Monday Morning Edition

Before starting a new week, be sure to check out the features that made a splash on Hot Off the Press last week:

• We took a closeup of three thriving writing communities on WordPress.com, and chatted with author and blogger Jerry Mahoney (aka Mommy Man) about his new book.
• If you’d like to use your site stats to better engage with your audience, you’ll want to try out these tips.
• Easy navigation is crucial — so exploring different custom menus is always a good idea.
• We showcased sites using minimalist beauty Tonal, and welcomed two new themes to our collection, Sidespied and Chronicle.

Pro tip of the week: Do you enjoy linking to posts, videos, and other content from around the web, but worry your readers will never return to your site? When you create a new link in one of your posts, don’t forget to check the “Open link in a new window/tab” box.

tea & paper‘s entry from last week’s Daily Post photo challenge, Work of Art.

Coming up this week:

• Stay tuned for our announcement of a new Blogging U. Writing challenge,
• A collection of blogs you’ll want to follow this summer,
• A look at sites using this year’s default theme, Twenty Fourteen, to great effect,
• And more…