Tag: WordPress

WordCamp US 2026: E-Commerce Idea Percolator

The Portly Politico1 Comment

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you. Additionally, Automattic is (hopefully) compensating me for promoting WordCamp US 2026; you can get $20 off a general admission ticket with promo code AF26. —TPP

Thank you to everyone who left such sweet comments about Murphy. I am so thankful for the five years I had with the old girl, and hearing how she touched your lives brought me a great deal of joy (and some more tears). She was such a good, sweet, sassy girl, and I miss her so much. —TPP

Two weeks ago I wrote a post about WordCamp US 2026 (WCUS 2026), which is coming to Phoenix, Arizona Sunday, 16 through Wednesday, 19 August 2026 at the Phoenix Convention Center. It’s only $80 for a general admission ticket with promo code AF26. You can purchase tickets here.

I’ve been using WordPress.com as my main platform for blogging daily since 2019, but I’ve never been to one of these conferences. I took a look at the list of speakers and their topics for WordCamp US 2026, and it looks like the kind of thing that would be really useful not just for writers, but also business owners.

Right now, Dr. Wife and I have a number of little projects to get done around the house. One of the downsides of living in a rural area is that it can be difficult to find contractors. You have two options: search online, which has limited results at best (and, increasingly, I just ask AI, which I use as a glorified search engine); or ask people locally. Everybody “knows a guy”—or knows a guy who “knows a guy.”

The problem I run into is when I’m looking for some niche specialty. For example, right now we’re trying to get a garage door repaired. The door works, but it won’t close unless someone stands there and holds the button down until the door is completely closed. It’s one of those things that isn’t urgent, but it’s enough of a nuisance that I’d like to get it fixed. Well, searching for “garage door repair” pulls up all sorts of entities that may or may not exist, and may or may not be willing to come to us for service. They often barely have a website, or are just an unreliable floating in the ether.

[A quick aside: while writing this piece, one of the garage door repair dudes called me back; it turns out I just needed to adjust the sensors so that align better—and to dust the cobwebs off of them. There’s a reason I’m a teacher and not a skilled technician.]

It’s kind of crazy that it has to be said, but in 2026, you need a website; if you’re in business, you need an active, updated website. Even if you’re not conducting business, having a website is worthwhile (and WordPress.com makes it super easy to build one); it’s almost like a living résumé.

So what does all of this winging about websites have to do with WordCamp US 2026? Well, if I were looking to maintain a strong web presence using the easiest tools available (and WordPress.com currently has the easiest and most robust tools for public-facing entrepreneurial endeavors), I’d love to hear from people who are using and experimenting with WordPress.com every single day.

Indeed, of the many talks at WordCamp US 2026, there’s an entire talk about using WordPress.com as a operating system. It’s a concept that I can immediately visualize, but never thought of on my own (for which I am kicking myself now). If you’re a small business owner establishing an online presence with WordPress.com, to which many people already have some kind of account, being able to create an entire e-commerce ecosystem that functions a la an operating system is a pretty clever concept that, I imagine, removes many of the headaches of maintaining multiple logins, etc.

Maybe I’m reading too much into the promise or the purpose of the talk, but just the idea has my mind percolating. Imagine being awash in new ideas and conferencing and networking at WordCamp US 2026 for four days (and, again for only $80 with promo code AF26 here).

It’s also worth noting that, while you can use and learn WordPress.com just fine without flying to Phoenix, Arizona, the folks behind Automattic products and services (like WordPress.com,  Jetpack, and Akismet) will be there, it’s the perfect opportunity to learn how to use these services from the very people that program and maintain them.

Again, yours portly just uses the $8/month (when paid annually) “Premium” plan, which isn’t built for large-scale e-commerce, but if I were an entrepreneur with a more robust online business and/or a brick-and-mortar business, I’d likely use the WordPress.com “Business” plan ($25/month, when paid annually). Before I made such a leap, I’d do a good bit of research. Talking to folks at WordCamp US 2026 who make these products would be a fast-track to learning, I’d imagine.

Sure, we can learn a great deal now with AI and other resources, but I find that a conference helps me think about things I’d never consider searching for on my own. I get the impression that WordPress.com, while accessible to users, also holds depths of functionality that I’ve only begun to uncover. Seeing how other folks who have plumbed those depths would be a real education.

And for $80 (with promo code AF26), WordCamp US 2026 is the best deal in education.

