WordPress.com blogs are protected by the Akismet comment spam filter. Akismet is pretty good at catching spam, but it is always still learning.

You may receive spam comments, spam likes, or even spam likes on comments. There are steps you can take to resolve this. It’s worth noting that if you get a sudden spike of ‘spam’ comments or likes from a particular site or type of site, you may find others experiencing the same problem by checking out the WordPress.com forums. In this case, listing the usernames of the spammers can help staff to look into these accounts for suspicious activity.

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What is Gutenberg? Gutenberg is the new default text editor for WordPress, set to arrive some time in 2018. It will be replacing the current TinyMCE editor.

On WordPress.com, its arrival will be dependent on when it is integrated into each of the currently offered themes. For VIP clients it’s integration will be managed allowing an easy opt-in process.

For sites using the software from WordPress.org, it is scheduled for inclusion in WordPress 5.0 (the exact date for this hasn’t been determined yet). You can test it out using the Gutenberg plugin (ideally just on test sites).

The aim of Gutenberg is to make the publishing experience simpler, by dividing everything up into blocks.

Ultimately the goal of Gutenberg is to move beyond  simply using blocks in a page or post editor, to eventually building your whole site with it.

It is also a very exciting time for developers who want to get their hands dirty. Existing themes can be made compatible with Gutenberg, new themes have a much more standard way to create rich post layouts and the instructions for users on how to set things up will be much clearer in the interface.   Plugin developers can use blocks in a multitude of ways to extend WordPress.

If you want to learn more about how Gutenberg works, check out the Gutenberg page over at WordPress.org. CodeinWP have created an extensive write-up, and the folk over at Gutenberg.news are keeping a great up-to-date blog with recent Gutenberg news.

I love WordPress, and have developed sites using WordPress.org for years. As a WordPress.org fanatic I never thought I’d be writing a blog post about the pros of WordPress.com, but after taking a good hard look at it recently I’ve realised there are actually more advantages to using WordPress.com than I thought. Here’s what I found:

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Edit: Dec 2018 – This post was originally created as the first post on my WordPress.com blog. Since then the posts on my self hosted WordPress site have been merged to this blog.

I’ve been developing websites for years. I’ve come to love WordPress as a platform, and now also enjoy developing plugins. For me, among other things, it’s a way to give back to the community. And while I spent most of my time with self-hosted WordPress websites (WordPress.org), I’ve decided to delve into WordPress.com and get to know it inside out.

So here is my shiny new WordPress.com blog. Hopefully I will fill it with various tidbits of helpful information that I can share.

Oh by the way, this was originally the default blog post that WordPress.com adds to your blog when you start a blog site. I decided to keep the quote at the bottom though. In my family it has long been assumed that Izaak Walton is part of the family tree on my dad’s side. Well, my grandmother (RIP) insisted it was so, and the information had been passed down generation to generation. However I have no proof 🙂

It did make me smile though, so it stays!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton