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Want to receive WordPress.com notifications instantly, even when you’re not on WordPress.com?

Add the new WordPress.com extension for Chrome and as soon as you get a new follower or a new like on one of your posts, a notification will appear in your browser:

Simply click the icon to view your latest WordPress.com notifications:

Start following new blogs without visiting WordPress.com

The Chrome extension also makes it easy to follow sites from your WordPress.com account by displaying a Follow button whenever you’re browsing a site that has an RSS feed.

Clicking the Follow button will add new posts from the website to your reader, and send you an email each time an update is published. (You can change your default email settings if you like.)

When you visit a WordPress.com site, you’ll notice that the extension icon will turn blue, but keep in mind that you can follow blogs on Blogger, Tumblr, and other services, too.

Quickly post cool stuff you find while browsing the web

Press This is a lightning-fast way to publish content on your blog without ever visiting WordPress.com. Click the WordPress.com extension, then select Press This whenever you find something on the web that you’d like to share on your blog, and a pop-up editor will appear:

Select the blog you’d like to post to, then hit publish to share a link to the site. Your blog will be updated, and you can continue browsing the web from wherever you left off.

If you’d like to publish an excerpt of text along with the link to the site, simply highlight the material with your cursor before clicking Press This:

And it will appear in the editor for you to publish along with the link:

We hope this makes it easier for you to share cool stuff on your blog quickly! If there’s anything you’d like to see in future versions of the extension, be sure to let us know.

If you feel like it’s a chore to keep up with all your favorite blogs, you can now read posts from all the blogs you follow (even the ones that aren’t on WordPress.com!) in one convenient place on the WordPress.com home page:

Your reader displays all the posts across all the blogs you follow in the order they were published, with the most recent content appearing at the top. You’ll see an excerpt of the introduction to each post, the first image in the post, and thumbnails of any other images that the post contains.

You can even like and reblog WordPress.com content directly from the reader (we’re working on bringing reblogs back to the toolbar!) using the icons in the top right corner of each post:

Whether you’re at the computer or using the WordPress app on an Android or iOS mobile device, having all the posts from the blogs you follow in one place makes it easy to find the updates that are important to you, and skip over the ones that aren’t.

Click in the toolbar at the top of any WordPress.com site (you must be logged in to see it) to add new blogs to your reader. For directions on adding blogs from Tumblr, Blogger, and other services to your reader, check out the support document on managing the blogs you follow.

Discover New Blogs, Too

To find some awesome new WordPress.com blogs you might like, check out the Recommended Blogs section of the reader:

Right now you can browse blogs in twelve different categories, and we’ll be adding more very soon.

Use WordPress.com as a Real-Time Information Network

If you want to see what people are saying about your hometown, favorite sports team, or a concert you attended last night, add any topic to your reader to create a stream of all posts published with that tag.

You can add as many topic streams to your reader as you like. You’ll notice frequent updates being published under general topics like “art” and “books,” but you can also add more specific topics like “Picasso” or “J. K. Rowling.”

Want less email?

Each time you follow a blog, new posts from that site will appear instantly in your reader, and you’ll also receive them by email. If you prefer to receive email notifications on a daily or weekly basis, or not at all, you can change your default email settings from the bottom left corner of your reader. You can also change your email notification preferences on a per-blog basis.

Find Friends on WordPress.com

Want to see if any of your Facebook and Twitter friends are on WordPress.com? Give the Friend Finder a try:

So, how will you use the reader, and what can we do to improve it?

Have you been paying attention to all the hubbub online about the proposed U.S. legislation (SOPA/PIPA) that threatens internet freedom? I wrote about it last week over on WordPress.org, but the gist is this: there’s a bill in the U.S. Senate that if passed would put publishing freedom severely at risk, and could shut down entire sites at the whim of media companies. Fight for the Future created this nifty video to sum it up better than I can.