To attend, get your tickets here.

Now, back to my to-do list—and hunting for contractors.

The Portly Politico is me, Tyler James Cook. I’ve been blogging on WordPress since 2018, and daily since 2019. I love to write about politics, culture, and music, and frequently feature my original music. Check out my musical creations here on the blog or on Bandcamp. —TPP

Bloggers, Unite: WordCamp US 2026

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you. Additionally, Automattic is (hopefully) compensating me for promoting WordCamp US 2026; you can get $20 off a general admission ticket with promo code AF26. —TPP

Last month I wrote four posts about WordPress.com and its various features. I’ve been using WordPress.com as my main platform for blogging and shameless self-promotion since 2018, and daily since 2019, so I’ve had eight years of experience working within its ecosystem.

A major part of that ecosystem is the community of writers and readers who share their stories and perspectives on their own WordPress.com sites (or at least in the comments section). It’s been pretty cool to develop links to great writers like Erin over at Existential Ergonomics; Audre Myers at Words on the Word; and Dave at Nebraska Energy Observer (not to mention frequent commenter and contributor Ponty, to whom I owe a deep debt of gratitude for his dedication to yours portly’s scribblings). It’s a sincere joy to exchange ideas with these and other writers, and to create our own little “blogosphere-within-the-blogosphere,” as it were.

An idea that gets floated from time to time is the blogger get-together. “Wouldn’t it be cool if we all met someday?” Surely it would, but the realities of travel, age, family commitments, and the fact that we’re all relative strangers (even if it feels like we’re not on the Internet) makes that dream more elusive than Audre’s beloved Bigfoot.

But what if there was a way to hang out with your favorite bloggers—and meet a lot of other writers, developers, designers, online retailers, and so on—in a safe setting under the auspices of WordPress.com/Automattic?

Well—you probably saw this coming—good news: WordCamp US 2026 (WCUS 2026) is coming to Phoenix, Arizona, for four days of networking, learning, and connecting. The event runs from Sunday, 16 through Wednesday, 19 August 2026 at the Phoenix Convention Center, and it’s only $100!

Actually, it’s only $80 for a general admission ticket with promo code AF26. You can purchase tickets here.

The folks behind Automattic products and services like WordPress.com,  Jetpack, and Akismet (I love Akismet; I would be buried beneath an avalanche of juicy spam if it weren’t for that service) will be there, so I imagine it would be a good opportunity to give in-person feedback (and/or to complain bitterly to the Happiness Engineers—pick your poison) to the people who make this ecosystem possible. Indeed, Sunday, 16 August 2026 is “Contributor Day,” which specifically is about collaborating “with fellow WordPress enthusiasts” to “help build the future of the platform” per the conference’s website.

I’ve never attended a WordPress.com event, but WordCamp US 2026 is the kind of event I’d like to attend if possible (and if airfare from the nearest airport to Phoenix is reasonable). The fact that it’s so affordable (again, just $80 with promo code AF26) makes it tantalizing. I’ve been blogging long enough that getting out to Arizona for a few days to learn more about it from the pros (and the people that make real money doing it) could be a worthwhile investment.

If nothing else, I could maybe write a sequel to my highly unsuccessful collection of travel essays, Arizonan Sojourn, South Carolinian Dreams: And Other Adventures.

But I digress. For those of you with a professional development budget, the $80 ticket price (again, with promo code AF26) is insane for four days of conferencing. If you use any Automattic services for your employer, this conference would be great to attend—your employer only shells out eighty bucks for the conference itself, and you get to go to Phoenix, Arizona for four days and rub elbows with your fellow nerds. Other than the location being in Phoenix in August (imagine the sweat by late afternoon, although I’m assured that the convention center is “fully air-conditioned”), it’d be an easy sell to your boss.

If you had an opportunity to attend WordCamp US 2026, what would you most like to learn? Should yours portly take the plunge, book the flight, and cover this conference in absorbing detail for the blog? Leave a comment and let me know!

Oh, and keep writing!

The Portly Politico is me, Tyler James Cook. I’ve been blogging on WordPress since 2018, and daily since 2019. I love to write about politics, culture, and music, and frequently feature my original music. Check out my musical creations here on the blog or on Bandcamp. —TPP

Lazy Sunday CCCXCIV: WordPress Posts

The Portly Politico12 Comments

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Over the course of June I’ve written four posts about WordPress.com and its various features. It’s been a pretty intensive overview of a service I’ve used for years, and I’m pretty pleased with the outcome.

