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WordPress.com supports a wide range of features for building your online presence: blogs, online stores, newsletter signup forms, and more. These tools are invaluable for many customers, but they can seem excessive for folks who are just looking to create a straightforward single-page website. If that’s you, read on for examples of how you can also create one-page websites here on WordPress.com. 

Both examples use WordPress.com’s freshly-launched Blank Canvas theme, which is optimized for single-page websites. It comes with no header, navigation menus, or widgets, so the page you design in the WordPress editor is the same page you’ll see on the front end. The theme also comes with a handful of ready-made Block Patterns to help kick start your site. 

About Me

By using the “About Me” block pattern, your website can be a special, concise introduction to who you are and what you do. 

Start with the new Blank Canvas theme. Once that’s installed and activated, open your homepage in the WordPress Editor. If you have homepage content already, feel free to select it all and delete it. 

With a blank slate in place, you’ll want to open the block selector, and switch over to the Patterns tab. By default, this will show you the single-page patterns that are included with the Blank Canvas theme. Selecting the “About Me” pattern will provide you with a beautiful starting point to begin customizing. 

With just a few clicks, you can personalize the images, text, and social media links to make your site your own. 

Collections of Links

Sending your followers to a single link is increasingly important. A handful of social media services only allow you to link to one single webpage (I’m looking at you, Instagram). Or maybe you’re a musician, and you want to point folks to your new album on their music service of choice — Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, or Tidal. Having a single page full of links is becoming a necessity — and Block Patterns provide a simple path to creating a standalone page full of links on WordPress.com. 

Again, let’s start with the new Blank Canvas theme. Open the homepage, and delete existing homepage content, if you have any. From there, you’ll want to open the Block Patterns panel again, but this time, select the “Links” pattern. 

This will provide you with a template you can use to begin your list of links. Customize or delete the user photo, add your name, links, and a description if you’d like. Each sample button can be customized or removed, and you can add as many links as you’d like. 

Once you have this the way you like it, copy your site’s address and paste it into social media!

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If you have an existing site that you’d like to convert into a single-page site, we have you covered too. We’ve added a new setting to 20 of our most popular themes that will let you hide the header and footer elements on the homepage. This will provide you with a blank slate for customizing your homepage. 

What other types of websites (single-page or otherwise) would you like to see more resources for? Share in the comments below! 

WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of those lesser-known, amazing stories.

From a young age Thelma was encouraged by her father to ‘work hard, and dream big’. In High School, she pursued a career in Computer Science. She said: “I did not know what I would be doing or how I would get there but I just knew that I was going to pursue a career in information technology.”

She wrote her first line of code at the age of 16 living in Zimbabwe, Africa. This was to mark the beginning of her enthusiasm for computer programming.

When she joined the school’s computer class, Thelma thought she would learn Excel and Word. Instead, the assignment was to write her first program in C. She said: “It was not easy, but it was very exciting. l remember writing up simple code for a Video Club – a check-in/out for VHS tapes and CDs. Thus began my fascination with computers.”

Seven years later, she went on to university to study for a Bachelors in Business Management and Information Technology. Her third year internship was at a local web design and hosting company. Though she had hoped her placement would be at a local bank or telecommunications company, the chance to discover website design turned out to be the best thing that could have happened. 

In 2017, Thelma went on to work for a company designing websites using HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and Joomla. She had heard about WordPress but had not used it. She recalls: “People have this misconception that WordPress is not for real developers and it is not secure and at that time I was one of those people.”

Finding a local community

From a discussion with a member of the local WordPress community, Thabo Tswana, about a striking swag gift from a WordCamp, Thelma’s interest was sparked. 

She started to find out more about WordPress and WooCommerce, and visited her local WordCamp Harare website. She was delighted to find that she could learn more about WordPress without needing any pre-existing knowledge, and wanted to be involved. So instead of just attending the camp, she volunteered too! 

Her response to her first WordPress event mirrors the experience of many others in the community. She said: “I only started using WordPress because of the awesome people that l had met at that WordCamp. Everyone was so welcoming.”

