Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! We shipped a lot of updates over these past two weeks. Here’s what’s new for you and your site:

Manage your site from your AI agent, free through November

On all paid plans, you’ve been able to connect an AI agent like ChatGPT or Claude to your WordPress.com account and manage your sites through conversation. Sites on our free plan can now also use this feature through November.

The easiest way to get started is to use our ChatGPT plugin or Claude connector and then ask it for help with building a site, making changes, or taking care of website chores.

Learn more in our support doc, Enable MCP tool access for AI agents.

Build stores with the WordPress Agent

Tell the WordPress Agent you want to sell something, and it’ll set up the store for you. It installs the WooCommerce plugin, designs a store layout, and adds example products to start from. Store building with AI works on all paid plans (and the Commerce plan includes valuable store add-ons like gift cards, product bundles, and shipment tracking).

Build with the WordPress Agent via our AI website builder.

Staging syncs tell you what’s happening

If you’ve started a staging sync and wondered whether it was working, this update is for you. While a sync runs, the site overview on your hosting dashboard shows a banner with its status. It says so when a sync is taking longer than usual, and when one looks stuck, it re-enables the Sync button so you can try again. If a sync fails, you get an email and a banner the next time you open your site, so you aren’t left waiting on a sync that won’t finish.

Staging sites also now tell search engines to stay away, so your test copy doesn’t show up in Google next to your real site. Staging is available on Business and Commerce plans.

Learn more in our support doc, Create a staging site.

More design control in the editor

You now have more ways to customize your pages, no custom code needed. For example, you can now set a minimum width or height in Button, Column, Gallery, and Heading blocks and add shadows to Button, Gallery, Media & Text, and Paragraph blocks.

Learn more about the updates to the editor in What’s new in Gutenberg 24.2.

WordPress 7.1.4 security release

WordPress 7.1.4 shipped October 28 with 13 security updates, tightening security for all WordPress users. Your WordPress.com site is already updated, so there’s nothing more you need to do to use the latest version.

Professional Email now comes with more powerful plans

A custom email address like hello@mygreatnewblog.com gives customers a name they recognize and trust. Now there are three Professional Email plans on WordPress.com, so your inbox can grow with you:

• Essential: 30 GB per mailbox with calendar, contacts, and spam protection. If you already had Professional Email, this is your plan with a new name.
• Plus: 50 GB per mailbox, plus scheduled sending and follow-up reminders.
• Ultra: 100 GB per mailbox, plus an AI email writer, appointment booking, email campaigns, and invoices.

You can find all the new email features here.

Fixes and improvements

We also shipped additional reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com, including:

• Making sure your first newsletter goes out when you add subscribers just before you publish.
• Showing the auto-renew switch only to the person who owns the purchase, so other admins no longer see a switch they can’t use.
• Fixing an issue where some posts failed to share to Threads.
• Fixing photos from phones and cameras that appeared rotated after upload.
• Fixing domain setup when you buy a domain first and a plan later. Your domain now becomes your site’s primary address automatically.
• Adding the option to use the www version of your domain, such as www.yourgroovydomain.com, as your site’s primary address, with a one-click switch back. (GitHub PR)
• Replacing the faded look of posts you’ve read in Reader with a small blue dot on unread posts, and adding a “Show read status” switch to your Reader settings. (GitHub PR)
• Fixing the new comment form: comments from signed-in readers no longer land in spam, undo no longer wipes what you’ve written, and the comment box stays readable on themes with dark color palettes. (GitHub PR)
• Explaining that only administrators can buy on the checkout “no access” page. (GitHub PR)
• Making checkout clearer: the card form now specifies which field is missing, and Apple Pay and Google Pay now show a more detailed price breakdown. (GitHub PR)

Neal Stephenson has spent decades writing about what happens when engineering outpaces the people and institutions meant to steer it.

He joined us for the first public Wide Margins conversation on October 13, publication day for D: Heavy Water, the second book in his Bomb Light series.

We discussed the book, but also his fascination with ages of heroic engineering and the parallels between those times and today.

The thread running through the conversation was about how we control technology: who gets to shape it as it moves ahead, and how much understanding and choice do the rest of us retain?

The command line is back — but who’s in control?

We discussed his early essay, In the Beginning Was the Command Line. The command line, he observed, “is back.” It is how you work with tools like Claude Code. The difference is that “we’re spectators to it in a way.”