On January 18, 2012, sites all over the internet will be blacking out to protest and try to mobilize more people to speak out against this bill coming up in the Senate next week — S. 968: the Protect IP Act (PIPA) — in an attempt to let U.S. lawmakers know how much opposition there is. WordPress.org, Wikipedia, and even WordPress.com VIP I Can Has Cheezburger? will be participating in the blackout to raise awareness and spur you to action.

Here on WordPress.com, we want to participate as well. Freshly Pressed will be blacked out during the strike.

Sorry to take away your daily fix of yummy web content, but this bill threatens to do that on a much wider scale. You don’t want that, do you?

More importantly, we are making it possible for you to participate in the protest. There are two options: a “Stop Censorship” ribbon and a full blackout. The blackout portion will be in effect January 18 from 8am to 8pm EST, while the ribbon will be displayed until January 24. Here’s how to join in:

1. Go to Settings → Protest SOPA/PIPA in your dashboard.
2. Select if you want to join the blackout or show a ribbon.
3. If you choose to join the blackout, you can edit the message that will be shown on your site during the blackout.
4. Preview what your protest will look like.
5. Click “Save Changes” button to activate your protest.

That’s it! Easy-peasy activism right at your fingertips.

The “Stop Censorship” ribbon will display in the upper corner of your site and links to americancensorship.org. It will display until January 24, 2012 (the Senate vote date).

If you choose to do the blackout in addition to the ribbon, then we will black out your site from 8am to 8pm EST along with the official strike. You can customize the message that will appear on your blacked-out site to tell people why this issue is important to you. Your site will return to just displaying the ribbon after the strike is over.

I hope that a significant number of you on WordPress.com will join in this protest. Publishing freedom is a right we must protect.

And one last pitch: whatever you decide to do about your site, please take a few minutes to head over to americancensorship.org and take action. It only takes a few moments of your time to be an agent of change!

Italian blogging service Splinder.com is closing down at the end of this month, and we’d like to extend a hearty “Benvenuto” to any Splinder users who’re looking for a new blogging home. To help make migration easier, we’ve added a Splinder importer to WordPress.com. If you’d like to make the move, please go ahead and get started now so that there’s time before the January 31^st deadline to work out any issues.

Exporting your Splinder Blog

To import a Splinder blog, you’ll first need to save your export file to your computer by following these steps:

First, log in to Splinder and click the “Blog” link available at the top of the home page.

Next, click the “configura” link available at the top of the blog page.

Now click “Esporta blog e attiva redirect” in the right-hand sidebar.

Next, download the content of your blog by clicking the link “Clicca qui per scaricare il file con i contenuti del tuo blog.”

Now you’re ready to import the downloaded file into your WordPress.com blog.

Importing to WordPress.com

Create a WordPress.com account and blog if you haven’t already, and then visit Tools -> Import in the admin sidebar. You should find the Splinder importer among the list of importers.

Click the link to get started. Next, you’ll upload the export file you’ve downloaded to your computer from Splinder.

Once the importer has validated your import file, you’ll be prompted to map users from the old blog to the new.

If you’d like to have your post images downloaded as well, be sure to tick the “Download and import file attachments” checkbox.

Once you’ve submitted the import request, it can take a few minutes to perform the import, and you’ll receive an email letting you know that the import finished.

After you have imported your content into WordPress.com, you can return to your Splinder settings to create a redirect that will forward your old Splinder blog to your new WordPress.com blog. Provide your new WordPress.com blog URL in the field and click the “Attiva redirect” button.

If you have any trouble importing your blog, of course you’re welcome to contact support, and one of our Happiness Engineers will be glad to help out. To learn your way around WordPress.com, we encourage you to check out our handy tutorial. We also provide comprehensive feature documentation at our support site. Welcome to WordPress.com!

I’m excited to announce we’ve added two great new premium themes to our ever-growing collection of themes today.

First up is Duet – a responsive, minimal, and sophisticated design from The Theme Foundry.

Duet is tailored for writers, journalists, and business bloggers. Meticulously crafted and refined options provide you with the power to effortlessly customize your theme. Choose and mix from ten accent fonts, and five body fonts to discover the perfect typographic style for your website. You can also upload a custom logo image to put your own personal stamp on your blog.

