Lately

Lately is a weekly Friday letter for close friends. You capture things you come across during the week (links, photos, quotes, thoughts) and a curated letter goes out to your friends every Friday. Lately is in beta and available for new sites while we test it.

Lately turns your WordPress.com site into a weekly letter that goes out to a small circle of close friends every Friday morning. You capture things throughout the week by talking to the WordPress Agent on Telegram. Drop a link, paste a quote, share a photo, or just type a passing thought. Each capture gets a category like 📚 Reading, 🎧 Listening, 📺 Watching, 🔧 Trying, 💭 Pondering, or 📍 Doing.

On Friday, the WordPress Agent helps you draft Friday’s letter from the week’s captures so you can do a quick, 5-minute review and publish. Your friends read it in their WordPress.com Reader or by email.

While in beta, Lately is only available to new sites. To get started:

1. Create a new Lately site.
2. Connect to the WordPress Agent on Telegram.
3. Invite your friends to subscribe, just send them a link to your new site.
4. Start capturing content you want to share by messaging the WordPress Agent.
5. As you send photos, links, quotes, and thoughts the agent will prompt you to add any details you’d like to capture. Each item gets added to your draft for the week.

From there Lately will take care of the rest. It will capture things you share into a WordPress post and, on Friday, share your letter via email and the WordPress.com Reader. Each letter is only available to your subscribers; it’s not shared on the public web.

You can blog without needing to enter the WordPress Dashboard as chatting via Telegram will let you draft, edit, and publish what you want to send. If you change your mind on any items, just ask the agent to remove them from this week’s letter.

Lately is private by default and your letters are only visible to people you’ve approved as friends. To add a friend to Lately:

1. Send your Lately URL (yoursite.wordpress.com) to someone you want to share with.
2. They open it and tap Subscribe. Their request lands in your Friends tab.
3. Open Lately → Friends and tap Approve. They’ll start receiving your letters.

The same flow runs in reverse for friends inviting you if they want to start their own Lately.

If a friend changes their mind, they can unsubscribe at any time from their subscriptions list. You can also remove a subscriber from the Friends tab of your Lately.

Lately ships with three style packs that change how your site looks. Switch between them any time from the small palette icon in your masthead.

• Modern: quiet, editorial, serif. The default; feels like a literary newsletter.
• Pop: like a comic-book, halftone shading, bold sans-serif. Loud and graphic.
• Zine: hand-laid editorial, paper-grain texture, marker accents. Indie-magazine feel.

The same letters get re-skinned automatically; nothing to redo. Your friends will see the new style the next time they open your site. Emails sent to your friends will all use the Modern style (we plan to add support for more styles to email in the future!).

Lately runs on your own WordPress.com site, so everything you capture and publish belongs to you. We’ve made every effort to keep things private and only available to you and your friends. Lately is still a beta project, though, so if you spot anything we’ve missed please let us know!

• Captures and drafts live as a single private post per week, on your site. Nothing leaves your site until you publish a letter.
• Letters are visible only to approved friends.
• Export anytime. You can export your entire Lately site (captures, drafts, published letters) from Tools → Export.