At WordPress.com, we believe short thoughts deserve a real home. Today we’re introducing a new theme built for quick posts, replies, and reblogs: the kind of writing that lives somewhere between a tweet and a blog post, on a site that’s entirely yours.
If you’ve been thinking about starting your own small, private social network with friends or family, or you want a space to post thoughts freely, or to import your historical posts from Twitter, Mastodon, or Bluesky without handing your words over to someone else’s platform, this one’s for you.
Let’s take a look — or sign up now at wordpress.com/social.
Write now, not later
Click the “Compose” button, type your thoughts, watch the 500-character counter, and tap Post. No blank canvas, no formatting toolbar to navigate first. Just a simple prompt, What’s happening?, and a place to answer it.
A profile page that feels familiar
Your profile collects everything in one place: your avatar, bio, and the counts your readers will look for posts, following, followers. Tabs for Posts, Replies, Media, and Likes let visitors browse the way they already know how. A sidebar keeps Home, Explore, and your profile one click away.
Reblogs that actually work
This is the feature we’re most excited about. Click the reblog icon on any post and it flows into your own feed, credited to the original author, automatically. No screenshots, no copy-paste, no lost attribution.
Every post is a real post
Here’s what makes this different from a social app: every quick thought and every reblog is a real WordPress.com post on a site you own, and every reply is saved as a comment. You get the speed and feel of a social feed, with the permanence and portability of a blog. Export it, back it up, migrate it to another host. It’s yours.
Built for the open web
The theme is fully mobile-responsive, so posting from your phone feels just as natural as from your desktop. Tap Compose from wherever the thought hits you.
And because every blog on WordPress.com comes with RSS out of the box, your readers can follow along in whatever feed reader they already use. No algorithm, no app required, just a URL they can subscribe to and content that shows up when you publish it.
Give it a try
Head to wordpress.com/social to sign up for a new blog and get started.
We’d love to hear what you think.
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Guess it’s not ready for primetime yet. LOL
Thanks for the heads up! Fixing it now.
You know, sometimes a week has two Mondays! We’ve all been there.
I get a blank page when I go to ~/social I tried clearing my cache but I am still getting a blank page in Safari and in Firefox?
Also, is this similar to P2 or different?
Sorry about that. That’s my fault. Should be working in a couple of minutes.
No theme listed in the chooser to swap one of my sites to (check it out kind of thing.)
And wordpress.com/social is throwing a blank white screen. On my Mac (firefox) and pixel phone (G) shows 404
Yes. That was my fault! I’m sorry. Should be fixed now if you want to try again.
Oh, I see you’re aware. Ignore me.
Sorry for the delay! We should be all set for anyone to visit https://wordpress.com/social
Note to self: Remember to remove the auth check prior to shipping a new feature. 🤪
I had a really fun time working with Dave on this – it became one of those things that I really wanted to have for myself, so I’m excited to see it available publicly now.
This sounds fantastic, I only wish I could easily incorporate it into my own blog rather than starting a new one. Maybe there’s a way to do this with post type or something, but it’s beyond me. Absolutely love where this is headed though.
Thanks for sharing! That’s a great idea. Adding it to our list of things to consider.
Will the main reader feed will be getting any of these feeds? Or both would be separate. I would like it all to be separate pls.
That’s up to you! If you follow the site, it will pull posts into the Reader. If you don’t it won’t.
Noted. Does the site owner have a chance to have a new name on social?
– Also, can we toggle to switch off the socials post off? ( for ex – if the blogger doesn’t switch the name etc & I already follow and vice versa)
The Reader follows sites, not authors, so I don’t believe this should be an issue.
Noted. Thanks
I’d prefer not to create another site.wordpress.com URL when I already have an existing WordPress.com site. It would be much more useful if this short-form blogging feature could be enabled on an existing site or connected directly to a custom domain.
The ability to run it on custom domains is definitely something we would look at as a future option.
Is the Blur theme available to download?
The /social site creation form is very restrictive on names that can be chosen — it looks like they need to be fairly long.
The site generation process froze on me, but it picked up when I clicked a second time on the “create my site” button.
The Blurt theme is not currently available for download. Right now the site creation step only provides sites on *.wordpress.com – so it does need to be something unique.
I can’t get a site registered at all
Can you provide some details on how it failed – we’d be happy to figure out what happened and fix it. You can email directly if you’d like – joseph@automattic.com – with the details.