With a flexible featured slider, your readers have no chance to miss your important posts. Duet comes with more great features, so be sure to read about it on the showcase page.

Next up is ThemeMin, designed by Themify.

ThemeMin is a minimal, light-weight, and fast-loading theme that focuses on typography. Together, all of these elements help to provide a comfortable reading experience. ThemeMin comes with a featured posts carousel on the front page. Plus, you can mix and match between five color schemes, three site layout options, and two post layout options until you find a combination that hits the spot for your blog. Go find more about the theme on its showcase page.

If you’ve been itching to turn your blog into an online newspaper or magazine, Nuntius could be your perfect companion. Based on the highly-popular News theme designed by Justin Tadlock, Nuntius contains many smart features that help your readers to stay on top of all your latest scoop.

Upon activation, Nuntius displays your posts in a traditional blog format on the front page. If you’re happy with this, you can use it as is. If you’d like to showcase your content newspaper-style, then you can use the special News Page template. The News Page template includes a slider for your sticky posts, a featured widget area, and featured categories that display posts in nifty blocks.

That’s not all — Nuntius lets you customize the link color and the background color of the header and main menu from the Theme Options page, in addition to the Custom Background and Custom Header features.

I’ll stop raving long enough so that you can head on over to the Theme Showcase to get all of the details on Nuntius and its features. We look forward to seeing what you do with this one.

Illustration by Caroline Hadilaksono

We’ve got a little year-end tradition here at WordPress.com. Every year, we commission an artist to spread some WordPress-themed holiday cheer. For 2011, Caroline Hadilaksono has created a warm and joyful scene that’s sure to get you in the mood for the holidays (and some blogging). We’ve made some desktop backgrounds from her illustration that we’d like to share with you. Here’s to a safe and happy holiday season for all of you, from all of us at Automattic.

• Large (2560×1830 · 6.4 MB)
• Small (1280×915 · 1.8 MB)
• For tablets (1024×1024 · 1.6 MB)
• For smartphones (640×960 · 971 KB)

Need help changing your wallpaper? Here’s instructions for iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Windows, and Ubuntu. A tip: Choose an image larger than your screen size, and set the position to “center” or “fill screen” (not “stretch”).

If you missed them last time around, be sure to check out our illustrations from 2010 and 2009.

For months we’ve been studying how, when and why people publish their posts, and what the common tasks are people perform afterwards. We know many of you immediately want to see what your post looks like, check for typos, and then share your post to social networks.

Starting today you’ll see a much improved design for giving you feedback and supporting how you work.

The first thing you’ll see, after your browser finishes telling WordPress.com you have a new post, is positive feedback your post was successful. We now notify you as soon as possible that everything went smoothly. At the same time, we’re loading your actual post to show you.

Once the post loads, which can take a few seconds, you can confirm it looks as you expected. If you find a typo in your post (which can be easier to spot in the published post, than on the edit screen), you can quickly click Edit and switch back into edit mode to fix it.

If everything in your post looks good, you’ll notice some smart things we’ve done to both help improve your post, and to inspire you for the future.

The progress bar: we now show a simple progress indicator that helps direct your efforts at a specific target. The goal is automatically set to increments of 5 posts (yes, we are considering allowing this to be customized). An inspiring quotation appears under the bar, as a reward and as motivation for next time. When you reach the goal, you get a nice surprise, and the bar will be reset for next time. Of course posting quality matters as much, or more, than quantity, but research shows having clear goals helps both.

Sharing: if you have the Publicize feature turned on, we show how many people were notified through social networks like Twitter and Facebook, with some of their Gravatars so you can learn more about them. If you don’t have Publicize active, you’ll see easy to use buttons for manually sharing your post on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Tagging: we also know adding tags to your post can make it easier for people to find your work. Based on the content of your post, we use an algorithm to recommend a few tags to add, which you can do with a single click.

We’ll continue to study how you post and improve what we do to support how you work. Happy posting.