The essay was partly about open source and how much control we have over our computers. I asked how that idea holds up in a world of increasingly siloed ecosystems. Stephenson’s answer was unexpected: AI tools have brought the command line back, but can assemble commands so quickly that people can scarcely follow them.

It’s an unexpected role reversal: we have gained an extraordinarily capable tool, but the steps it takes can be harder to see.

The same question of control runs through Stephenson’s account of a far earlier technological race.

From tabletop to national secret, then and now

This past begins to rhyme with the present. Stephenson described the neutron experiments of the 1930s as “gentleman science” done on tabletops. In late 1938, Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch explained how the uranium nucleus had split.

Within months, the physics world understood what that meant. During World War II, nuclear research became a secret national priority.

When Neal started the Bomb Light series in 2012, the AI we have now was barely on the horizon.

He noted that the argument that we have to build it before our adversaries do is “sort of exactly where we are.” He hears the same logic in today’s AI race.

We discussed whether the outbreak of World War II, which turned nuclear physics into a focused, secret national priority, may have made it more containable. But much of today’s AI is already in public hands. As Stephenson put it, “nobody’s going to build a nuclear bomb in their garage.” The models, on the other hand, are already in the garage.

The problem of reality

Stephenson traces his attraction to stories of heroic engineering to growing up in Ames, Iowa, where scientists produced uranium metal for the Manhattan Project.

He also finds near-future science fiction harder to write, because things change too fast to project even a decade or two ahead.

Dystopia, he said, has become the default pose for writers, even though, in his view, life keeps improving generation after generation.

His two big worries remain carbon emissions, which he believes has technological fixes, and people’s failure to agree on what reality is, which has no obvious answer. He worries that bot farms deliberately drown out truth online to serve other agendas, making it harder to find.

The thinking he chooses not to outsource

He is using AI to write code but not to summarize his research. Reading sources, taking notes, and comparing them with old notes creates connections a summary never would.

Asked about brain-computer interfaces, he said they don’t interest him: translating thoughts into words is the point.

Stephenson is hardly rejecting new technology. He is making a choice about where it helps, and where he wants to do the thinking himself.

My full conversation with Neal Stephenson includes a reading from D: Heavy Water and more on science fiction, engineering, and the stories we tell about our future.

He’s now working on the third and likely final Bomb Light book. Expect it in two to three years.

Next on Wide Margins

Wide Margins is a WordPress.com series of live, unhurried conversations hosted by Alexander Rose, featuring writers, thinkers, and creators exploring what’s next.

Each conversation streams on YouTube, with recordings available afterward.

November 17, 2026: Worldbuilding in fiction
Hugh Howey, author of the Silo series, on experimenting with worlds in the alternate present and possible futures.

January 12, 2027
Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and Incorruptible.

That’s good news when you’re the person making the products, answering the emails, and delivering the work. Your calendar doesn’t get bigger just because your prices get smaller.

These ten Black Friday ideas for small businesses start with what you already do well. The goal is one offer your customers understand, your business can afford, and you’ll still feel good about delivering in January.

Choose an offer that fits your business

The most useful starting point is often a question a customer has already asked. Can these products be bought together? Can I give this as a present? Will you help me get started?

Your reviews, inbox, and on-site searches can help you spot the opportunity.

Now it’s time to check the numbers. Imagine a product priced at $100 that costs $60 to make and deliver.

Here’s how three offers would compare:

• No promotion: $40 profit
• 20% off: $20 profit
• Add a $5 gift instead: $35 profit

The gift example leaves $15 more per sale than the discount, but it only works if customers value it. When you calculate the real cost, include your time, payment fees, packaging, and delivery.

A targeted discount can still be the right choice. The test is whether the customer gets something worthwhile and you have the money, stock, and time to fulfill it.

Black Friday offer ideas for each business

Some of these ideas suit a shop; others work for a one-person business selling expertise or experiences. Borrow the part that fits yours, rather than trying to run all ten.

1. Bundle what customers need

A good bundle saves the customer some thinking. Instead of choosing several separate products, they can buy the gift, starter kit, or finished solution they came for.

Take last year, for example: 27% of surveyed merchants planned to lead with Black Friday product bundles or buy-more-save-more offers.