Sure. I’ll email you shortly
I can’t get it. It won’t approve any sites I try to use.
Me too same issue. Refuses every name
Hey there, as Joseph mentioned above, if you send through some details of how it failed, we’d be happy to investigate. Thanks for trying it out!
What’s the link to the demo?
There isn’t a demo, but it’s fast to get started and play on your own site!
Half baked. You’re not doing yourself any favors by representing something as a service for readers when in fact you’re using your customers to surface suggestions. I don’t want to play. Bye.
Nick
Thanks for being candid about this. I hear you.
It sounds like the experience came across as incomplete and more like an experiment than a finished product, and I understand why that’s frustrating. That’s not the feeling we want anyone to have when they try something new from us.
We are still iterating on this, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of a clear, solid experience upfront. Your feedback is helpful in calling that out, and I appreciate you taking the time to say it plainly.
If you’re open to it down the line, I’d be glad to share updates as the experience matures. But no pressure at all.
This is interesting!
Start up for free . But what are costs after . Have premium now
Same limitations as the existing plans. You’re welcome to stay on the free plan. If for instance you want to add videos, you’d need to upgrade to a paid plan.
I am on a paid plan . Just asking if the new stuff advertised is additional cost
No additional cost. 🙂
I think there’s potential for us to have a new version of P2 here.
One way or another, the character limit shouldn’t exist, since social media platforms themselves have already relaxed that rule.
Thanks for sharing! Maybe we just make it an option? I could see some folks wanting to keep the limit. Constraints can be a good thing.
hey guys I’ve set it up but I don’t know why my name and url is fortunatelymoone6cec64dfa, I mean, I kinda like it, but it’s not what I chose. Thank you!
Thanks for calling this out. I’ll dig in to see what options we can come up with.
Thanks again for flagging this! I’ve fixed a bug that was causing the issue. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to change an existing username. However, if you sign up again, it should use the username you choose on https://wordpress.com/social (make sure you’re logged out when setting it).
Thank you sir thank you word press com
Thanks for the new feature!
I’m currently exploring and was a bit surprised to see the Customizer included since it doesn’t seem to change anything?
Good call out. We should disable that.
Update: Customizer has been disabled. Thanks again for the suggestion!
Having that Tumblr feeling but this time it’s more open.
Three things I’d like to know
Did I forget to say great work. This is very interesting, clean and simple
Currently it provides RSS feeds – using the built-in flexibility from WordPress to provides feeds for the whole site, per author, per tag, and per post.
Because the theme assumes it is running the whole site there isn’t a direct integration option for existing site. How that might work is something that we’d need to give some real thought to. Custom domains is something that we would definitely consider.
Exporting can be done via the regular WordPress export feature.
This sounds fantastic, I only wish I could easily incorporate it into my own blog rather than starting a new one
Would you like to turn these into a recommended feed?
Got this up and running. I really would like to use this theme on a self-hosted site, but this is really cool and nicely developed.
https://myreplies.wordpress.com/
I did notice that the lightbox for attached images doesn’t like portrait orientation. The image ends up beyond the screen and not scrollable.
Thank you for the report about the portrait image issue, I will take a look at that.
This should be fixed now.
Nice, thanks for the quick fix and reply.
Good work on this theme, it is really good!
Hey, I just wanted to come back and update on my personal experience. I sent the email and was immediately given a reply with next steps, I tried creating this the next day and it worked. I’ll link my first post down below.
https://psychiclexi.wordpress.com/2026/05/01/hey-so-this-is-my-first-post-im/
Really interesting update from WordPress.com! The idea of a lightweight, distraction-free space for short posts and personal updates feels very useful in today’s fast social media world.
I’m operating the theme now, and have invited some collaborators…
Test post of a link to an article in atlantic.com shows the entire url — I thought that after a wait, the theme would retrofit to a tumbnail …
My mastodon site and bsky accounts do that…
Looking forward. I like the simplicity!
Thank you.
Thanks for the feedback! Adding this idea to our list. 👍
Like others, my preference would be to add a Post type within my existing WordPress.com site. But I understand Automattic’s approach here. However, why not allow custom domains? Because a potential, acceptable workaround would be to configure the /social site as a custom subdomain of a user’s existing domain. For example, social.mrulster.com . I could live with that. It would my personal brand consistent across two WordPress sites. What do you think?
You should be able to add a custom domain via wp-admin > Upgrades > Domains.