If you’d prefer the classic experience, you can turn Instant Post Feedback off from your Dashboard, at Settings, Users, Personal Settings.

Would you like some more Twitter in your WordPress? We got ya. As an update to our ever-popular Tweet embedding functionality we’re supporting Twitter’s new embed API to enable richer, better looking, and more functional Tweets inside your blog posts. To embed a Tweet just put a permalink to it on its own line or use our new shortcode that allows for extra formatting.

But wait, there’s more! Have you ever wished that when you’re on Twitter and come across a link to someone’s blog post, like this one, you could see a preview of the post without having to click on the link? Now you can, our friends at Twitter have made it so that all wp.me links can be previewed, including snippets of posts and photos, directly on Twitter.com. In addition to this being something I’ve personally wanted for a while, we think it’ll get a lot more people visiting your blog.

Finally, if you link your Twitter account on your Gravatar profile we’ve made it so it’s easy to follow you right from that page.

Now go forth and tweetify.

P.S. You can follow me on Twitter here, and WordPress.com here.

The Long and Short of It wp.me/pf2B5-2pL

—
WordPress.com (@wordpressdotcom) December 08, 2011

Today we are absolutely thrilled to warm your creative hearts with the announcement of three new themes: AutoFocus, Imbalance 2, and Reddle.

AutoFocus is an elegant, minimal theme designed for artists, photographers, and other creatives seeking a simple but beautiful way to showcase their talents online. Designed by Allan Cole, this oft-requested theme simultaneously boasts impressive featured images throughout and a clean, unobtrusive design that gets out of the way of what truly matters—your creativity.

AutoFocus Home Page

If you publish single-serving images on a daily photoblog, AutoFocus will accommodate you with ease. If you insert large galleries into your blog posts with the intention of writing assignment recaps, AutoFocus will also elegantly serve up your photo sets and stories. Wordsmiths will also enjoy the sleek and readable aesthetic that AutoFocus delivers.

Point is, AutoFocus works on so many levels for so many different types of creators that it’s simply a perfect fit here. Read more about its features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Imbalance 2, designed by WPShower, is yet another gorgeous theme that strikes a perfect balance between functionality and minimalism. Combine that with its modern style and your choices of use with this theme are quite varied.

Photo-heavy blogs, online portfolios, and online magazines are all intelligently handled by Imbalance 2. One of the first cool things you’ll notice about this theme is how everything on its home page automagically snaps into place regardless of whether you have a habit of publishing lengthy blog posts or tighter, short-form entries.

Imbalance 2 Home Page

Along with a full-width layout template Imbalance 2 comes with several theme options: a site-wide theme color selector, which affects links, background hovers, and borders; sticky post handling; and the option to make your image and post grid fluid or fixed.

Read more about Imbalance 2′s features on the Theme Showcase or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

Our final theme for you today is Reddle, a deceptively minimal, multi-purpose theme that impresses upon its user both versatility and simplicity.

The elements of Reddle’s layout were inspired by an older theme called Rubric but there’s really nothing basic about its minimal layout. Everything about the design adapts to how you want to use your blog and what you want to use it for.

Want to you use your blog for a simple one-column link blog? A two-column business site with a custom header and no posts? Reddle can do that. It even adapts its layout to visitors reading your blog from a device like an iPhone.

Reddle Home Page

Reddle also provides support for two additional Post Formats: Image Posts and Aside Posts. Aside Posts are ultra-minimal. They don’t have a title or tags. Image Posts will highlight the first image in your post along with a short excerpt.

You can see both post formats, as well as many other of the theme’s features, by visiting Reddle’s Theme Showcase page or dive right into previewing it on your blog from Appearance → Themes.

As 2011 comes to end, we thought it’d be interesting to look back at the events that made headlines this year, and a few of the bloggers who were there in person (or closely connected to the events) to document history in the making. Here’s a recap of some of the biggest news stories of the year, as blogged by WordPress.com users.

