Brian Castner

We’re respected that Brian Castner, Iraq War maestro and author of The Long Walk, creates his central online home right here during WordPress.com. Brian’s story and work are fascinating, as are a essay and photographs he shares on his blog.

We asked Brian a few questions about his background, his book, his blogging philosophy, and his choice of WordPress.com for his site.

Could we greatfully tell us a bit about your singular background?

I served in a Air Force as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Officer, and deployed twice to Iraq in 2005 and 2006. EOD is a military’s explosve squad, so we defuse roadside bombs and all forms of rockets and missiles and such. we got out of a troops in 2007 and became a executive training Army and Marine Corps EOD units before their deployments, though when a highlight and post-traumatic issues finally held adult with me, we wrote a book about it. Now I’m a author — we do repository pieces, I’m operative on another book, and we blog as well.

Your book, The Long Walk, was published final year. What’s it about? (And is it loyal that it’s now being incited into an opera?!)

My thought in essay a book was usually to get a feeling right — what does it feel like to take detached Improvised Explosive Devices in Iraq and afterwards come home and feel like you’re going crazy? So, a book is a brew of those dual story lines — in Iraq and behind home — and they are intertwined given it felt to me like all was function during once. When we was deployed we usually suspicion of entrance home, and once we was home for good we felt a need to go back. we indispensable to write a book to explain a fight to myself, and we never approaching it to take off like it has given it was published by Doubleday final year.

And yes, it is being incited into an opera, and we positively didn’t pattern that either! The American Lyric Theater in New York is producing it, and we have been operative closely with Stephanie Fleischmann and Jeremy Howard Beck, a librettist and composer, as they erect it. They have taken a plan unequivocally seriously, and have been impossibly deferential of my family and a book, and are doing a unequivocally true pursuit translating it to a stage. The first performance of a music, usually piano and voice, is a initial weekend in June. There was a open opening of a difference in February, and it was so emotionally heated we had difficulty listening.

Did essay a book assistance we heal?

It did, though if recovering was a usually goal, we wouldn’t have indispensable to go by a announcement process. There are a series of essay programs for veterans that concentration on healing, and they are great, enlivening group and women to usually get their story out. we wanted to find peace, certainly, though we also wanted to turn a writer, and we did my best to emanate a good story too, that other people (besides my family and friends) would wish to read.

What would we contend if one of your 4 sons wanted to enlist?

The troops was mostly good to me, and we wouldn’t trade any of my experiences, good or bad. we have a new family, a EOD brotherhood, and we would never give that adult for my ignorant pre-war self. So we wouldn’t stop my sons from enlisting, though we know a troops isn’t for everyone. It wouldn’t be a good fit for all of my boys. And given we know a bad things that might be coming, I’m not formulation on walking them down to a recruiting hire on their 18th birthday either.

Thank we for formulating your central website during WordPress.com! Why’d we select us?

An author in 2013 usually needs to have a peculiarity website that can offer as a heart and height for your books and events. If a reader likes your book and wants to know more, they need a place to go. So we knew we indispensable a attractive site, and we chose WordPress.com for a integrate of reasons. First, we was gentle with it. we wrote for an choice news website in Buffalo, New York, for a integrate of years before we wrote my book, and they used WordPress on a back-end. we found it easy to learn then, and given we was gentle with it, it done clarity to build my personal site with it.

Second, and this is no tiny thing, we could emanate a decent-looking site for a tiny volume of money. I’m no programmer, though I’m also not a famous best-selling author who can means to compensate thousands of dollars for someone to build them a site. we indispensable to be means to fast and low build a peculiarity site we could maintain, and WordPress.com is good for that.

You’ve picked a premium thesis Linen for your blog. What appealed to we about it?

I looked for a unequivocally clean, well-spoken pattern that fit a gloomy mood of a book. we was means to tweak a credentials tone on Linen, so now it’s got a resigned grey, vaguely newspaper-like feel, though it also has a good ensign complement to pull a eye to high-quality photography. we searched by a garland of options, and Linen seemed to fit best.

Your blog covers all kinds of topics: info on your book, musings on art, stories about outside adventures, book reviews, interviews with other vets, to name usually a few. How do we proceed all this content?

