A few years ago, when we began to offer domain mapping—serving a WordPress.com blog on your domain, like example.com—we omitted DNS control because we didn’t count on many people needing it. Soon we tired of saying “no” to users wanting email on their blog domains so we added limited support for Google-hosted email. Recently we tired of saying “no” to users wanting DNS control so today we deployed a DNS editor for custom domains.

The Edit DNS link is on the Domains page.

This free enhancement is available to everyone who uses domain mapping on WordPress.com. The ability to add some common DNS records (MX, TXT, CNAME, A) opens the door for services hosted elsewhere to work under the same domain as your blog. Integrating other hosted services with your domain, such as email (you@example.com) or other kinds of web content (wiki.example.com), can make your dot-com a more powerful branding tool. We hope it makes WordPress.com a better choice for bloggers all over the internet.

Media is a big part of my life. Showing friends a slideshow of a weekend excursion is a common occurrence. When blogging these photos, displaying them in a long gallery doesn’t always make sense.There wasn’t any other option to show off the images uploaded to your WordPress.com blog until now.

Today, we’re rolling out 100% JavaScript powered slideshows. But, why did I bother to mention that they’re JavaScript powered? Most importantly, because we’re consuming the web in different ways. Our JavaScript powered slideshows will work in any browser that supports CSS and JavaScript – even the iPad and iPhone!

The slideshows are simple and straightforward. Upload your photos as a gallery, then click the “Insert slideshow” button, or use the [slideshow] shortcode. The slideshow automatically adjusts its dimensions to fit your blog’s theme.

Without further ado, here are some pictures I took while visiting some zoos over the years.

This feature is currently only available on WordPress.com. A WordPress.org/self-hosted plugin will be available soon.

We’ve always sort-of had profiles here on WordPress.com — you probably remember giving your name and such when you first signed up for WordPress.com — but they’ve always been a little lame. You’d see your information when you wrote comments, or with some themes, or on the forums. Such basic functionality worked, but you guys have been asking for richer profiles that showed a bit more personality and were as easy and ubiquitous as your Gravatar.

These days you’re not just blogging on WordPress, you’re also posting photos on Flickr, updating your friends on Facebook, and Tweeting (Buzzing?) about everything in between.

What if your Gravatar wasn’t just an image that showed up when you comment, but you could attach more of yourself to it to better represent your style, flair, and personality not just with more photos but with links to all the cool stuff you’re doing around the web.

That’s what Gravatar profiles are, and they’re now live to the world and easy to edit right inside your dashboard.

We’re continuing the tradition of complete openness and transparency that Gravatar (and WordPress) has been known for, so nothing you put into your profile will be locked behind proprietary APIs or a scary terms of service — what you choose to share in your profile will be open to the world.

You’ll find some cool features on the new profiles: you can have a gallery of your favorite photos, add a variety of contact methods, and link your other profiles. Every linked account is verified so you know it’s not an impostor, and we also might be able to do cool stuff in the future like aggregate your content or update your avatar in multiple places when you update Gravatar.

While we’re all getting familiar with this new system, you will only be able to view your own profile on Gravatar.com, so you’ll have a bit of time to spruce it up before we’re out of beta. Check out this handsome fellow:

Sample profile on Gravatar.com

To edit your profile on WordPress.com just click this link. From there you can edit all of your information to build out your profile. Some of the links will go through to Gravatar.com, since that is the engine behind all of this, and you can also go edit it on Gravatar.com instead, it’s the same thing.

Edit your Public Profile

Personal settings and options now have their own page in the “Personal Settings” sidebar menu under “Users” in your dashboard.

Profiles will become public for everyone soon so make sure to check yours out and update it to include (or leave out) exactly what you want. If you remove all information from your profile, then other people will only be able to see your Gravatar, just like right now.

March 24 was Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. Over on the Publisher Blog we highlighted two women in the WordPress community.

Today, we’re bringing you another new theme. Neutra is a simple and elegant theme. Dabs of color accent this typographically focused theme built upon a solid grid-based design.

Neutra

The design is extremely inviting. Colors accent the white and gray design, helping showcase your content without distraction. The headers are quite warm and inspiring.

Neutra's Colorful Headers

Nice icons accompany the post metadata that sits at the bottom of the post.

Post Metadata

To make organization of pages easy, there is a nice styled drop-down menu.

Drop-down Menus

Neutra was designed by maxxu and is available in your dashboard or in the WordPress.org themes directory.