Our new course — Monetize Your Website — helps you turn the value you’re already creating into sustainable income, using the built-in tools available on WordPress.com. Whether you share knowledge, create content, or offer services, this course walks you through practical, beginner-friendly ways to get paid. No traditional eCommerce setup required. The course is fully self-paced, so you can dip into individual lessons as needed or follow along from start to finish at your own pace. Start the free course What you’ll learn Across a series of practical lessons, you’ll learn how to: Understand your monetization options — explore the different ways WordPress.com lets you earn, and choose approaches that…

There are thousands of WordPress plugins out there. But to get started, you really only need a handful.  We pulled real usage data from WordPress.com sites to see which plugins people rely on, and we selected the ones that address core website needs. Then, I personally tested each plugin and looked at user reviews. This guide covers the most essential WordPress plugins. These are helpful if you’re launching your first WordPress site, filling gaps in your current setup, or something in between: Jetpack: For all-in-one site management Akismet: For spam protection Page Optimize: For site speed Crowdsignal Forms: For user feedback WooCommerce: For e-commerce Gravatar Enhanced: For user profiles Yoast…

Andrew Adetitun runs The King’s Monologue, a media network teaching African history to over 160,000 followers across different channels.  He noticed that African history wasn’t just underrepresented — it was actively obscured. Achievements credited to the wrong civilizations. Truth buried in books most people would never read. So he started making content. First on TikTok. Then YouTube. One video went viral — a few million views in days. The audience grew from there. From a viral TikTok to 160,000 followers What started as a few videos turned into something much bigger: 120,000+ YouTube subscribers 160,000+ followers across platforms A library of documentaries and original research Museum visits, trips to Egypt,…

WordPress.com has launched an official connector for Claude — the first of its kind for a WordPress host. This means that you can now safely connect Claude to your site and know that the integration is officially supported by both Anthropic and WordPress.com. Check out the WordPress.com Claude Connector From MCP access to an official connector A few months ago, we introduced MCP access to let AI agents work with real WordPress.com site context — something most standalone AI tools don’t have. With our recent addition of OAuth 2.1 support, those integrations became both more secure and easier to authorize using the agents you already rely on. This partnership builds…

Finding your next favorite blog shouldn’t feel like scrolling through an endless feed, hoping something good appears. And for creators, getting discovered shouldn’t require figuring out an algorithm. Back in 2009, WordPress.com launched Freshly Pressed, a curated collection of posts that entertained, enlightened, and inspired. It was our way of saying “we like you, we really like you” to creators, and amplifying their great work for others to find. We paused Freshly Pressed a few years back, but the idea never really went away. And the case for human-curated discovery is stronger than ever.  It’s time to bring Freshly Pressed back. What is Freshly Pressed? Freshly Pressed is where we…

WordPress powers everything from personal blogs to large-scale community projects — but the most interesting sites aren’t always the biggest ones. In this guide, we’ve handpicked 15 unique WordPress website examples that stand out for their ideas, storytelling, and design choices. Some attract significant traffic, while others serve smaller but highly engaged communities. All of them use WordPress.com in thoughtful, creative ways. Along the way, you’ll see practical design and content ideas you can apply to your own site, whether you’re starting fresh or refining what you already have. 1. Hidden Gem Animal Rescue: Foster-based rescue organization Website type: Nonprofit Theme: Custom  Logan and Murphy founded Hidden Gem Animal Rescue…

WordPress has evolved far beyond its blogging roots and can now power almost any kind of site — from personal sites and portfolios to memberships, news sites, and full business websites. And with its new AI website builder, designing a website has become even easier — simple text prompts are enough to turn your ideas into a working site for any need. I challenged myself to build 21 different types of websites using this tool.  Here are the results, along with pro tips for prompting, design, page structure, and more. 1. Portfolio website A portfolio website helps share your creative work, whether that’s writing, photography, design, video production, or something…

Tammy Silva started sharing remote job opportunities on LinkedIn during the pandemic.  When she moved back to Brazil after years in Singapore and Australia, she noticed something: most Brazilians had no idea they could work remotely for U.S. companies and earn in dollars. So she started posting about it on LinkedIn. Job openings. Resume tips. Interview advice. All free. “I wasn’t doing it for work,” Tammy says. “I was just trying to reach people. If I helped 10 or 20 people get better jobs, that was enough.” But people kept following. The audience grew. What started as a side project became a full-time business — and a website she built…

If you’re launching a new business — whether it’s ecommerce, a consultancy, or a creator project — one of your first moves is to build an online presence, usually starting with a website. Going online itself isn’t the hard part. The real challenge is knowing what to focus on first. This guide walks through the key steps required to build an online presence, focusing on what actually matters in your first few months. We spoke with founders and small business experts to pull together practical advice and examples you can learn from. Step 1: Define your business in one sentence Start by writing a one-line descriptor that clearly explains what…

Version 1.7.0 of WordPress Studio is a major upgrade for anyone building WordPress sites locally, especially developers and power users who like to automate tasks and work from the terminal. In earlier releases, the Studio CLI focused mainly on creating and managing preview sites.  With version two, it becomes a full-featured command-line companion for much of your Studio workflow, including creating and managing local sites, running WP-CLI in the right context, connecting to WordPress.com, and more. In this post, we’ll review what’s new and share practical ways to incorporate the Studio CLI into AI-assisted workflows.  Try WordPress Studio now For the full command reference and advanced options, see the updated…