If you’re just getting started, you might be wondering how to register a domain name. If you already own one, you may want to know whether to connect it or transfer it to WordPress.com. And how do you get an email address that matches your domain name?

These are some of the questions our customer support team (also called Happiness Engineers) answer every day. We’ve brought the answers together in Make Sense of Domains, a free video course that explains your options and walks you through the steps.

Each short lesson covers one part of setting up your domain name. You can follow the course from start to finish or jump straight to the question you have today.

What you’ll learn

Start with an introduction to domain names, then choose from six lessons:

1. Register a domain name
   Choose a new domain name, register it on WordPress.com, and make it the address visitors see.
2. Connecting versus transferring
   Understand what changes with each option, including where you manage your registration and renewal.
3. Connect a domain name you already own
   Use a domain you bought elsewhere with your WordPress.com site while keeping it registered with your current provider.
4. Transfer a domain name
   Move a domain you already own to WordPress.com so you can manage it alongside your site.
5. Add email to your domain name
   Set up an address such as info@yourgroovydomain.com that matches your domain.
6. Manage DNS records
   Learn what DNS records do and how to add or update them for services you use with your domain name.

Make sense of your domain name 

Whether you’re choosing your first domain, using one you bought years ago, or bringing your address to a new WordPress.com site, there’s a lesson to help you take the next step. 

You don’t need to become a domain expert.

Make Sense of Domains is a free, self-guided course you can complete in about 45 minutes, or you can jump directly to the lesson that answers the question you have today. 

You’ve got the offer, the audience, and a reason for them to pay attention – now you want all that work to turn into sales, bookings, subscriptions, or signups.

The last stretch isn’t about rebuilding your site or inventing another promotion. It’s about making sure the campaign works as well for your customer as it does in your head.

Here are 10 practical checks that cover the whole customer journey to make the path from promotion to confirmation as clear and reliable as possible.

Your Black Friday checklist:

1. Make your Black Friday offer easy to understand
2. Send people to the offer they clicked
3. Test the deal, not just the page
4. Try the whole thing on your phone
5. Check how your campaign impacts page speed
6. Give people a reason to come back
7. Clear up the doubts that kill a sale
8. Make sure you know what worked
9. Decide what you’ll do if something goes wrong
10. Run a full Black Friday dress rehearsal

1. Make your Black Friday offer easy to understand

Black Friday doesn’t have to mean 30% off everything in sight. In a WooCommerce Black Friday survey of 249 store owners, 27% chose bundles or buy-more-save-more offers as their main promotional strategy, while 18% chose tiered discounts (spend $100, get 10% off)

A bonus or limited set of bookings might suit your business better than a sitewide discount.

If you need a paragraph to explain the deal, it’s probably doing too much. Someone should be able to glance at it and understand three things: what they get, what they pay, and when it ends.

Then check the numbers and limits. Does free shipping erase your margin? Can you fulfill the orders or appointments? Set exclusions, quantities, and dates around what you can deliver.

2. Send people to the offer they clicked

You’ve persuaded someone to click. Let’s give them what they came for. 

An email about a bundle should open that bundle. A sale covering several products can lead to a collection. Each message needs a destination that delivers on its promise.

Put the offer, price, dates, and conditions near the top, with a specific button: “Shop the bundle” or “Book your place.”

Then check that the promise survives the click. Prices, end dates, and codes should agree across the email, social post, and page.

3. Test the deal, not just the page

It’s surprisingly easy for a sale to look right while charging the wrong price.

For instance, a discounted price might display correctly on the product page while checkout still uses the original price for one size or variation. Nothing looks broken until someone tries to buy.

So don’t admire the finished offer – try to break it:

• Switch things up: Pick another size, variation, bundle, or service option. Does the price still make sense?
• Try the awkward combination: Add something that shouldn’t qualify for the deal. Throw in another coupon you already use. Make sure your discounts aren’t accidentally being too generous…or refusing to work at all.
• Look at the number that matters: The promotional price is nice. The amount someone is actually asked to pay after shipping, taxes, fees, and discounts is the real test.
• See what happens next: Finish the purchase, booking, or signup. Does the confirmation arrive? Does it contain the right details? Can the customer actually access what they bought?

If you’re collecting leads instead, submit your own form. Then check the inbox. A cheery “Thanks, we got it!” screen doesn’t help much if the message itself disappears into the void.

One handy shortcut: payment test modes let you run through checkout without charging a real card. WooPayments test mode, for example, can simulate successful and failed payments before real customers arrive.

4. Try the whole thing on your phone

A page can look great on your phone and still be awkward to buy from. That’s why the mobile preview is a starting point, not the final check.

Adobe found that 56% of U.S. online holiday transactions in 2025 happened on smartphones. This deserves more than a glance at the layout. 

Follow the link you’ll share through to purchase or booking confirmation. 

Try these QA questions:

• Can you read the offer without zooming in?
• Are product options, form fields, and buttons comfortable to use?
• Do pop-ups cover anything you need to see or tap?