Skincare brand grüum’s Black Friday Edit brings skincare, home fragrance, and accessories into one seasonal collection. The offer is more concrete than “browse our sale”: here’s a collection already put together for you.

For a digital creator, the equivalent might be a project planner, budget tracker, and walkthrough for someone taking on their first freelance client. Each item should help with the same job. A bundle isn’t improved by padding it with things nobody needs.

Once the contents work together, tools such as Product Bundles can turn them into a single purchase.

2. Add help that makes the purchase more useful

Sometimes the thing stopping a customer is not the price. It’s wondering whether they’ll know what to do after buying.

That makes a useful extra a good Black Friday offer. Rather than adding more content to a course or another file to a template bundle, help customers use what they already bought.

You could include:

• A group feedback session for learners working through the same course.
• A guided setup workshop for people buying your templates.
• One follow-up review after a client puts your recommendations into practice.

Keep the promise specific. A 45-minute session on a published date gives buyers something they can plan around. It also lets you account for preparation and follow-up, instead of turning a modest sale into open-ended support.

3. Make a service or experience easy to give

A pottery class, portrait session, or cooking lesson can make a thoughtful gift. The key is making it easy to give now and enjoy later.

Trentham’s Black Friday promotion offered £100 gift vouchers for £80, redeemable against garden visits, memberships, gift-shop purchases, and selected events. Buyers could give someone a choice of experiences without having to pick a date or activity for them.

The idea to borrow isn’t the discount; it’s making an experience easy to give. A smaller business could offer a voucher for a two-hour pottery session, with materials and firing included.

Make it clear what the buyer receives, how the recipient books, and whether there are any extra charges.

4. Fill a few quieter-season appointments

Black Friday can be a way to plan next month’s workload, not squeeze more into this one.

Dolly DeLong’s Black Friday plan for 2026 sets aside four branding-photography sessions to deliver in December and early January. The offer matches the dates she can work with clients who need fresh marketing images. As she puts it: “My scarcity is arithmetic.”

That’s a useful model for tutors, consultants, and other appointment-based businesses. Offer specific dates or a clearly bounded redemption window, and count the preparation and follow-up too. Money collected now still comes with work you owe later.

5. Give annual subscribers something to start with

An annual subscription asks customers to commit to a year. A joining benefit can give them something worthwhile in the first week.

Craft educator Lia Griffith’s Black Friday membership offer paired discounted annual plans with bonuses including masterclasses and a five-day Crafty Wonderland event featuring ten projects. New members had something specific to make, rather than just a library to browse.

A paid newsletter might offer a curated starter collection; an educational membership could run a welcome workshop. Choose something you can deliver without adding another permanent weekly obligation, and consider including existing members. They shouldn’t feel overlooked for having joined earlier.

Whatever the format, make the first charge, renewal price, and ongoing access clear. A good joining benefit helps people enjoy the membership, rather than distracting them from what they’re signing up for.

6. Give your subscribers first choice

Early access means more when there’s something worth choosing first: a popular workshop date, a limited-edition product, or the last few places in a small group.

Public speaking training company Ultraspeaking gave its VIP subscribers a 24-hour head start on its Black Friday membership offer. Only 30 discount codes were available, and early buyers could also unlock a bonus live workshop. Subscribers had a genuine reason to act before the sale opened to everyone else.

Don’t feel you have to wait until Black Friday itself to launch. Giving subscribers an early opportunity to buy can help you reach customers before their holiday shopping budgets are committed elsewhere. You can then open the offer to everyone and keep it available for longer, provided you can sustain it.

A small business could do something similar with limited workshop places, new products, or appointment slots. You don’t need an elaborate loyalty program—an email and a clear early-access window can be enough, as long as customers actually get the advantage you promised.

7. Release a Black Friday edition

A special edition gives customers something different to buy, rather than the usual thing for less. That could be a new version of something you make or an exclusive release you stock.

Independent record shop Record Surplus invited shoppers to explore exclusive and limited-edition Record Store Day releases. Shoppers could browse the release list beforehand, and purchases were limited to one copy of each title per customer to give more people a chance to buy.

The idea to borrow is giving customers something worth seeking out. A ceramicist could release a favorite mug in a seasonal glaze; an illustrator could offer a small run of signed prints. Start with something you already make well, then give this edition a clear point of difference.

Keep the limits honest, too. A batch of 25 really can sell out. A digital download won’t, so explain any time limit rather than inventing a shortage.

