Last month, the Support team (also known as Happiness Engineers) got together to brainstorm new ways of providing you with the features and resources you need.
Out of that meetup came a number of improvements and features, like the RSS Links Widget, introduced earlier this month. Another is the Image Widget, launching today.
In the past, it was necessary to use HTML in a text widget to display images in your sidebar. Now all you have to do is plop a URL in the image widget. The rest is done for you. If you’d like to set a title, alternate text, and image size, it’ll do that, too.

And there’s more cool stuff coming your way:
We’ve made some improvements to the Support contact form, and a better search for Support is in the works. We’ve made some internal changes, too, that will help our growing team answer your questions even more efficiently.
There’s now a Hugs page to display some of the positive feedback we receive from those of you who write in to Support. It brightens our day to hear that we’ve helped out, so we’re sharing a bit of that love. 🙂
Maybe most excitingly, we’re going to start providing Support in other languages — a much-requested feature. The first of these will be French, with several others to follow. We’ll post announcements here when each is launched.
As always, another excellent move. Bravo WP!
cool, about time lol and I can’t access the hugs page, it shows blank so I’ll just leave my hug here and write, Thanks for the new widget and new features *hugs*
Whoops, forgot to remove a security check. Should be able to get to the Hugs page now.
This seems static. A better idea would be to have a dynamic image widget where an already posted picture would rotate daily from blog archives allowing visitors to click on it to read the blog post from the past. Perhaps I’m talking about a different widget altogether but I think it would be more useful.
Cool. Maybe WP will add a slideshow widget next. Thanks!
almost as awesome as unicorns!
That is so great ; )
Now people who had difficulty with HTML will find it easy to place images in the sidebar!
The Hugs page is a pretty nice idea, too.
Cheers
Must it be an image which is stored on *another* website?
Can’t I use one of the images you have stored for my WordPress blog, e.g. embedded in a page or a post?
And if yes, can you please provide an example?
You can use any image URL. An example is the image used in this post. The URL is `https://wordpress.com/blog/files/2009/09/image-widget-example.png`
Wonderful!
You guys do such a great job. THANK YOU.
Cute 🙂
Better support for the win! 🙂
Does the widget allow to have the clickable URL to open in a new window? That would make it perfect!
A big HUG from my side too….
Ok. I have tried it and it works fine
Gotta love widgets 😀
every visual feature is like a lavish chocolate topping on the blog 😀 *hugs*
You guys are making this blogging thing a little too easy. 😀
Awesome!!
It’s cool. I think it would be more useful.
I love it 🙂
The image widget will come in handy. Waiting for the more “cool stuff” in the pipeline! 🙂
I keep hugging you [though not as warmly as most of them in that page]! Hope to see myself in the ‘hall of fame’ sometime! Please also start an appreciation page for people who have been most helping in the forums. 🙂
P.S.: My blog views have crossed 50K and I am soon moving to .org! 😀
That is awesome! Thanks so much!
Oh and if some brain comes up with a way to do what Ismailimail said, that would be super cool too!
ten thousand thank-yous for the imagewidgie
you folks read my mind–thank you! looking forward to using this!
yes, awesome. Though I still do not understand why WP.com do not accept javascript… In my opinion I just can’t understand why this could be happenning in the biggest blog plataform. There’s nothing more to prove or to avoid so why not to enable full features for professional bloggers. Another point is why to collect (I know is a low price) for making template modifications (CSS…). I am not willing to migrate to another plataform but TODAY I can see many features at Blogger that, hard to believe, WP.com do not make available… Congratulations for any improvement but still very shy ones…
thanks
thanks
Very good; I’ll take it (grin).
thats its so cool and great 4 the inexpert people in html
ah much easier! 🙂
awesome guys, I can’t wait to test it.
The innovations at WP are always appreciated. This make life much easier for me with several live weather images I use.
Sweet! Now I don’t have to use the Text Widget to post pictures!
Spiffulosity! Up with unicorns and widgets!
The image widget is going to make my life MUCH more interesting. OK, not my whole life, just the blogging part of it. I have already thought of twelve new things to try and I haven’t even gone over to look at it yet. Now about a widget to make coffee . . .
Love the Image widget it makes it a lot easier instead of the coding all the time. Thanks guys great job as usual.
YES! I was just thinking a few days ago that ya’ll needed to do this! Thanks!!!!
once again WP never run out of ideas that is something special, I hope you are gazzilionares, you sure help my business XX
For the inexperienced blog user, this may be good, but for many of us, it doesn’t give us anything we weren’t already capable of doing.
Given this could be done with HTML, how about giving us something that we couldn’t do with HTML. I agree with one of the other comments about something dynamic or let us emulate something that would normally require javascript to do, given that hosted wordpress doesn’t allow javascript.
I speak for the WordPress.com community when I say thank you for releasing new features regularly!