I have a unequivocally despotic essay schedule, with daily word count targets and deadlines. I’ve found it’s a usually approach to keep adult with so many opposite kinds of projects, from blog posts that take half a day to write to a book that requires a year or two. So we try to post on a blog once a week, on Wednesday. we write about dual categorical things: updates about book events and essay projects, and topics that are engaging to me though don’t fit into my normal book and repository “beat.” Sometimes we usually have a thesis or thought we wish to explore, and a difference need to come out, no matter how many people finish adult reading them. Not each impulse we have is accepted for a news of a day — a blog is a good place for such wandering thoughts.

What essay recommendation and tips would we give associate bloggers?

When essay during that alt-news site, we schooled a value of consistency. Readers pattern unchanging content. If we wish people to come behind to your blog and review some-more another day, they need to know when. So we announced that we would write columns each Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and afterwards we stranded to it roughly no matter what. we couldn’t post everyday, though we could keep to that three-per-week schedule, and it worked.

Now, my blog supports my book efforts, so we write less, though still consistently. If I’m going to take a week off, we contend so. Malcolm Gladwell talks about a “10,000 hour rule” in his book Outliers. It fundamentally says that it takes 10,000 hours of doing something to master it. The usually approach to get improved during essay is to review and write. Blogging helped me get to 10,000 hours.

Thanks for your time, Brian!

Check out briancastner.com for some-more on Brian, his book, and his ongoing work.

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Who doesn’t adore “Before and After” home alleviation shots? It’s always extraordinary to see how usually a integrate of changes, like a cloak of paint or a discerning do-it-yourself project, can renovate a vital space dramatically. It’s no opposite when it comes to WordPress.com blog themes, in that a tiny customization can go a prolonged way.

Today let’s take a demeanour during Beau and Arrow Events, a marriage impulse blog run by Ellen and Kate, dual San Diego-based eventuality planners. You’d never know that this stylish blogazine is using on Comet, one of a sparest themes.

Here’s how a bloggers behind Beau and Arrow Events remade grayscale Comet into cursive and bullion elegance. It’s zero any courageous blogger couldn’t try during home!

A cohesive tone scheme

Like any well-planned wedding, Beau and Arrow Events picked a handful of thesis colors and stranded to them. In this case, glow and bullion accents rage plain black and white.

The bloggers opted for a bustling backdrop with a pink-and-white arrow pattern, though keep it from commandeering a pattern by not repeating it anywhere else. In fact, a backdrop is a usually space pinkish appears in a tone scheme. Elsewhere, like on enclosure borders and links, a bloggers chose bullion as their solitary accent. The outcome is a ideally offset duochrome.

To learn some-more about personalizing your blog with tradition colors, view a tutorial.

Typefaces that margin with personality

On Beau and Arrow Events, a bloggers done confidant rise choices that reason their possess with their featured marriage photography. You’ll notice that their custom header image isn’t a trademark during all, though a miscellany of interrelated fonts. The outcome is an elegant, delicate vibe that caters ideally to a blog’s wedding-planning audience. To continue this thesis via a page, Ellen and Kate chose flirty Fertigo Pro Script for headers, and a classical serif Skolar for a entertaining physique text. A smaller, caps-lock chronicle of Fertigo creates notice-me sidebar titles.

If you’re meddlesome in reading some-more about how we can personalize your blog with tradition typefaces, yes, there’s a educational for that, too!

Custom bullet points raise a sidebar

Ellen and Kate say coherence in their pattern by carrying over a ampersand in their tradition header picture to a bullet points on a sidebar. They’re means to do this by environment a tradition picture in place of a unchanging black dot for bullet points that typically symbol unordered lists.

You can dive into your CSS to have some-more control and customize your site a approach we wish — to make a accumulation of tweaks, such as environment a tradition picture for an unordered list, like Ellen and Kate do here. In sequence to revise a CSS, they use the $30 Custom Design Upgrade and a tiny ampersand image.

Here’s how to make your possess tradition bullets:

• Create and upload a tiny image, that we’ll call custom.jpg, to your Media Library.
• In a Customizer, navigate to a CSS symbol on a reduce right side.
• Now, you’ll wish to hurl adult your sleeves and do a tiny coding! In CSS lingo, “ul” is how we impute to an unordered, or bulleted, list. To change a idol that shows adult as a bullet, we’ll wish to mention a “list-style-image” skill that affects that “ul.” Finally, we’ll need to mention a URL where this picture lives. Since it’s in your Media Library, it lives during custom.jpg.
• Now we need to put a above information into syntax browsers can read. It’s OK if we don’t know accurately because it’s worded this way, usually know that it’s a same information we summarized above. Add a line that looks like this anywhere in a Customizer modifying window:

ul { list-style-image: url(‘custom.jpg’); }

• Save and refresh, et voila! — we should see a heart, star, or whichever tradition picture we picked in place of a typical bullet point.