Nearly half of store owners Woo surveyed offered express checkout. Test any wallet or express-payment buttons you offer on a compatible phone, too.

If you catch yourself thinking, “I’ll just finish this on my laptop,” you’ve found something worth fixing.

5. Check how your campaign impacts page speed

A hero image, video, and countdown can arrive together on the page you most need to be quick. A third of store owners Woo surveyed made website performance their top preparation priority.

Run the public offer and product pages through the WordPress.com Speed Test, before and after adding campaign extras. 

WordPress.com manages hosting, built-in caching, a global content delivery network, and automatic scaling for traffic spikes. You don’t need another page-caching plugin. Focus on what your images, embeds, and plugins add.

WordPress.com Business and Commerce customers can also use the Hosting Dashboard performance report. Compare mobile and desktop; this checks page speed, not simultaneous-visitor capacity.

6. Give people a reason to come back

“On sale now” only gives people one reason to look. Prepare a launch message, a useful demonstration or customer example, and a genuine deadline reminder.

Store owners were most likely to point to email (23%) and organic social (21%) as effective holiday channels. Start with the audience you already have — and check what they’re already receiving:

Point homepage banners, relevant existing pages, and social posts toward the offer. Publish early, verify your site in Search Console, and inspect the offer URL for indexing problems. 

Google can take days or weeks to crawl a page and neither verification nor an indexing request guarantees a ranking.

7. Clear up the doubts that kill a sale

A 30% discount stops feeling like a bargain when $18 shipping suddenly appears at checkout.

Baymard’s U.S. shopper research identifies three reasons worth addressing before someone pays:

For bookings or subscriptions, show the full price, when access starts, and any renewal cost. Give short answers near the decision, with links to policies and contact details.

8. Make sure you know what worked

A busy traffic chart is satisfying. Knowing which email brought in paying customers is far more useful for your next promotion.

Say your email generates more profitable orders than social, while bundles outsell individual items. That gives you a direction to test for November – not proof to abandon social. Compare visits, completed sales, and costs, not traffic alone.

Nearly a third of store owners Woo surveyed used historical sales data to shape their plans. Set up measurement now so your Black Friday results can inform the rest of the holidays.

UTM parameters (labels added to campaign links) help separate the traffic:

• Campaign: Use black_friday_2026 across the promotion.
• Source: Distinguish your newsletter from Instagram.
• Content: Use utm_content to separate the launch email from the closing reminder.

Your final CTA should look something like this:

https://yourwebsite.com/black-friday/?utm_campaign=black_friday_2026&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=launch_email

WordPress.com Stats shows page views and clicks; completed orders or bookings need their own tracking. Follow a tagged link through a test conversion and verify both. Remember: A click on “Buy” doesn’t count as a purchase.

9. Decide what you’ll do if something goes wrong

You don’t need a disaster plan for every possible Black Friday mishap. You do want to know your first move if one of the moving parts goes sideways.

Think through the problems most likely to derail your campaign before you’re trying to solve them with customers waiting.

The point here isn’t to predict every problem. It’s to avoid making the first decision while the problem is already happening.

The WordPress.com Activity Log can help you see what changed, while Business and Commerce plan backups give you a route back if you need one.

And once the campaign is close? Resist the urge to squeeze in that clever redesign, shiny new integration, or “tiny” improvement. 

10. Run a full Black Friday dress rehearsal

You’ve checked the pieces. Now take one uninterrupted trip from the message to the confirmation.

1. Start with the actual message: Send yourself the email, then open its link while logged out.
2. Complete the transaction: Choose an option, apply the code, and check the total in test mode. Try a declined test payment, too — can you recover and finish?
3. Go beyond confirmation: Open the receipt, booking details, or download. Check you receive what was promised.
4. Check your side: Find the order or inquiry, its notification, and the campaign tracking.
5. Repeat on your phone: Follow the same link through to confirmation. Retest fixes.
6. Restore launch settings: Remove test orders, check stock and bookings, and turn payment test mode off before the promotion.

Then ask someone unfamiliar with your site to try it without your help. If you find yourself explaining where to click, that’s your final clue about what needs attention.

Turn Black Friday into more than one busy weekend

By the time Black Friday comes around, you shouldn’t be adding more to your campaign. You should be taking the friction out of it.

The offer should be clear, the promotion should lead to the right place, and the whole journey from click to confirmation should work on any device.

That’s the thread running through all ten checks: don’t test whether your campaign looks finished. Test whether someone can actually use it.

If selling online is becoming a bigger part of your business, explore what you can build with WordPress.com Commerce.

The WordPress.com MCP lets you manage your WordPress.com site from your favorite AI agents like ChatGPT and Claude.

Once you connect WordPress.com to your AI agent, you can draft posts, update pages, check traffic, organize content, and more.

Whether you’re using our ChatGPT plugin, Claude Connector, Cursor plugin, or connecting directly to the MCP, I’m here to help you get creative and unlock the full potential of these integrations.

