Months ago we added the ability for readers to like your posts, and ever since thousands of people have been liking posts every day. But something was missing: there was no way for post authors to discover when someone liked something they’d written. Or even when someone new subscribed to the entire blog.
Today, these problems have been solved: We’ve added two new email notifications, one for likes and one for subscriptions.
Post authors will receive an email notification from WordPress.com, telling them which post was liked and who it was. And blog owners will receive an email when someone new subscribes to their blog. This gives instant feedback every time your post or blog gets some positive attention.
If email notifications are not for you, no problem. You can turn these notifications off by going to Dashboard→Settings→Discussion and deactivating the appropriate checkbox under “Email me whenever”.
And if you have a particularly active blog, we decided to leave some features off by default so you wouldn’t be annoyed. You can turn them on if you wish as described above. More details can be found in the support page for email notifications.
WordPress.com News 
Will this like function implement into the stats system in wordpress, it will be easier to look at as all our view stats are in the stat system?
Is this email system notifies every time a person likes? or they actually compile a list of people like a month?
We’re looking into ways to integrate more with existing stats pages. You will get an email every time a user likes one of your posts.
I cnn’t fellow all. I’m alone for a big blog and I cann’t have times to discover all fonctions.
I love this new improvement. Everytime i receive such an email telling me someone liked my post, i feel thrilled so much. Thank you wordpress.com team.
This is great news as now I won’t need to check periodically. Thank you for finding ways to make the site even better!
Wrote a post some time ago indicating that readers could “like” my posts if they chose to do so. So far only 1 response. Either they don’t care to take the time, or I’m missing the mark on what I write. Kudos to those who are “liked” a lot. Congrats, and keep making your readers happy! And Happy Thanksgiving, wordpress. Thanks for giving me a platform from which to share…hugmamma.
Excellent, I’ve only just started 3 blogs and am really enjoying it – the additional features will be very welcome.
GreaT work. Thank you.
clever idea, excellent facility…thank you…
This enhancement gives hope to those of us who would like to see more meaningful site statistics from WP – such as “unique visitors.” Since you only report to us “page views” we don’t whether we’ve had 20 visitors or 1 visitor who viewed 20 pages. These more meaningful stats would enable us to improve our blogs, improve the experience for our site visitors, and drive more usage (which, of course, helps WP). By contrast, knowing the identity of someone who “liked” is far less valuable. In fact, in my case, I do not want to know any of the identities of people who visit my blog but I very much want to know how they are using the site so that I can serve them better.
Liked!
That’s good you will know that you are appreciated for your efforts.
i want my f-like and wordpress like to be integrated; any suggestions?
In order to reblog a post you like you now have to first click the Like button and then select reblog. Could WP maken this a one click feature or even a ( optional) special button ?
We’re planning on working more on the reblogging features, so watch this space.
Wait, so when someone subscribes using the ‘subscribe’ button at the top of the page; I get to know who that is?
Slightly related: When I get a visitor from a ‘Wordpress Dashboard’, is there a way of finding out who that is?
Correct for the first, not at the moment for the second.
Nice! But just as important to me is knowing who has just unsubscribed from my blog. I wish we could get a notification for that too.
The ‘Like’ notification email also gives away your gravatar and location?! Can’t these other stuff remain private?
Hi Randomize: your basic gravatar profile information was already public, as that’s what gravatar profiles are for. You can read more about Gravatars here: http://en.gravatar.com/
Your location is only a rough approximation generated from your IP address, which is information already given to a blog when someone visits.
Sounds like a great idea, just hope I figure out how to use it.
I am glad to see this feature…thank you.
as a blog reader, I’m a bit rattled by all the information that goes out to the blog author, particularly your best guess at my geographical location. How can I disable that? I’m trying to protect my privacy as a blog reader. I don’t want to not “like” someone’s post thru wordpress, but if I can’t turn off my hometown, I won’t use the function anymore.
thanks!
We understand your concern, however we are only using information already made available to blog owners. A readers email address and IP address were already made available to blog owners through the comments list in the dashboard.
All we are doing is a very basic lookup of the IP address, which can be mapped loosely to geographical areas, such as the nearest major city and state, but not any more specific. . You can find services on the web that do the same thing, as it’s part of how IP addresses work. There are many free services on the web (such as this one) that do the same thing.
Leaving a comment on any blog or website usually requires an email address and an IP address, so you were already giving this information to blog owners, just not in this format.
Neat, but does it HAVE to be an email notification? Would much rather click on it in WP itself.
Thanks for the suggestion Steve. We’ll keep this in mind.
Great new tools to connect us with those that have interest in our content. Much appreciated!!
Good features.
Clear and to the point. Nicely done.
Good idea. Thanks 🙂
This is great. Thanks
Hi, i’m pretty new here…and like what i see !
I received my first email about a new subscriber this morning and it surprised me since I never got one before. Now I know why I got it, and I’m thrilled this service is now up and running. I must say, I don’t understand the whining about getting “more email.” Perhaps those who get so much email about traffic on their blog might be better off with a service that actually costs something?
Thanks, WordPress. I will be mentioning your name at T’giving tomorrow when we go around the table and name the things we’re thankful for this year.
I don’t mind seeing what states or countries people are from..it’s just a little weird getting down to the city level guessing.
Otherwise, I don’t have a problem with it.
So what about posts that were liked before this was instated? I assume those likes are untraceable, correct?
I don’t just “like” this, I “love” this idea!
Thank you. That is a great addition.
I don’t see any place on my blog page for people to click “like.” Do I have to activate it? If so, how do I do that?
To turn on likes, go to Settings->Sharing.
That’s great! I hope someday to be on the receiving end of this useful new feature. (sighs, wipes away tear)
That’s great!