You can do most some-more with tradition CSS to make these forms of pattern tweaks — for more, check out a support page on custom CSS.

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Happy Theme Thursday! Sharing and handling your work online should be easy, and currently I’m anxious to announce a new thesis from a friends during The Theme Foundry that helps we do only that!

Snap is a responsive, lightweight, and minimalist thesis that creates it easy to underline your projects. Snap’s purify grid formed blog blueprint and configurable page templates also make it impossibly flexible.

Snap

Read some-more about Snap in a Theme Showcase, or exam expostulate it for yourself by going to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard.

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Since a emergence of time, humankind has yearned for control. While we can’t give we some-more control over many of your life, we can give we some-more control over your widgets. And today, with a new widget prominence tool, we can configure your widgets to be shown or dark usually on certain pages.

Widgets are a approach to supplement new calm (like your Twitter stream, a tab cloud, or a couple to your blog archives) in a sidebar, header, or footer of your site. To see a widgets we have accessible to you, record in to your WordPress.com dashboard and click on Appearance » Widgets. To supplement a widget, simply click on it and drag it adult and over to a right of a widget screen, into a Default Sidebar, Header Area, or Footer Area territory of your site. Then, to control visibility, enhance a widget and click a Visibility symbol subsequent to a Save button.

For example, if we wanted a Archives widget to usually seem on difficulty repository and blunder pages, select “Show” from a initial dropdown and afterwards supplement dual rules: “Page is 404 Error Page” and “Category is All Category Pages.”

You can also censor widgets formed on a stream page. For example, if we don’t wish a Archives widget to seem on hunt formula pages, select “Hide” and “Page is Search results.”

Visibility is tranquil by 5 aspects: page type, category, tag, date, and author, though any prominence order is rubbed separately, so there isn’t a way, for example, to usually arrangement a widget on posts that are categorized as “Summer” and also tagged with “Picnic.”

The prominence row is accessible currently in each widget for each user on WordPress.com; revisit Appearance » Widgets in your blog’s dashboard to take control. Or, to learn some-more about regulating widgets on your blog, check out the new Introduction to Widgets series: Widgets 101, Widgets 201, and Widgets 301.

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All kinds of organizations make their home on WordPress.com: tiny businesses, municipalities, eremite organizations, schools, village groups. We also yield an online HQ for utterly a few non-profits, from a tellurian to a hyperlocal. They spin to WordPress.com for an easy-to-use, low cost resolution that gets them an effective web participation though ludicrous thousands of dollars from their missions: assisting others.

Here are usually a few of a organizations that call WordPress.com home, and some of a ways they’ve used WordPress.com to emanate constrained sites that tell their stories and rivet their supporters — scarcely all for small or no cost:

Girls’ Globe

Girls’ Globe is a Sweden-based non-profit that connects people and organizations dedicated to a rights, health, and empowerment of women and girls.

The site creates a space for bloggers and non-profits to share stories of their hurdles and successes. Each of those stories becomes a training knowledge for women’s rights advocates, giving them a new tool, suggesting an effective plan for advancing girls’ rights, and providing general exposure.

Girls’ Globe uses a Oxygen theme, holding advantage of a post slider to emanate a colorful, striking homepage that showcases a site’s many absolute stories. A custom menu guides visitors both to accepted calm and to pages vicious for any non-profit: About, Partners, and Donate, where embedded PayPal buttons let visitors simply support a classification regulating possibly US dollars or Swedish krona.

(Oxygen is a versatile thesis that’s utterly renouned with non-profits — check out how a Little Hippies Foundation and SimpleNeeds Georgia have done it their own.)

Turning Pages

We found many preparation organizations on WordPress.com — fitting, for a height that’s about essay and reading good content. Among them is Turning Pages, a South Carolina non-profit charity adult preparation and math classes and tutoring:

Turning Pages relies on a Confit theme, creatively designed for restaurants though ideal for formulating websites with focused, simply passable home pages. Their goal is front and center, and a home page also creates critical information like residence and bureau hours, a contact form, and a present symbol permitted with no serve clicking. In a sidebar, a tradition menu lets intensity volunteers and adults seeking assistance find applicable information easily. (If you’re meddlesome in building a website with a home page rather than a blog, as Turning Pages has, check out a home page tutorial.)

