For those of you who want to take your blog to the next level in 2011 (perhaps you’ve stepped up to the Post a Day or Post a Week challenge), we’ve got your back. From now on, we’ll be offering tips on blogging best practices to help you produce high-quality content, boost your readership, and [...]

I love winter and I bet you do too but if you’re like me you probably don’t like the cold very much. You might be wishing you could take a trip to a beach somewhere right about now. Well, if you can’t make it to the beach yourself how about taking your blog there? Today’s [...]

Learn WordPress.com is a step-by-step tutorial that includes lessons on how to start a blog, customize your site, and connect with other bloggers in the WordPress.com community. It’s a great resource for anyone who: Wants to create a blog but isn’t quite sure where to start Needs help choosing a blog topic Wants to better [...]

Are you the type of person who enjoys simple and uncluttered looks on a theme? Clean Home, our new addition, is a crisp and structured theme wielding a traditional two column layout with two widgets areas. But don’t let Clean Home’s simple looks deceive you since it hides some great functionality to help you personalize [...]

Last year we—the Theme Team—were quite busy, not only offering you 29 great new themes, but also improving the themes you already love and use on your WordPress.com sites. In case you haven’t looked closely at your theme in a while we’d like to point out several recent improvements. Custom Menus 61 of our themes [...]

There is a saying among writers: to write more, write more. The hardest part of blogging isn’t the tools – it’s what goes on between your ears. Many people start blogs with excitement, but lose courage when facing the blank post page, or chicken out before hitting publish. Here at WordPress.com, we know. And we’re [...]

The holidays make for a crazy time of year. You’re spending time with family, traveling, maybe enjoying some winter weather. All of this can help you create wonderful blog posts. Here are a couple tips on how to let your blog shine as you head into the new year. Blogging made easy Press This is [...]

The short version of this story is that the contact form on WordPress.com has been upgraded. But that leaves out so many of the juicy details A couple of months ago we took a step back to look at what sort of things the contact form needed and what it could be. While this is [...]

Last year we started a little tradition, commissioning an illustration to give away as desktop wallpaper during the holidays. This year, Spanish artist Gary Fernández has created a wintry forest scene filled with curious characters who have great taste in blogging platforms. Friends in the southern hemisphere, we love you too, but if you haven’t [...]

Do you love WordPress.com themes? Have you ever wished you could view all the available themes without being logged into your dashboard? Curious how other WordPress.com sites use the theme you’re using? Want to be sure you’re using your theme to its full potential? If you answered yes to any of those questions you’ll be [...]

I’ve moved my blogging to a new site: http://tsunoda.tumblr.com Come check it out. Marhaba! Filed under: Uncategorized

Happy Halloween! I’d like to write about the spiritual life in Morocco outside of Islam—in the spirit of the American holiday that I regret, is not celebrated here but is known. Moroccans believe in three types of spirits or rruH: L’maLaika (angels), L’jin (genies), and S’sayatin (demons). Angels and demons are wholly good and bad respectively. [...]

(Written October 15, 2008) One common concern among Peace Corps Volunteers is mastering a foreign language. From what I have seen so far, almost every member of my training class has studied a foreign language at one point, and everyone in my immediate Community-Based Training (CBT) Group is fluent in at least one other language. Derija mgribi, [...]

(Written October 12, 2008) If you’re traveling to Morocco and can only learn a couple words before you leave, I would recommend these two outside of the normal greeting “s-salam allykum” and thank you or “shukran.” Shweeya is most commonly used to mean “a little.” Though this word can be used to also mean, “a little,” “sketchy,” “kind [...]

(Written October 12, 2008) One of the first obstacles that I’ve encountered while in Morocco has been not having easy access to cafés. In many towns (and our CBT site is no exception), cafés are frequented only by the men and maybe the occasional ignorant tourist. Coming from Paris where I practically lived by jumping from [...]

(Written October 4, 2008) An important phase of my training is ending, and I am headed back to the Seminar Site in Azrou, to check in with the Youth Development Staff. We’ven been at our CBT (Community-Based Training) site for about two weeks. In Azrou, I will see the other Youth Development Trainees, debrief about the [...]

(Written September 30, 2008) On the eve of Leid, or the end of Ramadan, I had my first formal cooking lesson with my host mom. Mothers all around our town were hard at work making cookies, which usually include almonds, in order to serve them he next morning to friends and family. Khadija, my host mom, [...]

(Written September 28, 2008) Today was the last Saturday of Ramadan, the holiest month of the Islamic Calendar, which means that my host family and other Muslims in Morocco celebrate “The Night of Power.” My host father, Hamid, owns a photo store off the main road and up the hill. The Night of Power is an [...]

(Written September 26, 2008) The bulk of my Pre-Service Training (PST) is spent at a CBT (Community-Based Training) site. The entire class of Peace Corps Trainees has been subdivided by language and technical skills. There are five groups total, with an average six trainees in each. My CBT group is the smallest and is headed for [...]

We’ve officially broken into our derija language books and some members of this incoming class of Peace Corps Volunteers are beginning to take studying very seriously. From what I’ve learned, many of the volunteers in our group have had some instruction in French or have taken Standard Arabic sometime in the past two years. There [...]

My Peace Corps Trainee Group (both Small Business Development (SBD) and Youth Development (YD)) is truly a diverse crowd that represents a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds, a good sample of America. An overwhelming majority of the members are in their mid-twenties and the group is pretty evenly split between men and women. Some [...]