I still don’t know how to find out how many subscribers I have. Do I have to turn something on to get this? And I have trouble understand exactly what my blog can do. It might be just me, but it doesn’t seem easy to figure out.
love this! thanks.
Thank you for the info. and for giving us a way to deactivate e-mail notifications if we’d like. 🙂
How about just letting me find out through the Dashboard or Site Stats instead of a tedious e-mail?
You can find a list of your subscribers by going to Dashboard -> Settings -> Site stats, scroll down to general, click on the subscriber number, and you’ll see a list of current subscribers.
…
Nice idea!
Thanks WP
I ‘m new to wordpress and this information helps me alot.
Thank you,
hello.. too all
it’s great.. good job.. thanks for this..
Yay! (I couldn’t believe there was no email notification for subscriptions!)
Finally!
I think I like this,
what would make this better is if we had stats on where we are getting our readers, like geographical/regional and how long people stay on our blog site. The stats we have right now are fine for begginers, but it is awfully limited. Knowing how many new readers click on our blog or people who have never been on our site before would be nice as well. When will we have this?! This technology is not dificult to incorporate. I can guess my avg age of readers are middle aged, but how can I be sure? It would be nice to know these aforementioned facts or stats to know my target audience.
First, keep in mind it’s a bit more complicated to “incorporate technology” across 15 million blogs than you suspect. It can be trickier than you think 🙂 Second, we don’t know the kind of information you’re asking for: the age of a reader is private information, and its information we typically don’t even have.
But I understand your general point: you’d like better data about who is reading your blog.
I just read some of the comments above. Let me explain that I DON’T want to know the identity or the IP address of my visitors. I respect their privacy. I just want to serve them better with better and more meaningful stats.
Wonderful update to already rockin’ software! Thanx and Happy Thanksgiving to the best team out there!
Joanna Aislinn
NO MATTER WHY
The Wild Rose Press
http://www.joannaaislinn.com
http://www.joannaaislinn.wordpress.com
i like
Please like me!!!! 🙂 This is good.
Thanks, I was just thinking how much better it would be if we got email notifications of “likes.”
I have been posting my poems in here and have not had one comment or maybe I still have not found out if my settings are marked correctly. I would love to know more about this and appreciate any help to this newbie here. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
magics02
To help you get more views and traffic, start by reading this: https://wordpress.com/support/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
haha, no more secret admirers with this latest discovery………..
I like this 😉
I like the feature, how nice to have a bunch of lovely faces/ people like a post(s) I hope to have some, someday 😀
Thank you wordpress.
are you planning on adding a centralized turn-on or turn-off option for this “like post”? just so i don’t have to disable it every single time. one central function would be appreciated. i don’t fancy it too much. 🙂
The global setting for like is Settings->Sharing. There you can turn likes off for all your posts.
I’ve only just joined WordPress.com (still filling in info before inviting friends) and already I am massively impressed. This just impresses me more!
Brilliant! It took me ages to find who was subscribing to my blog (found the tab now) so having an email is brill.
Hi. Its really good. Thank you for your good idea
That is really great! I had been wondering about the “Likes”. Though rather than an email notifications, it would be awesome to have the “Likes” added as a tab to the Stats “General” box with the subscriptions, shares and spam. That way there is a running tab of all of the “Likes” over time and not just one at a time.
I appreciate all of the amazing stats features that you have added over the last few months. Keep up the great work! Happy Thanksgiving!
What if I don’t like the person who states that they like me? There’s a dilema…
great…….
Nice
Flott 🙂
Bra jobba!
good
Hi Scott,
As a new wordpress contributor, I appreciate your work here, and the time you took to read my first post/poem (Only White Horses Can Reach Beyond The Stars…). I look forward to exploring the site further. OWH
My apologies, Scott, I misunderstood the email I received – but perhaps you will read my first post / poem sometime, just the same! OWH
yeah i like that
I like this idea as long as it’s a daily digest. I don’t have any subscribers yet, but when I do, I don’t want to be bombarded with a while bunch of emails. It would be so much better if this were included in the stats page.
Good idea. It’s nice to communicate and know we are being heard!
I’m new at blogging. And I don’t thibnk my blog is out there in it’s proper place.
An excellent feature! It should certainly help fellow WordPressians and readers alike.
The LIKE button is tied to Facebook. I get to know who liked my post and Facebook gets to know as well. AND Facebook gets to know where the person who clicked on the Like is on the web. Sorry but i consider it as insidious as a tracking cookie.
The like button is not tied to Facebook.
thanks for this! 😀
This happened to me, too…didn’t even know I had 5 subscribers until I got one of these emails yesterday. Thanks!
Great innovation! WordPress is really the best, until further notice. Keep on the good job.
Excellent idea:)
very nice and long needed one. Thanks
Ooooh, thankies (:
Thanks, very usefull to me
Nice! And, ditto s.donuts!
Thanks for this great feature !! WordPress rocks!!
Great feature. However I am still stumped as to why no one is actually finding my blog..wish I knew what I was doing wrong.. :-S
Hi everbody new to this site just wanted to say hello and have a great weekend.tc phill
nice addition especially since im new here
Thanks! And we all want to be liked! Right guys?
Not many people seem to like every day happening around them but these are the kind of things I blog about,sorry if I am distasteful in my blogging.
This is exactly what we expected. Thanks !!
I think it would be nice to have a button for people to like posts through facebook. That might help to dray views to your blog.
I’m really glad to see both of these. But especially the notification of subscribers. I’ve been thinking for awhile that would be a nice feature. Thanks!!! 🙂
Thanks a lot..Nice
Hi people i am new here =D i shall start posting soon. Please support me!!!
I like this 🙂