January 25: Tens of thousands of people take to the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities to demand an end to the rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

Cairo-based journalist Max Strasser reported on the events from Istanbul. Marilyn Gardner posted updates on the situation after speaking with her daughter, who was living in Egypt for school.

Flickr.com/photos/sarahcarr

March 11: Japan is hit with an 8.9-magnitude earthquake, the strongest in its history.

The author of Amblerangel.WordPress.com was at a grocery store in Shibuya-ku when it happened. She recounted the experience in We’re Being Shaken and Stirred in Japan. According to Liz Tagami, who was at Narita International Airport when the quake hit, “It started as a silent rolling wave.“

Amblerangel.WordPress.com

June 24: New York legalizes same-sex marriage, becoming the largest state in the U.S. to pass the law. It goes into effect thirty days later on July 24, 2011.

TalkAboutEquality.WordPress.com was on site at the New York City Clerk’s office to chat with the couples who lined up for marriage licenses, as documented in the post Thousands of New Yorkers Put a Ring on It. In August, Jacob Murphy shared photographs of a pop-up chapel ceremony in New York City’s Columbus Circle.

TalkAboutEquality.WordPress.com

July 9: South Sudan becomes the world’s newest nation after seceding from Sudan.

Uganda-based photographer Will Boase was there to capture the celebration, which he blogged about in Happy Birthday South Sudan.

TheMzunguDiaries.WordPress.com

July 20: WordPress.com blogger discovers a fake Apple store in Kunming, China.

The author of BirdAbroad.WordPress.com published pictures of the store in a post titled Are You Listening, Steve Jobs?, which quickly caught the attention of major news outlets around the world.

BirdAbroad.WordPress.com

September 11: Americans remember 9/11, ten years later.

In the post 3,652 Days Later, Dale Roe of Project 2,996 declared, “Take this day, not to remember mass murder, but to remember the 2,996 people who are loved and missed.” The project uses WordPress.com to organize tributes to the victims of 9/11. Amalie Flynn was just blocks away from the Twin Towers on 9/11. She started SeptemberEleventh.WordPress.com on 9/11/2010 and posted every day last year.

Project2996.WordPress.com

October: The Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum.

Terrell Starr visited New York’s Financial District to document the demonstration. Many Occupy movements like Occupy Oakland, Occupy London, Occupy Albany, and Occupy Together use the WordPress open source software or WordPress.com to power their web sites.

HiddenNewYorkers.com

November 18: UC Davis campus police pepper spray nonviolent protestors, sparking outrage.

The next day, Nathan Brown, an Assistant Professor at UC Davis, wrote an Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, demanding that the school’s chancellor resign.

BicycleBarricade.WordPress.com

Will you be the next blogger to break or cover news live from the field?

Download WordPress for your mobile device and you’ll always be prepared to share your perspective with the world! To make your posts easy for others to find, be sure to include relevant tags that indicate the city, venue, or event that you blog about.

What did we miss?

Did you live blog any major news events this year? Leave a comment with a link to the post!

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
but this blog is sooo delightful
Until the internet gets slow,
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

That’s right, it’s that special time of year where you can show off your holiday cheer with a little special blog flair — falling snow. To get it started:

1. Go to your dashboard.
2. Navigate to Settings » General.
3. Check the box next to “Show falling snow on this blog.”
4. Roast some chestnuts.

Even Texas boys like me who only saw snow a handful of times growing up can enjoy it all month long, until we turn it off on January 4^th.

If you are a terrible Grinch or if the snow just slows down your computer or confuses your cat, you can go to your personal settings page and hide the snow everywhere you go.

Over the years one of the most frequent requests on WordPress.com has been to allow bloggers to earn money from their blog through ads. We’ve resisted advertising so far because most of it we had seen wasn’t terribly tasteful, and it seemed like Google’s AdSense was the state-of-the-art, which was sad. You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better.

Well we think we’ve cracked it, and we’re calling it WordAds.

Blogs are unique and they shouldn’t be treated like every other page on the internet. There are more than 50,000 WordPress-powered blogs coming online every day, and every time I explore them randomly I’m always surprised and delighted by how people are using the platform to express themselves.

