” in Japanese), came to life from that idea.
Tomoni uses Noto Sans and Noto Sans Japanese, which makes both texts visually harmonic. There are eight color variations to suit a wide array of aesthetic flavors.
Entry is a uniquely styled block theme designed specifically for journalling. It features a blocky grid layout for posts, with every element contained in squared or rectangular shapes. This is a design that makes a statement.
Trellick is a minimalist, raw blog theme that strips away the polished veneer of the modern “sameness” of web design — this theme shows the untamed essence of the digital realm. Embracing the architectural concept of Brutalism, Trellick showcases a bold, unapologetic aesthetic.
This design features three columns. The left (header) and the right (sidebar) columns are sticky, and only the main content in the middle column scrolls. The small, square-shaped featured image contributes a distinctive look. Trellick is available in four different color schemes.
Covr is a beautifully crafted theme that boasts a clean and modern design, specifically created to showcase images in an immersive and captivating way. Its full-width home template elegantly displays your portfolio, photography, or personal blog posts, providing an enjoyable browsing experience for your audience. Whether you’re a photographer, artist, or blogger, Covr is the perfect choice to present your work and make an impact.
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 Premium plan or above. Partner themes are third-party products that can be purchased for $79/year each.
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:
Say hello to WordPress 6.3 “Lionel,” named after Lionel Hampton, the celebrated American jazz artist. A prolific jazz vibraphonist, pianist, and percussionist, Hampton gained notoriety working in harmony with greats from Charles Mingus to Quincy Jones and as bandleader of the eponymous Lionel Hampton Orchestra. His artistry and charitable work have been recognized with a Grammy, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the National Medal of Arts.
Be sure to turn up the volume of the musical stylings of Lionel Hampton as you discover all “Lionel” has to offer.
With “Lionel” you can create beautiful and compelling websites more efficiently than ever. Whether you want to build an entire site without coding or are a developer looking to customize every detail, WordPress 6.3 has something to pique your interest. As you unpack and explore this latest release, you will discover updated functions and navigation designed to help you work and create with less effort, design tools that give you more control over layout, and added functionality enriching the site-building experience.
“Lionel” marks a major chapter in the evolution of WordPress as a tool for expression. It’s the culmination of years of work from hundreds of contributors, bringing a more powerful and cohesive editing experience for crafting websites with blocks. It continues the quest of making web publishing approachable for everyone—so it’s also just a new beginning!
This momentous release opens new possibilities for the creative expression of designers, creators, and builders. Powerful tools and refined controls give users confidence and allow them to easily manage their sites.
Do everything in the Site Editor
WordPress 6.3 brings your content, templates, and patterns together in the Site Editor for the first time. Add pages, browse style variations, create synced patterns, and enjoy fine-tuned control over navigation menus. Spend less time switching across different site areas—so you can focus on what matters most. Creation to completion, all in one place.
Do everything with the Site Editor
Preview Block themes
Experience block themes before you switch and preview the Site Editor, with options to customize directly before committing to a new theme.
Preview a new block theme before you switch and commit
Create and sync patterns
Arrange blocks and save them to the ‘My Patterns’ section for use throughout your site. You can even specify whether to sync your patterns (previously referred to as “Reusable blocks”) so that one change applies to all parts of your site. Or, utilize patterns as a starting point with the ability to customize each instance.
My patterns: All your patterns in one place
Work faster with the Command Palette
Switch to a specific template or open your editor preferences with a new tool that helps you quickly access expanded functionality. With simple keyboard shortcuts (⌘+k on Mac or Ctrl+k on Windows), clicking the sidebar search icon in Site View, or clicking the Title Bar, get where you need to go and do what you need to do in seconds.
Get to know the new Command Palette
Sharpen your designs with new tools
New design controls bring more versatility for fine-tuning, starting with the ability to customize your captions from the Styles interface without coding. You can manage your duotone filters in Styles for supported blocks and pick from the options provided by your theme or disable them entirely. The Cover block gets added settings for text color, layout controls, and border options, making this powerful block even more handy.
New design tools
Track design changes with Style revisions
With a new audit trail, you can now see how your site looked at a specific time. Visualize these revisions in a timeline and access a one-click option to restore prior styles.
Style revisions: See your style revision history
Annotate with the Footnotes block
Footnotes add convenient annotations throughout your content. Now you can add and link footnotes for any paragraph.