8. Add a useful bonus above a spending threshold

A spending bonus lets customers choose their own products and receive an extra when the order qualifies. A ceramics seller could include a matching spoon rest with orders over a set amount, rather than marking down the whole collection.

Gifts and add-ons were the main promotion planned by 15% of merchants surveyed ahead of Black Friday last year. For a small shop, the appeal is being able to add something useful while keeping the main product at its usual price.

The threshold still needs to cover the gift’s cost, extra packaging, and delivery — not its advertised retail value. Keep the rule simple enough to explain in one line, and choose a bonus that belongs with the purchase. An unrelated freebie is just another thing the customer has to find a use for.

9. Team up to reach more customers

You don’t always need to create a joint product to work with another business. Sometimes the opportunity is helping customers discover things that belong together.

Folksy’s Black Friday campaign, The Real Deal, brought independent makers together in a shared handmade-product showcase. Sellers could nominate products for the collection, while Folksy supplied social media templates, newsletter materials, and printable signs. The campaign put craftsmanship and the people behind the products ahead of price cuts.

A few local businesses could borrow that approach with a shared gift guide or shopping event. For example, a potter, coffee roaster, and baker could build a collection around gifts for someone who loves a slow Sunday morning.

Keep the collaboration manageable:

• Choose one theme that connects the products.
• Give each business a clear place in the guide.
• Agree on how everyone will promote it.

Each business can handle its own sales. The shared effort goes into making the collection worth exploring – not creating another complicated promotion to manage.

10. Give customers a reason to come back

A return incentive works best when the next visit feels like a natural continuation of the first.

Range + Rye offered a $10 bonus card with a $50 gift-card purchase, or $20 with a $100 purchase. The Pennsylvania restaurant ran the promotion in person: a customer could buy someone else a gift and leave with another reason to visit.

For a class-based business, the equivalent could be credit from a beginners’ workshop toward an intermediate session. Give people time to use their first purchase before deciding what comes next. Price the promotion assuming customers redeem the credit, and explain restrictions upfront. It should work when they remember to return, not only when they forget.

Put your offer to work on your website

The offer comes first; the setup should follow. A one-off consultation doesn’t need the same machinery as a store with dozens of products.

For a single service or download, a clear offer page and a payment button may be enough, with scheduling or delivery handled separately.

A full catalog needs product pages, a cart, and order management; WooCommerce is one option, and WordPress.com’s Commerce plan packages it with hosting and additional store tools.

Keep the customer’s next step obvious: reserve a date, choose a package, or subscribe. Specialized bookings and memberships may need extra extensions, so check the full process rather than assuming that collecting payment completes the job.

Make the offer the first thing visitors notice. If you’re running a discount, lead with the percentage saved and a clear call to action, rather than crowding the page with product features. The same principle applies to bundles, gifts, or exclusive experiences: show customers what they’re getting and make the next step easy.

Choose your offer, then give it a test run

You don’t need to become a completely different business for a weekend.

Remember, one useful offer is enough to start. Give yourself time to promote it, make its value immediately clear, and test the path from landing on your website to completing a purchase.

Once you’ve chosen your offer, make sure your site is ready for Black Friday so customers can follow through to purchase.

Whether they’re buying a product, booking a session, or joining a membership, the promise on your page needs to work – all the way to checkout.

Wildlife conservation through biotechnology

A diverse gene pool is crucial for wildlife’s ability to adapt to environmental changes or disease outbreaks.

Historically, to increase genetic diversity, conservationists would migrate healthy individuals from one unrelated population to another. Today, biotechnology opens up additional paths, from genome sequencing and biobanking to cloning and gene editing.

When even a simple website update took too long

As with many nonprofits, Revive & Restore mainly communicates through its website, making it central to its mission.

The site highlights the organization’s mission, programs it’s involved in, latest news, upcoming workshops, and allows them to accept donations.

Yet, the team kept running into issues that made it increasingly difficult for the website to do its job.

Ryan Phelan, Revive & Restore’s co-founder and executive director, said the team was “on the verge of moving our Revive & Restore website away from WordPress entirely” after its developer claimed, “the platform couldn’t scale to meet our needs.”

Getting a second opinion

That advice could have changed the direction of the entire project. Instead, Ryan got a second opinion, and their findings told a different story.