Confit is designed for a vast custom credentials image, and Turning Pages has selected a breathtaking shot of a Congaree River bridge, a Columbia landmark. It adds visible seductiveness and emphasizes that this is a community-focused classification while not distracting from a critical calm on a page — a ideal double-duty background.

Tuning Pages isn’t a usually classification that saw a intensity in a Confit thesis — a Vida Vegan Conference is also regulating it to share information about a arriving gala, benefitting a chimpanzee sanctuary.

Invisible Children

When a universe initial became wakeful of the atrocities committed in Uganda by Joseph Kony and a Lord’s Resistance Army, promulgation footage of Kony viral, Invisible Children was one of a categorical drivers behind a campaign. A California-based non-profit, Invisible Children is dedicated to finale a use and abuse of child soldiers in Africa, and their online member is powered by WordPress.com VIP:

Invisible Children is packaged with information, from an interactive predicament tracker that lets visitors wizz in to learn some-more about specific incidents opposite Africa to a lobbying sign-up form and Congressional calendar for would-be activists. Compelling video and information assistance them make a box for their work, and a site provides plenty eventuality for meddlesome visitors to get involved, from simply creation a concession to attending an eventuality to requesting for a job.

The extent of organizations regulating WordPress.com VIP is truly conspicuous — from Invisible Children to a Partnership for a Drug Free America to a charity: H2O blog.

Metro Council for Teen Potential

You competence not consider that a thesis called Fruit Shake featuring bananas in a header would be a good substructure for a non-profit website — though then, we haven’t seen a Metro Council for Teen Potential:

Based in Rochester, New York, The Metro Council is a village girl support classification charity health and skills education, mentoring, and care training to immature people in a larger Rochester area. Using Fruit Shake, they’ve combined a simple, purify site. A front-and-center goal matter and confidant photos of a teenagers it works with give visitors an evident clarity of what a classification does, and a navigation options in a sidebar make it easy to differentiate by a site’s options.

From animal gratification organizations to museums and municipal organizations to scholarship funds to community groups distributing food and wardrobe to a homeless and beyond, non-profits use WordPress.com to get their word out about their missions, attract volunteers, fundraise, and classify events, all in a name of a larger good. We’re unapproachable to give them a height that helps them emanate change.

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Every few weeks, we’re sitting down with an Automattician to assistance we get to know a people who work behind a scenes to build new features, keep Automattic running, and make WordPress.com a best it can be. This week, we’re unequivocally gratified to deliver we to Mr. Philip Arthur Moore: Theme Broker, global nomad, and emoticon expert.

What kinds of overwhelming things do we do during Automattic?

Philip Arthur Moore

I’m now a Premium Theme Team lead during WordPress.com. The infancy of my waking hours are spent feverishly obsessing over creation premium themes a world-class knowledge for all WordPress users. This means a lot of opposite things: ensuring that business are well-supported in a premium themes forum; auditing any singular line of formula in any reward theme; educating a WordPress theming village on correct approaches to WordPress thesis development; and with my colleagues entrance adult with strong, strong discipline for developing themes a WordPress.com way.

One of a some-more sparkling tools of my pursuit is being means to partner and work unequivocally closely with reward WordPress thesis shops like Graph Paper Press, The Theme Foundry, Press75, and Organic Themes to move some of a best WordPress.org themes onto WordPress.com for a users’ delight. In many ways we feel like not usually do we have Automatticians as coworkers though partner thesis shops as well. Many a prolonged night has been spent prepping reward themes for their launches, nothing of that would have been probable though solid, abounding relations with a partners. In short, reward themes are my life right now.

Tell us about a plan you’ve worked on recently.

My favorite ongoing plan is _s, or Underscores. It’s a starter thesis on that any singular Automattic reward thesis is built and it was combined to both assistance us do a jobs improved and teach a WordPress village on theming best practices. we actively minister to a plan essentially since we strongly trust in developer preparation and Open Source. It also doesn’t harm that we get to play with git and GitHub, that is one of my favorite companies in existence.

It’s tough to know a energy of _s unless we see what’s built with it. Further, Ryu, A Simpler Time, and Untitled were all combined regulating _s, though you’d never know it though being told and that’s what creates a starter thesis so powerful. To date, Underscores has around 34 sum contributors and it’s always open to more. I’ll continue to work on it since it provides a plain benchmark on that to class other themes and it also gives me a possibility to correlate with a theming community. 

What have we schooled that we can share with WordPress.com users?

