We love developers and the applications they build to help extend WordPress.com in new and meaningful ways. To continue providing support for developers who build applications that integrate with WordPress.com, we’re announcing support for OAuth 2, as well as a new developer portal, develop.wordpress.com.

Starting today WordPress.com supports a new method of authentication which makes it extremely easy for third party applications to connect with WordPress.com blogs. This new method uses an open protocol, OAuth2, to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard way. OAuth2 allows applications to access a WordPress.com blog without ever asking for personal details such as a password or username. Connections from applications can easily be managed within the dashboard and connections won’t break when a username or password is changed.

In addition to supporting the new authentication feature, we’re also launching develop.wordpress.com. If you’re interested in learning more about OAuth2 and other ways to integrate with WordPress.com, then this developer portal is for you.

Develop.wordpress.com contains some handy documents and resources about how you can develop using WordPress.com technologies. The site also houses a channel where you can contact us directly regarding issues such as OAuth2 authentication, client access, and embedding new media types on WordPress.com.

These documents are only the beginning –  we’ll be adding more resources and tools over time as the developer ecosystem grows.

Memolane is one example of the many possibilities for integration of third party applications with WordPress.com. Memolane allows you to pull posts directly from your WordPress.com blog into a graphical time line with other elements of your online life. You can easily view, add to, and share this timeline online. As of today, you can also embed your personal Memolane on your WordPress.com blog using a new shortcode.

So, developers, what would you like to build with WordPress.com?