The developer began with an audit, uncovering a theme that made page creation difficult and conflicting plugins that contributed to slow load times.

“WordPress wasn’t the problem,” said Marmee Manack, the nonprofit’s director of operations. The developer removed the conflicting plugins, and Revive & Restore moved its hosting to WordPress.com with migration assistance and discounted hosting.

WordPress.com handles the hosting infrastructure, security, and software updates, while the developer focuses on improving the site’s publishing workflow with the WordPress block editor and reusable page templates.

Ryan said: “We are currently migrating all existing content to the streamlined, core WordPress Gutenberg editor. This shift will simplify our operations and ensure a lighter, faster, and easier-to-manage website for the long term.”

Making the website easier to update

Moving its hosting to WordPress.com was one part of the project. Revive & Restore still needed to tackle the problem its team faced every day: creating and updating pages.

For Marmee, this is a familiar challenge in the nonprofit world. Many organizations have “a single comms professional tasked with planning, building, implementing, and maintaining active communications channels, including the website.”

When that person struggles to publish a simple update, it can affect the organization’s entire communications operation.

Working with its developer, the nonprofit began rebuilding its site with a lighter theme, the WordPress block editor, and reusable page templates. The goal was to make routine updates less time-consuming and avoid the formatting problems that had caused its backlog.

With its new page templates ready, Ryan says the team is “well on our way” as they move existing content into the updated layouts. The team hopes to relaunch the updated website this fall.

A better home for their WordPress site

Before making costly changes to a website, it pays to understand what’s actually wrong.

For Revive & Restore, getting expert help meant identifying the underlying issues and finding a clear path forward without starting from the ground up.

WordPress.com provided the other piece of the puzzle: managed hosting that takes care of the technical infrastructure, security, updates, and backups, while retaining the flexibility of WordPress.

Connect your site to an agent through WordPress.com’s MCP, and it can take those jobs off your plate.

You still do the writing, make the decisions, and talk to your customers, while the agent handles the busywork, checking with you as often as you choose before it changes anything on your site.

How the WordPress.com MCP works

The WordPress.com MCP creates a secure connection between your site and an AI agent you already use, such as ChatGPT or Claude. Describe the task in plain language, and your agent can help from the chat.

Paid plans always get access, but from now until the end of November 2026, sites on our free plan can use it, too.

Get your finished draft ready to publish

Writing a post isn’t the end of the job. After the last sentence, you still need to sort out formatting, pick a category, and write a search title and description.

Paste your finished draft and ask your agent to handle those steps. It saves the post as a draft with your wording untouched. If the category you want doesn’t exist yet, it can create it.

Need a proofread, too? Ask your agent to check grammar, punctuation, and more. You decide whether your agent publishes on its own or waits for your OK.

Find and update outdated business details

A name, a price, an address, or your hours can live in more places on your site than you remember. They’re in posts, pages, the footer, the site settings, and even the search titles on drafts. Miss one, and a visitor finds the old detail on a page you forgot.

Ask your agent to find the outdated details before changing anything. It searches your published and draft posts, every page, the header and footer, and the site settings, then shows you where each detail appears.

You look it over and say what to change and what to skip. Once you approve, your agent can make the changes and check each one.

Find and fix images missing alt text

Alt text is the short description of an image that a screen reader reads aloud, so people who can’t see the picture still know what it shows. Finding missing alt text usually means digging through your media library and checking images one by one.

Ask your agent to find images with missing titles or alt text. It can scan the media library for you, and it suggests descriptions based on what it can work with, like each image’s title, caption, and the page it was uploaded to.

You can check the descriptions against the real pictures before approving any additions.

Find comments that need a real answer

Comments from first-time commenters need your approval by default, so you usually need to manually review each one before it appears on your site. If you get a lot of comments on your site, you know how time-consuming it can be.

When comments pile up, the questions that need your attention can get buried. Ask your agent to sort new comments into praise, questions, feedback, and likely spam. Review the list and decide what happens next. Your agent can also help draft replies to comments that need an answer.

You choose where AI helps

Your agent can handle the repetitive parts, while you remain in charge of the decisions. AI doesn’t replace your judgment. Some jobs just don’t need your time, and handing them off leaves more room for the work that does need you.

Once you connect an AI agent to your WordPress.com site, it only acts when you ask. You choose what needs your OK, from every change to nothing at all, and backups and your site’s Activity Log have your back.

