February 2022

What’s the Word: Your New Favorite Newsletter

February 23, 2022

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Your regular dose of tips,

tutorials, and inspiration.

What's the Word: Your New Favorite Newsletter

Hi there! Welcome to "What's the Word" — the new WordPress.com newsletter. My name is Jeremy and I'm part of the community team here at WordPress.com. This newsletter will bring you customer spotlights, news about features, educational opportunities, how-tos, and more.

The first thing I want you to know is that I'm a real human who uses WordPress.com, just like you. I live in Colorado with my wife and kids, I love coffee and hiking, and I write a lot about books — my current obsession is Stephen King, which you can read about at one of my sites, StephenKingReader.com.

Okay, enough about me for now. Let's jump right in to this month's news and highlights!

We recently wrapped up a brand new month-long writing challenge called Bloganuary, where we provided daily prompts to inspire people to publish blog posts. Thousands of participants joined in from around the world, publishing thousands of posts and reaching millions of readers. What warmed our hearts the most, though, was getting to see how close our community of global bloggers really is. People liked and commented on posts (which you can browse here!), watched their audiences grow, and followed new sites they didn't previously know about. Stay tuned for more blogging challenges starting next month!

Boost Your Blogging Habit

Through Bloganuary, we saw thousands of participants from around the world get back into their blogging groove! Huzzah! Don't forget about our free blogging course if you need a tune-up on the basics:

A Powerful New Set of Tools to Make Your Website Beautiful

Behind the scenes, we've been working on a revolutionary array of new site editing tools that will transform how you create, edit, and customize your WordPress.com website by leveraging easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality, aka "Full Site Editing" (or "FSE"). We're excited to announce that these tools are now available to all WordPress.com users! Whether launching a new site or working from an existing one, you can take advantage of Full Site Editing.

Here's how, in a nutshell:

For New Sites: The process for setting up a new site will walk you through exactly what you need to do. You can choose from FSE themes or classic themes.

For Existing Sites: If you want to keep your existing site as is, no problem! Just keep your theme as-is (that is, do nothing at all) and you'll be set.

But if you're eager to start using these new tools to update your site, you can follow these simple steps:

Select the site you want to update on wordpress.com/home
Hover over "Appearance" in the left side navigation and click on "Themes"
Use the search bar to start typing in "Full Site Editing"; before you type the entire phrase, click on the "Full Site Editing" option as seen here
You will now see our list of block themes and several of their variations; choose the one that looks right for you and your site

I'm admittedly not much of a techie, but playing around with Full Site Editing on my own site has been awesome so far. Once you get the hang of it, you'll be amazed. Guaranteed.

Upcoming Learning Opportunities (That Are 100% Free!)

Sneak Peek: Full Site Editing

Wednesday, Feb 23, 7 p.m. UTC
With the release of our new Full Site Editor (or "FSE"), we are adding this free webinar and Q&A! FSE will allow you to edit all parts of your site without the need for code — so join our WordPress experts and be among the first to learn how to use the new tools. Register for Sneak Peek: Full Site Editing today:

Sign Me Up!