Recommend blogs in the WordPress.com Reader
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Over at WordPress.com, we recently added a new feature to the WordPress.com Reader. You can now build a list of blogs you like, and recommend them to others.
What if your readers could help your blog grow? What if the writers you love could introduce their audience to yours?
That’s the idea behind recommended blogs, a feature now available in the WordPress.com Reader that lets you share the blogs you enjoy most with your own audience.
Since the WordPress.com Reader lets you follow any site that supports RSS, you can recommend blogs on any platform or CMS. As long as the site includes an RSS feed, you’ll be good to go!
You can view my recommended blogs in my WordPress.com Reader profile.
Ever the champion of the Open Web, @davew asked me if one could fetch those recommended blogs to show in their own app or tools. Since this is WordPress.com, recommended blogs are indeed available via the WordPress.com REST API. There are different endpoints one can use to fetch and show recommended blogs. All you need to get started is a WordPress.com username.
Side-note: WordPress.com usernames are also Gravatar usernames, so once you have a Gravatar username, you can show all sorts of information the person chose to make public in their profile:
Once you have a WordPress.com username, you can make a request to
rest/v1.2/read/lists/<username>/recommended-blogs/itemsto get a list of their recommended blogs:
We also have another endpoint you can use to export the list in OPML format:
wpcom/v2/read/lists/<list-ID>/export. You can get that list ID from the API response just above. That can be handy if you then want to import the list in your own Reader!
If you haven’t tried the WordPress.com Reader yet, this could be a good opportunity to give it a try!
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Could you check that the ActivityPub plugin is still active on your site? You seem to be using the Friends plugin but the ActivityFun plugin itself seems disabled.
You can also post in the plugin’s support forums if that doesn’t help ; we’ll be happy to help!
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If you’re an old-time blogger, you probably remember Freshly Pressed. 16 years ago (!), the folks at WordPress.com launched a new blog where they highlighted interesting blog posts from the WordPress.com community every week.
We iterated on the idea a few times over the years but the main idea stayed the same:
a curated collection of posts that entertained, enlightened, and inspired. It was our way of saying “we like you, we really like you” to creators, and amplifying their great work for others to find.
Great Writing Deserves a Spotlight: Freshly Pressed Is BackFreshly Pressed went away for the past few years, but I’m happy to say that my team brought it back! It’s got a fresh coat of paint and most importantly, it’s got quite a few interesting blog posts already!
Im really happy and proud that we were able to get this done. Today, more than ever, I think we could use a bit more humanity on the web.
The old web felt like a city. You could turn down a random alley and find a weird little shop. You could get lost and discover something beautiful by accident. You could end up in a tiny shop you didn’t know existed or sit on a bench and people-watch.
Now it’s a mall. Every path leads past a store. Every store wants something from you. Even the “public” space is engineered to keep you moving toward purchase.
Straight from today’s Freshly Pressed post, I miss being unmarketable on the internet.So check some of those blogs out. Give them a Like. Leave a comment. Start following them. And if you find good potential candidates for the next Freshly Pressed post, send them my way! All you need to be featured is a WordPress.com or self-hosted WordPress site running the Jetpack plugin, and most importantly, an interesting, or funny, or unique story to tell!
Bonus: if you’re more of an RSS person, you can also get Freshly Pressed posts straight in your RSS reader via this feed. Pinging @davew, I know you’re always looking for good feeds 🙂
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@king @pfefferle c5
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I’m not a big podcast listener, but I wanted to share the few podcasts I enjoyed in 2025. The list will be short.
My most listened podcast this year was once again Worlds Beyond Number. If you’re not familiar, it’s an immersive (i.e. with custom music and sound design) storytelling / actual play podcast, with Brennan Lee Mulligan (of Dropout, Dimension 20, and now Critical Role Fame) as the main gamemaster. Their main story, The Wizard, The Witch, and the Wild One kept me wanting more for the whole year. I subscribe to their Patreon so I also get access to their exclusive content on the Fireside podcast, and it’s definitely worth it. Part of their exclusive content is extra stories set in same world as the main story, and I found each one of them almost better than the main story.
Book 1 of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One has now come to an end but they continue to tell stories. Of note, a 4-parter based on the board game Cluedo (aka Clue for folks in the US) that was way better than it had any right to be!
I would consequently strongly recommend Worlds Beyond Number if you’re looking for a new podcast in 2026.
The problem with such great podcasts is that it’s hard to find anything just as good when you eventually catch up with all the episodes. I struggled with that in 2025, tried many different Actual Play podcasts. I only found one that I would recommend: Fables of Frost and Fur, by Roll for Impact. That campaign ended up being my second most listened podcast of the year.
As for the other top podcasts on my list, they’re all podcasts for kids in French and in Hungarian, so probably not something most of you will be interested in! 🙂
If you have recommendations for more Actual Play podcasts for me to discover in 2026, let me know!
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I am a fan of The Dresden Files. If you’re not familiar, it’s a series of 18 books written by Jim Butcher. The first book was published 26 years ago. In the books, you dive into the world of Harry Dresden, a private investigator in Chicago. Add in a bit of a noir atmosphere, good humor, and a bit of a buddy cop feel at times thanks to Harry’s consulting work with Karrin Murphy, police officer at Chicago PD. You get the idea. Oh, and I forgot a tiny detail: Harry is a wizard! In this world, vampires, werewolves, and fairies are real. Harry Dresden is listed in the Chicago phone book:
HARRY DRESDEN — WIZARD
Lost Items Found. Paranormal Investigations.
Consulting. Advice. Reasonable Rates.
No Love Potions, Endless Purses, Parties or Other EntertainmentI personally discovered the series 3 years ago via the audiobooks. I listened to the 4 first books and was hooked. It helped that the audiobooks were narrated by James Marsters (yes, Spike from Buffy!). He is a great narrator and his voice work was a perfect match for the series.
Fast forward to today, Twelve Months, the 18th book in the series just landed on my Kindle. You can order yours from the author’s store here.
Time to get back into the story! It’s been a while since the last book though, so I put together a refresher (thank you Claude) that I sent to my Kindle. I’ll read it, as well as the last few chapters of the last book, to get ready before to start the new book.
If you could use a refresher too, feel free to download the PDF below.
The Dresden Files: Series Summary (Books 1-17) — A comprehensive recap to prepare you for Book 18Download
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@tchambers The Forkiverse is a Mastodon instance (theforkiverse.com) created by the hosts of the New York Times’ Search Engine and Hard Fork podcasts a few weeks ago. They created the instance to discover the Fediverse, and learned a lot in the process. The 2 podcasts are quite popular, so it brought a lot of new folks to the Fediverse.
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@matthiasott It makes pancakes lighter, more airy. I personally replace half of the milk by something sparkling. Fuzzy water is an option, but beer is better. Apple cider is best! It gives a nice taste of apple to the pancakes!