Your activity log also marks the changes made by your agent so you can always keep an eye on things.

Connect your AI agent

Pick the one website chore you’ve been putting off for too long and start there. Once you’ve set up your AI agent, describe the chore you want help with.

Ask to see a plan first, review what it proposes, and decide what to do next.

Some hosts sell malware help separately. Finding that out when your site’s been hacked is a really awful experience.

What your hosting should already cover

Meanwhile, WordPress.com scans sites daily for malware and cleans up what it finds on all paid plans. That’s Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce.

Even better, our migration services act like a filtration system. Bring us an infected site. After your migration, we scan it, and our team cleans it up at no extra cost.

It’s like other hosting companies are saying the following:

Other hosts: “You’ve been hacked. Pay up or go fix it yourself.”

Meanwhile, here at WordPress.com:

WordPress.com: “If you’re on WordPress.com, we’re always watching – we’ll watch for malware and clean it up when we find it. If you’re not on WordPress.com, c’mon over. We’ll clean up the infection after migration and keep watching for trouble. ”

“Volume” hosts sell security or emergency cleanup separately. “Emergency malware” can cost upwards of US$160 as a one-time purchase, including a year of scanning. You’ll see hosts selling separate security plans, with cleanup limits on their lower tiers.

Cleaning up a hacked site shouldn’t cost extra. Malware scanning and cleanup are included in your paid WordPress.com plan.

Meanwhile, premium managed hosts include cleanup, but it’s worth looking at what else costs extra. You’ll see offers for “advanced DDoS protection” and a “managed web application firewall” as optional add-ons. A web application firewall and DDoS protection are already included in our paid plans. Together, they help filter malicious requests and traffic designed to overwhelm your site.

That disparity seems totally off to me. Security and cleanup should be part of what you’re paying your host to do.

Not just migrations, not just security. Yes to those, but also how both work together. How everything works together on WordPress.com: Jetpack, WooCommerce, hosting, security, and support.

Your next host should have your back

If you’re getting your site ready for Black Friday, now’s a good time to look at what your hosting includes. Security shouldn’t be another thing you have to worry about when customers start arriving.

If you want your site to be protected without paying more, come on over. We’ll be happy to do the migration for you and get you set up in your new web home.

Our team at WordPress.com keeps your site safe every day, so you can keep building what matters to you.

If your site is hosted on WordPress.com, there’s nothing you need to do to keep your site safe from these vulnerabilities.

Your sites are already protected against the recently disclosed PHP security issues. Automattic worked closely with the PHP Security team to ensure that all sites hosted on our platform were protected as soon as possible, ensuring all sites hosted with Automattic, including those on WordPress.com, WordPress VIP, WP Cloud, Pressable, and Tumblr, are safe. If you run your own servers, update now.

Why you didn’t have to lift a finger

On WordPress.com, PHP is installed, maintained, and patched by us at the infrastructure level, not by you. Our security team prepared for this release ahead of time, so every site on the platform is covered.

That’s the difference between doing it yourself and managed hosting (like what you get on WordPress.com). At many hosts, the site owner is responsible for security: updating software, installing a security plugin, watching for threats. On WordPress.com, we handle it for you.

How WordPress.com protects your site every day

This week’s news isn’t one-off work for our team; we ensure that these protections are on all the time for WordPress.com sites:

• Automatic updates: We keep your WordPress version up to date automatically.
• Encryption by default: Every WordPress.com site, including custom domains, is served over SSL, and insecure requests are redirected to HTTPS.
• Daily malware scans: Jetpack Scan checks every WordPress.com site daily for dangerous plugins, themes, and malware. Our security team resolves what it finds, and we email you if we have to remove something.
• A firewall in front of your site: Our web application firewall examines incoming traffic and blocks suspicious IP addresses, malicious bots, and unusual activity.
• Monitoring: We watch for suspicious activity, including brute-force login attempts and DDoS attacks, and alert you if your site goes down.
• Backups: We back up site data regularly, and sites on higher-level plans can access daily backups from the dashboard.

Your part

Of course, security works both ways, and there are still some things that you can do to ensure your site stays secure: use a strong password, turn on two-step authentication, keep your account email current, and review plugins and user roles regularly.

You don’t need to install a separate security plugin, and some can interfere with the protections you already get by using WordPress.com.