As a WordPress user you’re breathing rarefied air on the internet: the Creators, the Independents. Creative minds aren’t satisfied being digital sharecroppers on someone else’s domain, and you want to carve out your own piece of the internet and have a space that you’re proud of because it’s so… you.

If you’re going to have advertising on your site, it darn well better be good, and beginning with our partnership with Federated Media we’re ready to start rolling out WordAds here on WordPress.com.

If the above is something you’d be interested in, fill out this form to let us know a bit about yourself.

It’s that time of the year again, and we decided to take care of all our users whether they feel like lining up in the cold to take advantage of today’s bargains or not.

This year’s offer is about two upgrades that first saw the light of day during the past twelve months: Custom Design and Premium Themes.

For the next 24 hours if you pick up any of our Premium Themes we’ll throw in a totally free one year subscription to the Custom Design Upgrade, which would usually cost you $30. Depending on the theme you choose, that’s between 30% and 60% of the Premium Theme’s value.

Don’t miss this great occasion to stand out from the crowd, by adding a great Premium Theme to your site, and customizing its fonts and CSS to make it truly yours.

If you already have a Custom Design subscription, no problem, we’ll add an extra year to it for free.

If you’re not sure on what Premium Themes and the Custom Design upgrade actually do:

Premium Themes: feature detailed designs, exciting options for customization, and exclusive support directly from the theme authors themselves.

Custom Design: easily customize the fonts in your theme, and dive into CSS to make all the presentational changes you desire.

It’s only one day, it happens today, but the gift is yours for one year.

Don’t wait anymore to browse our Premium Themes collection.

I’m happy to introduce two new cool and colorful themes: Shaan and Adventure Journal.

Shaan is a smooth-talking theme, quietly delivering a cool, casual backdrop for your content. It’s perfect for writers who like a calm, quiet tone to their blog. If you use images to illustrate your writing, you’ll like how Shaan displays featured images in two sizes: small in archives and search results, and large for sticky posts on your home page as well as on single posts and pages.

Example of Shaan in action.

Designed by Specky Geek, Shaan is available today in your WordPress.com dashboard and directly from the Theme Showcase.

Have a well-traveled blog? Adventure Journal is a natural fit for highlighting your adventures. A theme for your next trip. Or your next blog.

Example of the Adventure Journal front page.

Featuring a warm wood background, a header image for your favorite photo, widget areas styled on curling paper, and a crinkled sticky post area for those important notes—this theme is full of rustic charm. Customize it with layout options, sidebar and footer widgets, and more. See all the options and details on the Theme Showcase.

Designed by Contexture International, Adventure Journal is available in your dashboard and directly from the Theme Showcase.

Also… Happy Thanksgiving! We hope you gobble these themes up.

We want to help your websites come alive with beautiful design. The WordPress.com theme team has been adding new themes at a dazzling rate, but did you know you can customize the style of any of our themes using the Custom Design upgrade?

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets which are styles that define how to display HTML elements. You can do anything from changing font colors to styling an entire site from scratch using CSS.

Not only does the Custom Design upgrade let you choose from 50+ custom fonts in the Fonts tab, it includes a CSS editor where you can save style rules after purchasing the upgrade or preview changes before buying.

Whether you are a design expert of amazing talent proportions or you are just learning the ways you can bend websites to your will, we think you’ll love making your WordPress.com sites even more beautiful with custom CSS. Beginners can start with the CSS Basics help page. Everyone is always welcome to share some CSS love in the WordPress.com CSS Customization forum where happiness engineers and amazingly tireless volunteers help with CSS questions.

To inspire you, here are a few strikingly different Twenty Eleven theme variations currently living at WordPress.com made by our very own Automatticans:

If you are a WordPress.org user, never fear! You can use the WordPress.com CSS plugin to get a CSS editor that won’t modify theme files, keeping them wrinkle-free and easy-to-update.

Go to Appearance → Custom Design → CSS in your dashboard and try out some CSS edits!

