I still don’t really know how to get website traffic

Despite having three whole months, I managed to put off finalizing this quarter’s blog post until the last minute. The topic? Pick a colleague’s post, and explain why you chose that one. Outline a plan for the post to get 1,000+ views. Imagine that you have a US $20 budget to work with. I’m far …

Styling Radcliffe 2

Yesterday, the theme team launched our first collaborative theme, Radcliffe 2. This theme was a refresh of an existing theme by Anders Norén. Ola Bodera wrote a great summary of our typical theme refresh process. (Though it may change down the road, right now this blog is using that theme!) In Radcliffe 2, we introduced …

Many Hands

The theme team at Automattic handles much more than just building themes, and we work collaboratively on many projects. However, when creating themes for WordPress.com -- designing and developing new themes, or converting an existing GPL theme — we tend to work alone. Occasionally one person will design a theme and another will build it, …

Balancing Options vs. Overload

On WordPress.com, one thing we’ve been focusing on is making themes that just work. It’s a bit of a balancing act; it’s very tempting to allow customers to control every aspect of their theme, because it seems like the simplest way to give them what they want. That idea may sound great to customers, but …

Consistency isn’t just good for users; it’s good for us, too

As a Theme Wrangler, I'm a member of the team here at Automattic that builds, maintains and reviews the themes on WordPress.com. Right now we have over 380 themes available for folks to pick from. Each theme is its own little microcosm, a standalone bundle of files and functions. The differences between these themes can …