No service can promise perfect security, and we won’t pretend otherwise. On WordPress.com, security is our job to solve, not yours.

In the video below, we build a portrait photography portfolio from scratch, showing how to present your work, customize your pages, and make it easier for potential clients to get in touch.

The same principles apply whether you’re a photographer, designer, writer, or another creative professional.

Put your best work first

You’ve built up a collection of work you’re proud of. That doesn’t mean every project belongs on your site.

Think of your portfolio as a greatest-hits album. Pick the projects that stand out and show the work you want more of.

Fewer pieces, chosen with care, say more than a large collection of everything you’ve ever created. Put your newest selected projects first so visitors see the work you’re doing now.

Your work is the star. Your portfolio website is the stage, and a good stage knows when to get out of the way.

Give your work plenty of breathing room, with a clean layout and minimal distractions. Then bring your best visuals: sharp, high-resolution, and consistent from project to project.

Group the work on your gallery or projects page by type, style, or industry so visitors can find what interests them.

If you publish projects as posts, categories and tags can help visitors explore related work.

Share a new project, a lesson you learned the hard way, or the messy middle of how something came together.

Showing your process helps visitors understand how you work. A blog is one way to do that; updating your project pages works, too.

Let your personality come through

People don’t hire portfolios. They hire people.

Your About page is your chance to introduce yourself. Share how you got started, what keeps you curious, and what you’re like to work with.

Add a photo. Write the way you’d talk over coffee — warm, honest, with a little personality showing.

Visitors should feel like they’ve met you before they ever send a message.

Your name is a pretty great domain name. It’s personal, memorable, and easy to pass along when someone says, “You should check out their work.” Keep it short, easy to spell, and easy to say out loud.

Working under a studio name instead? Same rules apply. If you’re still deciding, our domain names course walks through the options.

It’s one thing to say you’re great. It’s another to have someone else say it.

Add testimonials from clients, collaborators, and colleagues. Even better, show what your work did: a shop that grew its sales after your redesign, or a venue that filled its calendar after your photos went up.

Real results, in real words, help people trust your work.

Make “let’s talk” the easiest click on the page

Someone loves your work. They’re ready to reach out.

Add a contact form on a dedicated page, link to it from your menu, and include a clear contact button alongside your work. If you take appointments, let people book a time instead of filling in a form.

The shorter the path from “browsing” to “hello,” the better. And add social media icons so visitors can follow along.

If your work is location-based, name the cities or areas you serve so potential clients know whether you’re available to them.

Preview your portfolio on a phone before publishing. Check that images crop well, text is readable, and visitors can use your contact form without pinching or zooming.

Put it together on WordPress.com

Ready to give your work a home? In this video tutorial, we use the WordPress Agent to build a portrait photography portfolio from a short description, then add the details that make it ours: projects, testimonials, and a clear way to get in touch.

Your first version doesn’t have to be perfect. A portfolio website is never finished — it grows as you do.

Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! WordPress.com premium themes are now included on all paid plans, your comment form automatically takes on your site’s look, and your newsletter has a new home base.

Premium themes for all

Premium WordPress.com themes used to only be available on the Premium plan and above, but now they’re included on the Personal plan, too.

Check out our available themes, and if you can’t find one you like, you can upload your own on any paid plan.

A comment form that looks like your site

Your comment box now picks up your theme’s fonts and colors, so it’s more naturally integrated into your site’s look and feel without any extra effort.

A new overview for your newsletter

We’ve shipped a few updates to your newsletter experience on WordPress.com.

First up: if you’re in your dashboard and open Jetpack → Newsletter, you’ll now see a new Overview tab.

You’ll see a short checklist to help you get your newsletter set up: add a subscribe form, add your first subscribers, and send your first newsletter. Each step checks itself off when you do it.

Once your newsletter is up and running, this page will show your total and paid subscribers, open and click rates, a subscribers chart with a comparison period, and how your recent posts performed.

Want a fun little reminder that your list is growing? Turn on subscriber alerts in your notification settings, and your dashboard plays a chime and pulses the notification bell each time someone new joins your list.

As a reminder, every WordPress.com plan comes with a newsletter. It’s a great way to build an audience you own, strengthen relationships with your readers, and keep them coming back to your site.