Now that the series is complete (for now?), here are the entries I penned over the course of June 2026:

What do you think of WordPress.com? If you were to start blogging (if you weren’t already), would you use it, or opt for one of its competitors? Would you use multiple platforms? If you already use WordPress.com, what made you pick it over competitors? Have you ever considered jumping ship to another platform? Do you cross-post across multiple platforms?

Let me know! I’m curious.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

The Final Boss: WordPress vs. Substack

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

As we head into the end of June and reach the end of my series of pieces on WordPress.com (read the other installments here, here, and here). Last week I compared WordPress.com to Blogger/Blogspot, the platform I used to start my blog way back in 2009. This week, we arrive at the final boss of blogging platforms: Substack.

Even as I went to Substack to retrieve a link to it, the site and its writers sucked me in for a solid fifteen minutes. It’s why I’ve taken to calling the platform “Subcrack,” because it’s really good at roping in readers.

The secret to Substack’s appeal seems to be its unique blending of X’s short-form observations (“Notes” in Substack) and WordPress.com‘s long-form content. But there’s something more, too: the minimalism of Substack’s interface makes it a pleasure to read, especially when put in “Dark Mode.”

Yes, users have a degree of customization with their individual Substacks. They can change the homepage’s layout and the colors, but the customization is fairly limited beyond that. In some ways that limitation can be a strength, as it gives the sensation of experiencing many branches of one service, but I’ll get into that below.

I setup my own Substack page earlier this year, and I’ve been cross-posting my content from WordPress.com to Substack. While I still almost all of my long-form writing natively in WordPress.com‘s block editor, I use Substack primarily for its “Notes” functions—and to reach an audience that is almost entirely separate from the WordPress.com ecosystem.

As with last week’s post, I’m going to compare WordPress.com and Substack in three areas: overall interface (looking at the home screen, for example, when you first log into your account); the posting interface/editor; and the final published content (what the blogs look like when published).

Note that Substack is free for authors/creators. With WordPress.com I have the Premium plan, which is $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise). Substack does not have any inherently paid options for creators, but enables readers to pay for a subscription to their preferred creators. One way that Substack functions like X is that there might be many users, but only a handful of actual creators, although I’ve found that the Venn Diagram overlap is very high on Substack. Similarly, people can have a WordPress.com Gravatar without actually maintaining a blog, but that pool seems very small.

To illustrate, here’s a Venn Diagram I created in MS Paint based totally on vibes:

“Readers with an account” means those users who have an account with the service but only use it for commenting or “liking” posts, and not for writing posts or maintaining a blog-like presence themselves.

Regardless, the basic functionality of posting, checking analytics, etc., is analogous enough between Substack and WordPress.com to compare the two. I think it’s especially important because, right now, it seems like Substack is WordPress.com‘s biggest potential competitor in the blogosphere.

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Revisiting Blogger

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Back in 2018 I shifted The Portly Politico from the old Blogger/Blogspot to WordPress.com, and I’ve never looked back—until now.

I’ve dedicated the last two Wednesdays to highlight some of WordPress.com‘s functionality; you can read those posts here and here (for those of you that read last week’s post, I’m happy to report that I was able to deactivate the “Classic Editor” plugin with no ill effects—everything converted back to the blocks editor seamlessly). I thought it might be interested to go back and remind myself why I made the leap to WordPress.com, and to see if maybe I was too hasty in making the change.

I decided to compare Blogger/Blogspot to WordPress.com in three areas: overall interface (looking at the home screen, for example, when you first log into your account); the posting interface/editor; and the final published content (what the blogs look like when published).

Note that I have the free Blogger/Blogspot account that anyone with a Gmail e-mail address can get, while with WordPress.com I have the Premium plan, which is $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise). Blogger/Blogspot does not have any inherently paid options, but lacks the ability to purchase a domain name from Blogger/Google directly. You can purchase a domain name from a number of third-party providers (that’s my approach with www.tjcookmusic.com, which I built using Google Sites), but it’s not integrated into Blogger/Blogspot the way domain name purchases are in WordPress.com.

Regardless, the basic functionality of posting, checking analytics, etc., is analogous enough between Blogger/Blogspot and WordPress.com to make fruitful comparisons.