A week later, with help from Thabo, she designed her first website using WordPress.

She soon became more involved with the community and Meetups. Thelma participated in the first-ever ‘Women Who WordPress’ Meetup in 2018, with lots of women getting involved from bloggers to developers. 

She said: “We were free to talk and discuss a lot of things. We had more time to discuss the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, we shared views on how to handle discrimination at work, how to promote your website and a whole lot of other things.”

Establishing roots in WordPress

In 2018, WordCamp Harare had its first-ever female Lead Organizer Tapiwanashe Manhobo. Thelma was part of the organising team that year and was assigned to handle Harare’s first Kids Camp to take place eight months later. You can read more about her experiences of organizing a Kids Camp on her blog.

She said: “After the first Kids Camp, we had several people in the local Zimbabwean WordPress community who were enthusiastic about encouraging young people to embrace ICT. In 2019, we had not planned to have a Kids Camp because of financial constraints but to our surprise, we had some anonymous donations and we managed to have a WordPress Community outreach to a youth centre, Centre for Total Transformation, a week after our WordCamp. It is a non-formal school that caters for underprivileged and vulnerable children. The group were able to share practical skills about using WordPress, computer hardware and software.

Thelma shares that she became hooked on WordPress because of its community. “I enjoy attending WordCamps, meeting new people and just learning new stuff. I have a huge list of WordCamps I would like to attend. Last year I managed to cross WordCamp Johannesburg off my list. When everything is back to normal my plan to travel to WordCamps will proceed (fingers crossed).”

Reaping the fruits of ongoing learning

Thelma is committed to ongoing development training. She said: “Even though I can still cook up code in C and Java, for now, I have also included WordPress PHP functions to the mix. It was not easy to get to this point, daring myself got me to this slightly better stage. I try to do my best where I can and I am happy to say it has paid off so far.”

Thelma has continued her journey working in design and digital marketing last year with Trust Nhokovenzo who works in digital marketing and is active in  the WordPress Community. He came across her name as a developer from talking with others involved in WordPress. She went to work with his team at a marketing agency.

Her interest in the development of WordPress continued and she joined the 5.6 Release Squad in the mid 2020. At the end of 2020, she moved to become a Happiness Engineer working with WordPress.com. Thelma’s fascination with the platform and the community continues to grow and her contributor story is ongoing.

Find out more about the Harare WordPress community in Zimbabwe.

Contributors

Thanks to Nalini Thakor (@nalininonstopnewsuk) and Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), Yvette Sonneveld (@yvettesonneveld), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Larissa Murillo (@lmurillom), Meher Bala (@meher), Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune), and Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann). Thank you to Thelma Mutete (@thelmachido) for sharing her #ContributorStory.

This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com, a community initiative created by Topher DeRosia. HeroPress highlights people in the WordPress community.

#ContributorStory #HeroPress

Twenty Twenty One is the latest WordPress default theme, which is now available to all WordPress.com sites. Designed by Mel Choyce-Dwan, the muted tones and timeless design will let your work shine.

Twenty Twenty One takes advantage of all the latest features of the Block Editor — the new block patterns allow you to create a beautiful layout in seconds.

Learn more about TwentyTwentyOne, or check out the demo site!

We bid goodbye to 2020 in style with the release of WordPress 5.6 and the launch of Learn WordPress. But these weren’t the only exciting updates from WordPress in December. Read on to learn more!

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WordPress 5.6 is here

The latest major WordPress release, version 5.6 “Simone”, came out on December 8. The release ships with a new default theme called Twenty Twenty One. It offers a host of features, including:

• Greater layout flexibility
• More block patterns
• Video captioning support
• Auto-updates
• Beta-compatibility for PHP 8.0
• Application password support for the REST API
• Updates to jQuery

In addition, WordPress 5.6 is now available in 55 languages. You can find more information about the release in the field guide, and you can update to the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or by downloading it directly from WordPress.org. A total of 605 people hailing from 57 different countries contributed to the development of WordPress 5.6. @audrasjb has compiled many more stats like that, showing what a tremendous group effort this was—they’re well worth a read!