One of a biggest lessons I’ve schooled in life is that essay will take we everywhere. It doesn’t matter what function we reason or what we study, essay will take we far. If we are a new blogger who doesn’t know what to write about, only write; it’ll come to you. If we form a robe of blogging daily or weekly and hang to it, you’ll find your voice in no time and you’ll conclude yourself for slogging by a days when essay didn’t feel so great. Keep during it and don’t stop, and a year from now you’ll be grateful your fingers kept drumming on your keyboard.

Philip with volunteers and associate Automattician Naoko during WordCamp Seoul 2013

What do we suffer many about your job?

Without a doubt what we conclude many during Automattic is a turn of certainty that my colleagues and we have for any other to be a best in a universe during what we do. We pull any other to grow and learn, frequency — if ever — accept a standing quo, and always consider about how to make things better. We’re managers of one who rest on trust and sound visualisation to beam a common ship; it truly is a pleasure operative with a association filled with so many eccentric thinkers who caring many about pulling a needle brazen day by day.

It also feels implausible to know hundreds of other like-minded people widespread via a universe who are resolutely joined by a idea of creation a web a improved place. I’m not alone in my adore for WordPress and an open web and being probably surrounded by others who share a same views unequivocally is something special.

What do we adore to do in your gangling time?

Spare time will roughly always include of one, or any multiple of a following:

1. Reading adult on associate Third Culture Kids, Third Culture Adults, and Global Nomads. I’ve lived mostly outward of my birth nation (the US) for a final decade and bond best with expats and mobile souls.
2. Watching Seinfeld episodes for a umpteenth time. George is removing upset!!!
3. Digging deeper and deeper into a Spotify rabbit hole to find well-spoken chillout and loll tunes.
4. Making a accordant bid to call my family and best friends on a phone to tell them that we skip them and adore them unequivocally much. The art of long, wayward phone conversations contingency live on.
5. Finding out where a best dim chocolate is located in a universe and forgetful of those places in my sleep. If it’s reduction than 85% dim let’s not talk.
6. Reading books on Buddhism and vital a aware life. It passes by so fast so let’s make it a good one!
7. Figuring out how to incidentally inject emoticons into online conversations.
   (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
8. Taking open travel in vast cities. Tokyo’s rail complement is a tops.
9. Walking nowhere in particular.

Did we know Automattic is hiring? We wish people who are peaceful to work hard, share their ideas, learn from their colleagues, take beginning to get things finished though being told, and those who aren’t fearful to ask questions. Think we fit a bill? Work with us.

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In some tools around a world, this Sunday is dedicated to a mothers out there. For Mother’s Day, we’ve dull adult sites on motherhood, parenting, and family. On WordPress.com, you’ll learn mothers on all paths: new moms, stay-at-home-moms, singular moms, mothers who are full-time writers, and more. (Even mommy men, as you’ll see below.)

We generally wish to prominence bloggers with singular perspectives and courteous commentary, as good as collaborative blogs with mixed contributors. So, we wish we suffer this sampling of sites in respect of this special day.

Butterfly Mind

Illustration by Andrea Badgley.

Creative nonfiction author Andrea Badgley lives with her father and dual children in the Appalachian plateau of Virginia. In a past, she’s held a eye with courteous posts on both family and a letter life: a square on putting food on a table, and a post on revisiting her childhood diaries. Her blog is a delight: poetic musings on motherhood and parenting, and lightsome pieces, too (be certain to check her humor category).

On her About page, Andrea says her mom once told her to never ever stop letter — good advice, mom! — and we’re blissful to see her reflections on WordPress.com. Her voice is strong, nonetheless still and eloquent; follow along and review how she balances all a things that life throws during her.

The Mamafesto

On Avital Norman Nathman’s blog, The Mamafesto, motherhood and feminism collide. The writer, mother, and former high propagandize clergyman writes provoking, intelligent posts on a series of topics, from gender and media to activism and reproductive rights.

Image by Avital Norman Nathman.

In a new response to a Huffington Post letter about a mom who posted cinema of her six-year-old cross-dressing son on Facebook, she writes:

Maybe – and only hear me out – instead of suggesting that we *don’t* share these cinema over fear that it will repairs a children somehow, we indeed share some-more of them in hopes of normalizing and usurpation these forms of things.

Being a “pink boy” doesn’t have to meant anything over being a child who happens to adore pink.