WordPress 7.1.3 security release

WordPress 7.1.3 shipped October 6, and your WordPress.com site is up to date. We update your site for you, so there’s nothing you need to do to be running the latest and greatest.

Fixes and improvements

We’ve shipped additional reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com, including:

• Making sure everyone who buys a paid newsletter tier joins your subscriber list, including past buyers who had been missed.
• Stopping subscriber emails from going out when you restore an old post from the trash.
• Explaining what went wrong in site-down alert emails, with a summary of the issue and a link to learn more.
• Fixing a bug that sent followers duplicate emails when a comment was unapproved and approved again.
• Hiding sites you’ve already dismissed from Reader Discover recommendations.
• Asking you to reconnect Google Photos when Google rejects access, instead of failing quietly.
• Adding an All Playlists block that shows every video playlist on your site as a gallery or a list, plus a description field for each playlist. (GitHub PR)
• Adding a Latest Videos Playlist block that always plays your newest videos, and a “Show player” option on both playlist blocks so you can show just the list of videos. (GitHub PR)
• Letting you reopen a live chat with support after refreshing the page. (GitHub PR)

Already have a WordPress.com site? The agent can help you review content, edit images, and make changes to your site.

A custom theme, built for you

You now get a theme made for you. Tell the agent what you’re making and what your goals are, and it designs a fully custom theme based on your answers.

Plenty of AI tools can spin up a site now. The difference is when you build on WordPress.com, you:

1. Keep control of your work: Your content is exportable, and your custom theme is built for WordPress.
2. Add functionality as you grow: Use plugins to add a store, booking forms, payments, and other features.
3. Keep improving your site: Ask the WordPress Agent to make updates, refine content, or troubleshoot issues after launch.
4. Leave maintenance to WordPress.com: We manage hosting, security, and WordPress updates, and our support team is available when you need help.

Doing all of that yourself means stitching together hosting, security, plugins, and AI tools, then keeping them working together. On WordPress.com, it comes together on one platform and one plan.

A simpler editor, with the Agent beside you

Generating a site now takes less than half the time it used to. Most sites are ready in under four minutes. You can go from an idea to a site built with your goals in mind while your coffee is still hot.

Once your site is built, you land in the AI Editor. It’s a simplified editor with two tabs:

• Preview shows your site the way a visitor sees it.
• Edit lets you change your text right on the page.

This dual editing mode is helpful to quickly preview the changes you make. 

The WordPress Agent is also there. Ask it to rewrite a headline, add a section, or change something you don’t love, and it makes the change for you. Or skip the chat and make the edits yourself in Edit mode. Either way works.

Annotate mode makes it even easier. Highlight the specific parts of your site you’d like to change, stack several edits together, and send them to the Agent in one go.

You can open the AI Editor under Appearance → AI Editor, or the full Site Editor under Appearance → Editor.

Note: The AI Editor is enabled by default if you built your site with the WordPress Agent. To use the AI Editor on an existing site on a paid plan, you’ll need a block theme and to enable the WordPress Agent. See the AI Editor setup guide for instructions.

Install, activate, and update plugins by asking

Need a contact form, better SEO, or a way to take payments? Ask the agent. It recommends plugins that fit what you’re trying to do, then installs and activates them right in the chat. You can also ask it to update the plugins you already have.

You get the flexibility of the WordPress plugin library without the research and setup.

A site that knows you from the first chat

While it builds your site, the agent also generates guidelines for you. These cover your site’s purpose and audience, your tone and voice, your image style, and more.

After that, every conversation starts with a memory about who you are, what your business does, and what you want your site to achieve. You don’t have to re-explain yourself each time.

Your guidelines aren’t locked away. Find them under Settings → Guidelines, edit them whenever your brand changes, and export them if you want to use them elsewhere.

The agent uses them to create the content and images you receive, whether you’re chatting in WordPress.com, Telegram, email, or Slack.

DM your agent on Slack

You heard that correctly – you can now chat with the WordPress Agent in Slack. Have your agent at the ready when you’re working to make changes directly from a DM.

Connect your WordPress Agent to Slack in your account settings.

Put your WordPress Agent to work 

If you already have your site on WordPress.com, you can follow these instructions to enable the WordPress Agent on any paid plan.

And if you need a new site, build it with the WordPress Agent.

You get everything WordPress can do, a platform that takes care of the hosting for you, and an agent that builds your site with you and keeps helping after launch.