Add footnotes effortlessly with the new Footnotes Block
Show or hide content with the Details block
Use the Details block to avoid spoiling a surprise, create an interactive Q&A section, or hide a long paragraph under a heading.
Display or hide content with the new Details Block
Performance gets a boost
WordPress 6.3 has 170+ performance updates, including defer and async support for the Scripts API and fetchpriority support for images. These improvements, along with block template resolution, image lazy-loading, and the emoji loader, can dramatically improve your website’s perceived load time.
Accessibility remains a core focus
Incorporating more than 50 accessibility improvements across the platform, WordPress 6.3 is more accessible than ever. Improved labeling, optimized tab and arrow-key navigation, revised heading hierarchy, and new controls in the admin image editor allow those using assistive technologies to navigate more easily.
Other highlights
Set aspect ratio on images
Specify your aspect ratios and ensure design integrity, especially when using images in patterns.
Build your site distraction-free
Distraction-free designing is now available in the Site Editor.
Rediscover the Top Toolbar
A revamped Top Toolbar offers parent selectors for nested blocks, options when selecting multiple blocks, and an interface embedded into the title bar with new functionality in mind.
List View improvements
Drag and drop to every content layer and delete any block you would like in the updated List View.
Build templates with Patterns
Create unique patterns to jumpstart template creation with a new modal enabling access to pattern selection.
Changes in PHP support
Support for PHP 5 is discontinued. The new minimum supported version of PHP is 7.0.0.
Failed update safeguards
WordPress will now auto-restore the previously installed version of plugins or themes if something goes wrong during a failed manual update.
Learn more about WordPress and 6.3
Explore Learn WordPress for quick how-to videos, online workshops, and other resources to level up your knowledge of the latest features in WordPress.
Check out the WordPress 6.3 Field Guide for detailed developer notes to help you build with WordPress and get the most out of the latest release. Read the 6.3 release notes for additional technical details about this release, including feature recaps, installation information, file changes, fixes, and updates.
Read and subscribe to the Developer Blog for even more helpful WordPress content.
WordPress is a global software platform
61 locales have translated 90 percent or more of WordPress 6.3 into their language. Community translators are working hard to ensure more translations are on their way. Thank you, gracias, ありがとう, धन्यवाद, and ευχαριστώ to everyone who helps to make WordPress available in 200 languages.
Contributing to WordPress
WordPress believes in democratizing publishing and the freedoms that come with open source. Supporting this idea is a large community of people collaborating to strengthen the software. A big thank you to everyone who makes WordPress.
Our community of contributors has always been what makes WordPress wonderful. You are what makes sure our project continues to thrive, and our software remains secure, usable, and impactful. Thank you so much for joining together to make the web (and the world) a better place!
WordPress 6.3 arrives thanks to more than 650 contributors’ collective passion and effort in at least 52 countries. This release also includes over 205 first-time contributors!
The 6.3 release squad
The 6.3 release was led from start to launch by an active set of contributors from across many disciplines. Over several weeks, they kept the release on track and moving forward by connecting ideas, resolving issues, and removing roadblocks.
Complimenting the release squad is a diverse group of contributors whose global collaboration delivered hundreds of enhancements and fixes, ensuring a stable release for all—a testament to the power and capability of the WordPress community.
Many thanks to the community volunteers who contribute to the support forums by answering questions from WordPress users worldwide.
Get involved today
If contributing to WordPress appeals to you, learning more and getting involved is easy. Discover the teams that come together to Make WordPress and explore the product roadmap on the core development blog. You can also use this interactive tool to help you decide which team is right for you.
Looking toward the future
20 years ago this past May, WordPress shipped the very first version, 0.7. What started with a blog post from co-founder Matt Mullenweg and a subsequent comment by co-founder Mike Little eventually evolved into the world’s most popular web publishing platform.
WordPress software continues to evolve and iterate based on the needs and desires of its robust and diverse user community. This release is the capstone of Phase 2 along the WordPress development roadmap. As the community looks to the future, all efforts turn to 6.4 and, subsequently, the transition into Phase 3, which is expected to introduce powerful collaboration tools to the website creation and management experience.
6.3 Haiku
A capstone release Ships tools for building great sites Collaboration
Thanks to 