We suffer following a explanation and personal letter on her blog — and, either we determine or disagree, you’ll conclude that she asks questions that make her readers think. We also like that she showcases her freelance work on another WordPress.com site regulating a portfolio-style thesis Hatch; if we puncture her blog posts, be certain to poke around her other projects.

Kristen Hansen Brakeman

Musings from a mind of Kristen Hansen Brakeman.

Essayist and novella author Kristen Hansen Brakeman is a bustling author and mom — she’s got her hands in countless cookie jars: a WordPress.com blog of sharp, mostly waggish writing; her work as a prolongation administrator on TV accumulation shows; and her book projects — she’s now seeking illustration for an letter collection and a humorous anticipation for kids.

In further to exploring topics of aging (check out her popular post on a dreaded word “ma’am”), family, and other subjects with her sip of humor, she writes about life in a Sandwich Generation: lifting 3 daughters while holding caring of an aging mother.

Mommy Man

Mommy Man: Adventures of a Gay Superdad

Stay-at-home dad, writer, and “mommy man” Jerry Mahoney lives with his boyfriend, Drew, and their dual twins (who were conceived around gestational surrogate, with eggs supposing by Drew’s sister, Susie). On his blog, he writes about issues of happy parenting and being a stay-at-home father (consider his post on “dadscimination,” his thoughts on either kids merit a mom, or commentary on an part of Modern Family).

There’s lots of things to review here, so if we don’t know where to start, revisit his “Best O’Blog” page, or review some-more about his singular story in his Modern Love essay, “Mom/Not Mom/Aunt,” in a New York Times.

Spilled Milk

Spilled Milk is a collaborative blog featuring photography collections by 19 mothers around a globe. Each week, a new thesis prompts one of a contributors to simulate on parenthood and “the complexity and beauty that comes with lifting a kids.” The site pattern is minimal and elegant, and a bloggers use tiled galleries to arrangement sets of beautiful images.

Check out a new contributions that appreciate a themes of “Experience,” “Mess,” and “Meal.” The themes are broad, permitting any photographer to get artistic with snapshots and accumulate personal nonetheless cohesive collections of what it means to be a mother, wife, and spectator of a fleeting, intimate, and changed moments of a lives.

Image collection by Spilled Milk.

More collaborative blogs

Mothers With Cancer is a organisation blog of 20 mothers with cancer. Some of these women have been in discount for years, while others are newly diagnosed or are battling a new recurrence. Off a Merry-Go-Round is a space for contention and impulse for six women who have selected their families over full-time careers. Also, Peanut Butter on a Keyboard is a blog where parenting and edition intersect, led by a organisation of mothers who also occur to be intrigue authors.

And more: a brew of moms on WordPress.com

We adore a accumulation — and fun and wise blog names — of sites focused on motherhood:

Doodlemum

#$!% Mom

Adequate Mom

Divorced Mom

Original Simple Mom

Smarter Moms

Barefoot Mom

Ordinary Mom

Reluctant Mom

Honest Mom

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Theme Thursday is here, and I’m vehement to announce a 3 illusory new themes we’ve wrangled for we this week.

Handmade

Handmade is a pleasing retro-styled blogging thesis for foodies and crafters, designed with adore by a folks during Obox Themes. Focusing on an extraordinary courtesy to fact and pleasing typography, all in Handmade has had hours of courtesy poured into it. Tender, amatory caring would be an understatement. Handmade can be devoted to arrangement your gallery and blog posts in a best approach probable on a tiny screen. It works good opposite all screens either that be tablet, PC or even mobile.

Read some-more about Handmade on a Theme Showcase,  or exam expostulate it for yourself by going to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard.

Untitled

Untitled is a pleasing giveaway thesis for showcasing your photos and videos. Designed by one of a possess — a gifted Nate Schaumburg — Untitled’s facilities embody a full-width front page slider, support for post formats, and a mini carousel that appears on singular pages.

Read some-more about Untitled on a Theme Showcase,  or exam expostulate it for yourself by going to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard.

On a Whim

Finally, I’d like to announce — not on a humour — a third thesis of a day, On a Whim. Designed by Meagan Fisher, On a Whim is a confidant and colorful reward blogging theme, with a hold of whimsy. Its facilities embody support for several post formats, links to amicable networking profiles, and an discretionary second navigation menu in a footer.

Read some-more about On a Whim on a Theme Showcase, or exam expostulate it for yourself by going to Appearance → Themes in your Dashboard.