Want to contribute to upcoming WordPress releases? Join the WordPress #core channel on the Make WordPress Slack and follow the Core team blog to learn the latest on WordPress 5.7, which is slated to be out by March 9, 2021. The Core team hosts weekly chats on Wednesdays at 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. UTC.

Watch the State of the Word 2020 recording

State of the Word 2020, the annual keynote address delivered by WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, was streamed online for the first time on December 17. It was followed by a live Q&A from community members all across the world. You can find the stream recording on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The State of the Word video and the Q&A session are also available on WordPress.tv. 

Learn WordPress has launched

Learn WordPress, a new free, on-demand WordPress learning resource, launched officially on December 15. It offers workshops, lesson plans, quizzes, and courses for anyone interested in publishing with, building for, or contributing to WordPress. WordPress enthusiasts can also participate in discussion groups focused on specific topics to learn with and from each other.

Want to participate in Learn WordPress? Here are four ways you can do so! Additionally, contributors have launched a discussion on the future of Learn WordPress—feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. To help promote Learn WordPress, check out the Marketing Team’s materials, which detail a range of fun and creative ways to share this new resource.

Give feedback on the Full Site Editing project

Contributor teams have kicked off the Full Site Editing (FSE) outreach program for anyone who is building or maintaining a WordPress site so that they can give feedback on the upcoming FSE feature that will be part of Gutenberg Phase 2. Your feedback will go a long way in improving FSE user flows. To participate, check out the initial testing call on the Make/Test blog and join the #fse-outreach-experiment Slack channel.

Want to follow updates on the FSE project? Check out this blog post. You can find 2020 updates to the FSE project in the Make/Core blog.

BuddyPress 7.0 “Filippi” and 7.10 are now available

BuddyPress version 7.0 went live on December 9. Its features include: 

• New administration screens to manage Member and Group Types
• New BP blocks for posts and pages
• A default profile image for network sites
• Improved BuddyPress Noveau support for the Twenty Twenty One theme. 

A BuddyPress maintenance release (version 7.1) launched on December 21. 

Want to provide feedback or suggestions for BuddyPress? Share your comments on the announcement posts for 7.0 or 7.1. If you find a bug, please report it in the support forums. 

Gutenberg 9.5 and 9.6 released

The Core team launched version 9.5 and 9.6 of Gutenberg last month. Both versions include several improvements to FSE flows, bug fixes, and feature upgrades. Version 9.5 introduces features like full height alignment and support for font sizes in the code block. Version 9.6 includes features like the ability to drag blocks from the inserter and a vertical layout for buttons. 

Want to get involved in building Gutenberg? Follow the Core team blog, contribute to Gutenberg on GitHub, and join the #core-editor channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

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Further Reading

• The Community team kicked off a discussion about what the WordPress Community can do to host safe, in-person events again, in light of the continuing pandemic. 
• The Polyglots team published its end-of-year post, along with the results of its 2020 translator survey.
• WordCamp Sevilla 2020 was held online from December 26-29. You can catch the recorded livestream playback on YouTube. Videos of the event will soon be available on WordPress.tv.
• WordPress project executive director Josepha Haden and project co-founder Matt Mullenweg will be jointly hosting quarterly office and listening hours in 2021. Sign-ups for the first ones in January 2021 are almost filled up.
• The Core team published updates on the WP Notify project, which seeks to improve the notifications system in WordPress Core.
• The Support team published a post detailing jQuery issues in WordPress 5.6.
• WordCamp India Online 2021 will be held over three weekends between January 30 and February 14. There will be workshops, a contributor event, and sessions (in that order). The calls for sponsors, workshop presenters, contributor team leads, and volunteers are now open. Don’t forget to grab your free tickets!
• The Documentation team shared a first review of its external linking policy. It is using the plugin developer handbook as a test.

Have a story that we should include in the next “Month in WordPress” post? Please submit it using this form.

If one of your 2021 resolutions is to launch a business or move an existing one fully online, our WordPress.com experts can help you make it happen.

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