Nice job once again!
it is ok, thanks
K-ewl! Thank you, people . . .
🙂
As always WP is making simple things simpler.
About time! Great job.
Good move on the sidebar image widget. It’s a big help!
Yay for easy images!
Time to spice up the already-spicy political commentary 😛
WP just gets better and better.
Fantastic!
@ Nick
Thank you for the explanation.
But I need more than one picture (slide, album…). The “Text widget” doesn’t allow embed flash, iframe or javascript code 😦
I’m sorry, but we don’t allow iframes, Flash or javascript anywhere on WordPress.com, for security reasons.
Thank you!
I like the other name for support team — happiness engineers. haha. ❤
This is definitely a plus. WordPress gets better and better by the day!
Awesome! Hope this goes for GIFs too ^^
that’s great, before I used text widget to put image, now that is an official way, thanks
I would love to help you do the Support in Spanish. If there is any way I can help, let me know 🙂
Thanks! One way you can help is contributing translations to translate.wordpress.com!
thanks for improving yourself for us!
I love it! Makes the task so much easier. Thank you and God Bless.
Shiny!
Thanks, as always, for all your hard work, guys. Truly, we appreciate it.
Way to go, WordPress! w00t!!!
was needed.
thanks
awesome 🙂
I propose that this widget has the choice of target.
Example html: target=”_blank”
But, we always can use text widget
greetings
thanks a lot, it is pretty nice idea, like it
is there anything else like this to wait?
open the secret, what is upcoming?
excellent
excellent
excellent
excellent
lanjutkan!!!!
This one is much needed and facilitates a lot for those of us who are not html-wizards. Palms together!
Irina
hats off to this fantastic team…. m always wid WP
holy cow, i love this. thank you! you guys are so great. thank you for all of your hard work.
It is good, and i wish it can be more effective to many people.
Well done team! It just gets better and better! Thank you.
Saving us time and making life simple. Thanks.
awesome improvement!! Thank heaps WP!! ❤
Awesome WordPress!!
Yes, nice idea and thank you…
And to those complaining about javascript stuff, yes, I’d like to have it too, but I would *not* like to have the problems that friends of mine on other hosting services have had because of javascript. WP is stable and secure, and that matters more to me than any fancy widget.
Thanks again, team:)
Great………, This is going to very useful for Photo blogging. I will try this. I am still waiting for excellent photo blogging theme.
Cool – I’m going to try out the image widget! It is exactly what I needed!
Thank you!
-nathan
I’m right behind these guys… headin’ over to try out the new image widget! Woo Hoo! Thanks! You guys are the best! <>
A slideshow widget would be cool. But this is pretty cool too. 🙂
I’ve bounced around between different blog hosts since 2003, and let me just say that I think WordPress is by FAR the BEST. 🙂 You guys do more stuff to make the user experience so cool. Great job. 🙂
wow wow wow, thanks heaps for making our lives on this WPLand easier and easier. ❤
hay salamat. (thanks, i mean).
A long awaited feature finally here. Thanks so much!
I inserted a live webcam of the city i’m living in just using the Image Widget. It is straight forward to use it!
Thanks!
cool 😎
I’ll check it out.
Gonna start playing around with this asap.
Thanks,wordpress is really great
WordPress, you rock!!
Yeh. Thanks a lot! I like this widget. Next time for slide show widget.
HOT DIGGITY DAMN! I use tons of images on my blog so this is PERFECT!
Thanks wordpress!
(Now how about you make it possible to use the WordPress audio player in the sidebar 🙂 )
I know you creative and very thoughtful WordPress geniuses are working to make your Image Upload screen fully interactive with Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice-recognition software for those of us with blog-burned hands. I will promise a positively gushy comment to your Hugs line!
Oooh, that’s fabulous!!
Very helpful for the HTML challenged-two thumbs up!
the wordpress is really great platform for make the blog….Its updates are high tech….
Ive been waiting for you guys to do an image thing that was easier! I liked the changes they made on blogspot, you just do one thing instead of 4 like in wordpress. Hopefully this will cut down on things and save us time..
thanks for making our posting easier.. we appreciate it 🙂
makes it easy
tnx
if the image is stored on your computer it has no url. did i miss something?
If the image isn’t hosted on the web, you’ll need to upload your image to the Media Library first and use the provided WordPress.com URL.
What a wonderful coincidence! I was playing around with the text widget image insertion and I had difficulties so I gave up and now you’re giving me an easy solution. The wordpress fairy heard my pleas! Thanks so much!
Wow things just cant be hard in here…Thanks loads WP!!!!…
Just added it. A valuable addition to the Flickr access I offer in the sidebar.
Now, I can add whatever happens to be my latest fave photo from one of my walks here in La Cieneguilla. Regular visitors already love it.
Yey!
Thanks sooo much! I know HTML but this is AMAZING!