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The Impossible Dream: Restoration of Classic Editor in WordPress.com

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Last week I wrote about adapting to blocks in WordPress.com, as well as looking at some other changes WordPress.com has introduced recently, like badges and/or achievements for reaching certain milestones.  My overall verdict was that, while I miss the Classic Editor, blocks do offer a degree of versatility that make editing easier, even if there are some shortcomings to them.

While writing and researching that post, I noticed that there is a plugin native to WordPress.com that restores the Classic Editor—indeed, an almost even more “classic” version of it than I realized!—and realized that I had to give it a whirl.  Could it be that WordPress.com still had the coveted feature that many bloggers still crave?  And how would it stack up to the new block editing regime?

Everything you’re about to read is possible in any of the paid WordPress.com plans, including the Personal plan, which is $4 a month when paid annually (or $9 a month otherwise).  I use the Premium plan, which $8 a month when paid annually (or $18 a month otherwise).  I’m not sure if the Classic Editor plugin can be re-enabled in free plans; that said, if you use a free plan and it works, let me know!

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Adapting to Blocks in WordPress.com Editor

The Portly Politico10 Comments

Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

Longtime blogger Esoterica of Existential Ergonomics wrote a piece last Saturday that caught my attention: “Why Is WordPress Adding Achievements Now?” WordPress.com has long tracked “streaks” of daily consecutive posts starting with three days-in-a-row; indeed, that’s partially why I decided to start blogging daily way back in January 2019 (as of this post, it’ll be 2712 for yours portly), but now they’ve introduced little “badges” and achievements for more granular milestones.

Gamification through Achievements Incentivizes Writing

My comment on her post was to indicate my “mild resentment that the rewards and badges [aren’t] retroactive for the life of the blog, because I’d have several of the achievements already, haha!” But as I’ve reflected on that (admittedly selfish) initial reaction, I think what WordPress.com has done with introducing these achievements is very clever.

Consider: if I have been motivated to keep my daily streak going for 7.43 years just by a daily counter, imagine how much more motivating earning badges for specific milestones could be? Gamification works for a reason.

The new “activity streak” achievements, the old daily streak counter, and a new feature showing posts from that day in years past

Positive Changes: Plug-Ins

WordPress.com has instituted a number of changes lately with the aim of improving user functionality. One yuge change was opening up plug-ins to users with any paid plan, not just the $25-a-month Business plan. For years I’d been dying to add Disqus and Buy Me a Coffee (which, you know, you really should do, dear reader), the former because it’s used even more widely for comments sections than WordPress.com, the latter because I appreciate your support (cough cough). Adding that functionality was a real gift from the Happiness Engineers at Automattic.

My two plucky plug-ins in red; the spunky little “Classic Editor” (disabled) in green–more on the latter soon

So WordPress.com seems to be driving hard to improve the user experience, in ways that both benefit long-time users (like yours portly) and incentivize new users.

Most users will likely start with a free plan, which is how I began when I made the switch from Blogspot/Blogger back in 2018. As the blog grew, my desires to have a stronger presence and to monetize prompted me to spring for the $8-a-month (paid annually) “Premium” plan, which boasts a generous 13 GB of storage. Because I’m not selling handmade doilies and what-not through WordPress.com, Premium has been an excellent plan for my needs (the Business plan gets to the next level with all sorts of e-commerce features with WooCommerce, but that’s beyond my expertise). Coupled with WordPress.com‘s incentive structures and the addition of achievements, I could see many new bloggers posting more frequently and upgrading to at least the $4-a-month (paid annually) Personal plan (which has 6 GB of storage, which is very respectable if you’re primarily posting text and some pictures).

Adapting to the New Order: Blocks vs. Classic Editor

Now, one point of contention Esoterica and I both touched upon is the transition away from the Classic Editor to Blocks. WordPress.com rolled out its block editor some years ago, but maintained the option to use a “Classic” block. I had grown very accustomed to working with the Classic block editor, which essentially created one big “block” that allowed for doing everything that typically goes into a post: embedding video, uploading image galleries, etc. It worked very similar to a word processor, for example, but not as finicky.