Today, we’d like to give a warm welcome to Google Knol users who are migrating to WordPress.com. Begun in 2007, the Google Knol project has provided people in many fields with a place to share their knowledge and expertise with the world using a platform designed for scholarly authoring and publishing.

Starting today, those same authors can move their articles and collaborative journals to WordPress—and they have the power to choose whether to move to a self-hosted WordPress installation powered by the freely-available, open-source Annotum themes, or to have their Annotum-powered site hosted for free here on WordPress.com. Knol will slowly shut down over the next year, and we’ve worked closely with Google, Solvitor LLC, and Crowd Favorite to make this transition as simple as possible.

We here at WordPress.com are thrilled to provide an easy, fast way for Knol authors to move to their new homes without the need for configuring their own installation. And WordPress.com users who would like to start new sites powered by the Annotum platform can activate one of the two new Annotum-enabled themes on new blogs and get started right away. It’s yet another way the WordPress platform and WordPress.com are enabling the democratization of publishing and sharing of information with the world.

For more detailed information on the Annotum Project, please visit the official site. If you’re moving to WordPress.com and have questions about the process, please see our step-by-step guide and our list of frequently asked questions.

We want everyone on WordPress.com to be able to find the best theme possible for their blog. Something beautiful, amazing, and cool. A theme that makes you want to jump up, run your laptop next door, and show your neighbor your awesome blog. That’s why we love bringing you so many new themes, why we have over 150 themes for you to choose from, and why we have even more on the way. It’s also why every day you let us know different ways we could make all our existing themes just a little bit better. You contact us in support, add your suggestions in the forums, comment here, and — of course! — blog about it.

Because of all that we took as many of those little bits as we could and made our incredible collection of 150-plus themes even better for you.

More Custom Headers and More Color Schemes

We know how much you love customizing your themes and making them your own so we made sure that our best, our most popular, and our most beautiful themes let you do just that. The Custom Header Image feature lets you quickly add your own personal stamp on a theme. We went and added it to themes missing it that could really use it and use it well. You’ll now find that it’s available in themes like Notepad, Titan, Simpla, Grid Focus, and Chaos Theory.

And if you’re using the Modularity Lite theme, Inuit Types, Spectrum, Bouquet, or Vigilance you have new bonus color schemes to choose from. Coraline alone got five brand new color schemes!

Make sure you try out all the new design possibilities these color schemes bring to Custom Design.

Even More Theme Improvements

There were even more theme improvements. They were slightly smaller but good things come in small packages. Things like improving the custom header feature in our most popular theme, Twenty Ten. You can now change your header text color or even hide it altogether with a visit to Appearance → Themes and just a few clicks.

Sometimes less can be more

We also added Post Format support to the Spectrum theme. There are more customization options in the Structure theme, Misty Look, and Fruit Shake. Ocean Mist has customizable Featured Images for each post’s header image. Our most popular themes now have better comment labeling when comments are turned off and better author highlighting for multiple author blogs — making them perfect for blogs that are more like small business sites or magazines. And — and there are even more theme improvements that were done. Too many to list here!

We’ll keep on bringing you new themes. Keep on letting us know what you’d like to see improved with them.

I’m happy to announce that we have added two great new premium themes to our ever-expanding Theme Showcase!

First up is Anthem – a responsive, minimal design from The Theme Foundry.

Anthem is perfect for artists, designers, and photographers who want their images to take center stage. Choose from seven different post formats to give each post a unique look and feel. Anthem provides 4 customizable widget areas in the footer as well as 3 custom menu locations. You can also upload a custom logo image which can be cropped into a circle. Want to find out more? Head on over to the Theme Showcase!

Next up we have Luscious by StudioPress.

This eye-catching design has been custom-tailored with bloggers and publishers in mind. The deep red tones of Luscious are embellished with bright red and yellow accents drawing attention to each post’s heading. Choose from 6 different layout options, 2 custom menu locations and 7 widgets areas. Read more about Luscious in the Theme Showcase.