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If you’ve ever had a doubt about WordPress.com, chances are you’ve visited a Community Support Forums. Forums are a good place to hunt for solutions and get answers. While a Happiness Engineers assistance out in these forums, WordPress.com enthusiasts — people who are ardent about WordPress.com and assisting associate users — yield a infancy of answers.

We’ve interviewed forum volunteers Sergio Ortega (airodyssey), Mike Brough (auxclass), and Tess Warn (1tess). Today, we’re vehement to deliver another inclusive volunteer: Lorraine Murphy (raincoaster). We chatted with her about how she got concerned in a forums, as good as her tips for removing and providing good support.

Photo by Robert Schaer

You’ve been blogging during raincoaster.com given 2006 and write for many other blogs. Tell us how we got started on a web, your blogging, and because we chose WordPress.com.

At a spin of a century, we was during home — impoverished — perplexing to build a freelance business essay and desktop edition career, while struggling with an undiagnosed illness. we couldn’t go out much, nonetheless wanted to socialize. we knew there were forums and a amicable life to be found online, so we went to find them. And boy, did we ever.

I assimilated actor Viggo Mortensen’s fan base, and 6 weeks after a other members pooled their supports to fly me out to New York to accommodate him. These women had no suspicion who we was, though they wanted me to have that experience, that we couldn’t afford. we couldn’t assistance though be altered by that. Suddenly, it seemed to me that yes, the universe might be full of strangers, though no, not all of them are hostile. Getting online altered my worldview.

I delved deeper into a online life, training how to use a blog as use for my essay career. we satisfied all we owned had come to me thanks to my rendezvous online, and if a web could do that for me, we could do that for other people.

I launched my business raincoaster media, regulating transformative amicable media to move about certain change in individuals and organizations. One of my students, a male who has lived during homeless shelters for 17 years and uses his blog as a portfolio for his poetry, was recently published in Geist, Canada’s premier literary magazine. Another, Apr Smith of AHAMedia.ca, has started a media business in Vancouver. She’s been profiled on a BBC 3 times, and is some-more famous than I’ll ever be. That’s how we know you’ve unequivocally empowered your students — when they transcend you.

I came to WordPress.com after we lost 400,000 disproportion on my first blog, when a Diary-X use went down with no backups. I searched for a many secure, warden complement we could find; everybody we trusted suggested WordPress, and WordPress.com in sold — they knew we didn’t wish to get “under a hood” and tinker.

I got my initial large mangle from Manolo, a famous shoe blogger and waggish conform author during Shoeblogs.com. we started essay for his parenting blog years ago, and we still make fun of celebrities on Ayyyy.com and spasmodic blog during Manolofood.com.

I’m also essay for a DailyDot.com, focusing on Anonymous, WikiLeaks, and hacktivism in general. we adore resplendent a light on people operative to make a universe a better place. It’s critical to keep essay and lifting awareness.

What’s a story behind a “raincoaster” nickname and a “49 degrees latitude, 360 degrees attitude” motto?

Until recently, we lived on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, flattering many a roughest place in Canada: a normal life outlook is 42 years and change. It rains all the time there — it’s a really noir place — and raincoaster only came to me one day. It also creates a good nickname for someone named Lorraine. As for my motto? I’m a smartass, and we adore communication and puns, so it arrange of came to me one day. It fits.

How did we initial get concerned in WordPress.com forums?

I was confused about a disproportion between WordPress.com and .org, between a forum and a support docs, and between staff (Happiness Engineers) and volunteers. I suspicion we could do a solid pursuit volunteering in a forums and explaining a facilities of WordPress.com to users. Volunteers Timethief and Doctor Mike were kind adequate to beam me behind to the shallows when we got in over my depth, though really shortly we found that we could answer people’s questions.

You’ve posted over 60,000 replies in a WordPress.com forums since 2006. Thank we for your support! What forms of questions do you like assisting users with, and what do we find a many rewarding about contributing?

I like responding someone’s initial doubt a most. People are mostly repelled by how quick they get an answer, how transparent it is, and how they can put a resolution to work right away; they’re really grateful, and it’s smashing to see. The subsequent best thing is when people who’ve asked questions in a past come to a forums and start responding questions themselves.

What’s a many critical thing you’ve schooled from your proffer knowledge in a forums?

Meaningful, clever relations can be fake over mundane, repetitive questions about domain mapping. Really, my forum knowledge during WordPress.com shows that humans are, even in a midst of technology, essentially human.

What recommendation would we give to someone who wants to get concerned in a forums?