For reference: a “block” is essentially a paragraph; indeed, one of the blocks is called “Paragraph,” and it’s the default block in WordPress.com. This paragraph block is teal because I designated its style as “Info”—TPP

Well, Blocks have grown on me, and I am beginning to understand the logic behind them. One issue I’d run into use the Classic block is that, if my PC crashed and I hadn’t exited the block to save my work, I could lose a substantial amount of writing. That happened frequently enough that I’d leave the block, save, and then return to it. However, that seriously disrupts work flow.

Of course, learning a new way of blogging, including how to embed video and upload images, was a bit disruptive, too—at first. When one uses a certain format or program for so long, inertia can set in, so that even changes that are ultimately beneficial can seem annoying. For example, the first time I wanted to upload multiple pictures in one block, I realized that I could not simply use the “Image” block, but instead had to use the “Gallery” block; the former only allows one image to be uploaded, while the latter permits multiple image uploads.

For new users, however, the learning curve—which is very shallow to begin with—will be a breeze; it’s just us old grognards that will take a few weeks to adapt. I think I have already; in yesterday’s post, I was able to move blocks around seamlessly to get the kind of layout I wanted. With the old Classic editor and/or the Classic block, pulling off those New Music Tuesday posts, which include embedded video, images, and audio was much more difficult (I wrote about formatting these posts more extensively back in January).

Editing with multiple blocks—Paragraph, Audio, and Image (not pictured but also used: Youtube Embed)

Also, it seems that the Classic Editor is still around in the form of a plug-in! I wasn’t brave enough to engage it while writing this post, but I’m going to activate it at some point and report on my findings; stay tuned!—TPP

Conclusions

WordPress.com has really been stepping up its game in terms of engaging bloggers to do what we do best—blog! Anything that incentivizes writing, while also making multimedia posts more intuitive and user-friendly, deserves praise. While it took some adjusting, I’m learning to embrace the new block editor (well, new-ish to me—it’s been the norm for years) and explore its possibilities. There are blocks I’m only just learning exist, and it’s stimulating intellectually and creatively to explore what this spunky platform can do.

If you’re thinking of starting a blog, first of all—do it. I’m all about more people creating. We need that as a civilization! Secondly, WordPress.com is the institutional leader in the blogosphere. I’ll discuss the pros and cons of other platforms in a future post, but WordPress.com still comes out on top.

As I wrote back in January:

I’ve been really pleased with the functionality of WordPress.com, which also comes with Jetpack built in.  Jetpack has functionality I’ve only begun to explore; that said, I love its Akismet anti-spam system. According to Akismet, it’s blocked 13,830 spam comments in the past six months alone—and 141,377 over seven-plus years I’ve been writing this blog[.]

I think those Akismet numbers are way higher now—ha!

Happy Blogging!

—TPP

The Portly Politico is me, Tyler James Cook. I’ve been blogging on WordPress since 2018, and daily since 2019. I love to write about politics, culture, and music, and frequently feature my original music. Check out my musical creations here on the blog or on Bandcamp. —TPP

Pulp Brainstorming with WordPress AI

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Note: the following post contains affiliate links.  I receive a portion of any purchases made through these links, at no additional cost to you.  —TPP

On Saturday I wrote at length about my idea for a physical, portable, monthly (now, after some feedback, likely quarterly) publication packed with fast-paced, pulp-style fiction for readers who are hungry to read short stories but don’t want to do so on a screen.  I suspect there is a significant niche audience for this kind of publication, and it dovetails with my calls for conservatives to support like-minded authors.  In an age of AI and online publishing, there is a segment of the population that craves authenticity and good storytelling.

Paradoxically, I turned to AI to begin brainstorming this idea.  Regular readers will know that I am an AI-skeptic.  I believe some aspects of AI are corrosive to creativity, such as doing actual writing (and, therefore, thinking) for humans; however, AI is hugely useful as a sounding board to conceptualize an idea.  That is especially useful when an AI inspires real-world human creativity, and I think it can be powerful as an aid to human creativity, so long as we don’t make it a replacement for it.

That said, WordPress.com has their own AI-powered website builder, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to play around with it.  I was initially torn about the ethics of creating a website using WordPress AI, but the way I look at it is that WordPress is offering a series of text-based prompts to create a website using tools that are readily available to WordPress.com users; it’s just offering up choices to users that they might not realize are native to WordPress.com.

In essence, the AI isn’t creating the website instead of the user, but is responding to the user’s prompts to design a website with the user.  Ultimately, the final product is the result of substantial user input.

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