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The "New" post.

We have made a couple of updates to the polls and ratings feature on WordPress.com that you may have already noticed.

Ratings on front page

There is now an option in the ratings settings to allow you to display your posts ratings on the front page.

Usage is very simple – pick whether you want the rating above or below the post, and save.

Your ratings will now appear on your blogs front page… nice!

Poll Options Menu

You may have noticed a new menu option under the polls menu – Options.

Here you can import another PollDaddy account if you wish to access another account from your WordPress dashboard.

Using the default poll settings, you can set your typical poll settings, like a custom style. Then with each new poll created, these default settings are loaded automatically, saving you time and hassle.

Expiration limit on block repeat voting

There is an additional setting in the poll editor that allows you to set a limit on how long to block repeat voters.

Just choose one of the block options, select how long you wish to block repeat voting and save your poll.

We have also made a few minor updates like adding support for right-to-left (RTL) languages, and tightening permissions. The WordPress.org plugin has also been updated with these changes and with a few additional ones detailed on the PollDaddy blog.

You can find out more details on the support page.

Since our Post by Email feature opened last year the emails have been coming in fast and furious. Here’s a wrap-up of some of the latest improvements.

Bigger attachments
We like to see photos and video in your posts, so we’ve increased the size of emails that can be sent, now up to 50MB. Anything you can upload to WordPress.com can be sent in an email and will be neatly placed on your post.

Better image handling
In conjunction with this we’ve also improved our image handling so your photos look even better, particularly when teamed up with duotone, a great new photo theme.

Perfect for mobile photo blogging
If you have a camera-enabled mobile phone this makes for a very powerful photo blogging tool. If you need some inspiration check out Matt on his one-man-and-his-phone photo and video journey around the world. We’ll even geotag any posts, if sent from a GPS enabled phone.

Now with polls
Opinions are an important part of any blog and you can now create PollDaddy polls by email. Just include a special shortcode:

[poll]
Is Post by Email great?
* Absolutely
* Maybe
* I like eggs
[/poll]

We’ll do the rest so you end up with a poll like this:

Tell Twitter and Yahoo
If you’re using our Publicize service to send updates to Twitter or Yahoo you can customize the message in your email, and enable or disable specific targets.

[publicize twitter]check out my latest post[/publicize]

Location enabled
Are you a keen trekker and have a Spot GPS device? Send your emails to WordPress.com and we’ll show them on a map so people can follow your journey.

Details, details, details
Don’t forget that you can also set the post title, tags, and category of any email:

[title Animals I like]
[tags lion,penguin,mole]
[category elephant]

You can find the full list of shortcodes on the Post by Email support page.

On a final open-source note, we’ll be releasing the code for Post by Email soon, so all you WordPress.org users can install it on your own self-hosted sites.

Thinking of moving your blog from Vox.com to WordPress.com? You are not alone.

We’ve noticed that several people are dissatisfied with the service and want to move their blog elsewhere. A lot of people that we’ve heard from say they didn’t realize that there is no way to export from Vox and are looking for a solution.

Vox users have at least one option now: create a free blog here at WordPress.com, then import your Vox blog. (And never be locked in again — we make your data as free as possible.)

After logging into your WordPress.com Dashboard, click on Tools -> Import.

Click on the Vox importer.

Type in your Vox host name, user name, and password and click the Submit button.

The importer will first validate your user name and password. After starting the importer, you can sit back and watch the status counters tick away.

You can also safely leave the importer page or close your browser. The importer will keep running.

Currently, the importer can import posts, tags, comments, and image attachments.

We will send you an email when the import is finished. Easy peasy!