READ. Read everything. Once we consider we know everything, go to a forums each day and corkscrew down a thread titles. If one emanate stands out as having too many replies, or is a subject we don’t know a answer to, review it. Once we can corkscrew down an whole page and know all a answers without opening a threads, we can start responding things.

Thank you, Lorraine, for your WordPress.com village support and for holding a time to answer a questions.

Remember, forums are there for a village — this means you. If we have a question, search a forums to find a answer. If you’re associating about WordPress.com, find an unreplied thread — maybe you’ll be means to assistance a associate user.

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Customizing your blog’s thesis is one approach to uncover off what creates we you. Young adult author Nova Ren Suma does a pleasing pursuit of this during distraction no. 99, regulating both giveaway and reward options to make Sight her own. (Once inspired, we can get bustling customizing your possess blog!)

To start, here are Sight and distraction no. 99, side by side:

Nova’s customization creates a large splash

As a veteran writer, Nova’s blog connects her to both her readers and associate writers. She sets a tinge right away, by regulating a custom header and custom background. Nova also uses dual of Sight’s many constrained options to good effect: a featured image slider and both of a accessible custom menus.

Nova’s tradition header spells out clearly that you’re reading a blog of a immature adult author. The bold, purify black/white/red tone intrigue and altogether demeanour complements her credentials nicely:

Nova’s selected “Dreaming of Stardust” as her tradition background, giving an fragile demeanour to a blog that mimics a feeling of her books’ covers. Think about how your possess credentials and header play off of any other. Together, do they emanate a demeanour that represents your personality?

Next, Nova uses Sight’s picture slider option, permitting her to benefaction a calm she many wants readers to encounter, in a professional, magazine-like way. This is an easy approach to supplement transformation to Sight, and is a snap to deploy. Nova simply noted a posts as “sticky,” and done certain any one had a featured image. Sight will arrangement adult to 30 of your latest gummy posts this way, giving we lots of flexibility.

Nova also uses mixed tradition menus. Notice a dual menus in a header print above? There’s a plane one regulating underneath a header, that is her blog’s primary navigation. But she’s also selected to use a delegate menu choice in a header itself, right adult nearby a hunt bar. Here Nova’s combined some tradition links, regulating this high-profile mark to lift your courtesy to her personal website, as good as offer some-more information on dual of her books:

A sidebar that only won’t stop

We’d be lingering if we didn’t also indicate out how effectively Nova uses her sidebar. There’s not an in. of squandered space here.

Nova shares information on herself, her work, her book reviews, her appearances, and more, figure out room in a sidebar to keep all of this critical things in one place.

Nova’s About.me widget creates a clever impression. Notice how effective it is, providing a discerning bio and mixed platforms for following and interacting with Nova. You’ll also see a text widget next it, pity her “upcoming appearances.”

At a really tip of her sidebar, Nova showcases her many recently published book with an image widget that links to her personal website regulating a print of a cover. Just underneath this, she deftly uses a content widget to yield a outline of a book’s plot, along with several quotes from book reviews.

A final indicate about Nova’s sidebar: she’s selected a sequence of her widgets with care. This isn’t some mixture mix. She’s got her many critical things — her new book, her appearances, herself — right adult top, where we can’t skip them. Nova employs lots of other widgets as we corkscrew down her sidebar (recent posts, new comments, Twitter, and a tab cloud, to name a few), though it’s no collision they are where they are.

Consider your dictated outcomes with your possess blog. What’s critical to you? What do we wish people to see first? As we consider about that widgets to use to lift off your vision, don’t forget to spend some time on their order, too.

Want some-more assistance exploring all a possibilities in widgets? Try this contingent of posts from The Daily Post:

• Widgets 101
• Widgets 201
• Widgets 301

All a honeyed customization goodies

Finally, Nova adds one some-more covering of customization to her blog with tradition fonts and tradition colors, as partial of a Custom Design upgrade. For only $30 a year, she’s means to collect fonts that are opposite for any partial of her site, though work together altogether for a unchanging look. And with a tradition colors she’s chosen, her whole site is tied together, tip to bottom.

distraction no. 99′s tradition fonts:

distraction no. 99′s tradition colors, with a dash of her background:

WordPress creates it easy for we to play around with opposite tradition rise and tone options, before we even confirm to squeeze a upgrade. Check out these dual good articles to learn how, and to see some-more examples of blogs regulating tradition fonts and colors:

• Personalize Your Site with Custom Fonts
• Personalize Your Site with Custom Colors

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