How to access WordPress.com integrations

Our MCP makes website management easier, faster, and more fun. This gives you more time to focus on the things that matter: your customers and readers.

MCP access is included with WordPress.com Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce plans. New free sites can also use MCP for their first 30 days.

If you haven’t connected an AI assistant yet, enable MCP under Preferences → AI and MCP, then follow the setup guide for ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor, or another MCP-compatible agent.

1. Publish a new post from a draft

The WordPress.com MCP allows you to publish blog posts from anywhere. This means you can conduct your research and planning with AI, write your content, and send the post directly to WordPress when ready. It’s a seamless workflow for focused, data-driven content creation.

In ChatGPT, new posts start as drafts by default, so you can review the result before anything goes live.

2. Build and update pages

You can also make visual and copy changes to your live pages using the WordPress.com MCP. This is especially useful when you want to add a new section to an existing landing page or make a design tweak.

When ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI assistant is connected to the WordPress.com MCP, try asking the agent to edit a page on your live site.

Your AI assistant will ask for confirmation before applying changes.

3. Find what needs fixing 

Even the best blog posts can grow stale over time. A link that worked when you hit publish might now go nowhere. Information you checked carefully may no longer be accurate. 

With the WordPress.com MCP, you can ask your AI to read through your posts and help identify what needs attention. Ask it to flag outdated details, help check links, and suggest corrections. Then work through the findings together, fixing what’s wrong and leaving what’s right.

4. Organize categories and tags

We all strive for a well-organized site, but it’s often easier said than done. WordPress.com MCP can help you audit categories and tags, find redundant or rarely used terms, and keep a large archive easier to navigate and maintain.

5. Upload and manage media

The WordPress.com MCP lets your AI agent upload images to your media library, find existing images, and update titles, captions, and alt text. You can also ask it to set a featured image or add an image to a post or page. 

6. Install and manage plugins

Want to add a new feature to your WordPress.com site? Our MCP lets your AI agent search the WordPress.org plugin directory and, if you approve, install and activate your chosen plugins on your site. You can also ask it to review your installed plugins or deactivate ones you no longer need.

7. Understand your traffic

The WordPress.com MCP also lets you check your site’s traffic from your AI agent. Ask how many visitors your site received, compare different time periods, and get a natural language summary. 

For example, try asking how last month’s traffic compares with the month before. This is a useful way to keep an eye on your site while planning posts or updates.  

Try our video series on using AI agents to build and improve your WordPress.com site: Use AI agents with WordPress.com

Make AI part of your site workflow 

I’m part of the engineering team working on the WordPress.com MCP, and I’d love to hear how you’re using it and what you want to see next.

Ready to try one of these workflows? Connect WordPress.com to your AI agent and start with one of the examples above.

Share your experience in the comments, and I’ll take it back to the crew. 

Thanks for reading! 

You can bring it all into the WordPress.com Reader, a free RSS reader built into WordPress.com.

It’s one calm place for everything you read. Follow blogs, newsletters, Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, YouTube, and anything with an RSS feed, then discover new writers without getting sucked into an algorithm.

We’ve added a lot to the Reader this year to organize your reading, catch up, and discover new writers. Here’s the best of new and loved features.

See what you haven’t read yet

Every site and list you follow now shows an unread count in the sidebar, so you can tell at a glance where the new posts are. Posts you’ve already read are dimmed in your feed, and opening a post marks it as read.

Back from a week away? Hover over a site or List in the sidebar, open the three-dot menu, choose “Mark as read” (or “Mark all as read” on a List), and start fresh. If you’d rather not see counts at all, switch off “Show read status” in your account preferences.

Organize blogs and topics into shelves

It can be tempting to follow 200 sites. Finding the 10 you want to read on a Sunday morning is harder.

You can now group the sites and tags you follow into private collections called Shelves, like “Travel,” “Friends,” or “Photography.” Each shelf gets its own color and icon in the sidebar, and you pick how its posts are laid out. A Discover tab on each shelf suggests posts on the same topics from sites you don’t follow yet.

Read Bluesky and Mastodon in the same place

Connect your Bluesky or Mastodon account, and your timeline will show up in the Reader under Social feeds in the sidebar. You can like, repost, reply, and write new posts without switching apps.

Find new writers worth reading

Freshly Pressed is back. Each week, our team picks standout posts from across the WordPress.com community for their storytelling, originality, and point of view — not their viral reach.

You can also see which blogs your favorite writers recommend. When a writer adds recommended blogs to their profile, you can follow any of them in one click.

Read anywhere with the Jetpack app

The Jetpack mobile app is the best place to use the Reader. Everything you follow comes with you, and unread counts sit next to each site, so you can catch up in a few spare minutes on the bus or in line for coffee.

On iPhone, the Reader uses Apple’s Liquid Glass design, so posts fill the whole screen and the buttons float on top of them.

Find new readers by reading

Every post you publish on WordPress.com shows up in the Reader for the people who follow you. It also appears in the Reader’s topic feed for every tag you add, where people go looking for something new to read, and every follow there is a new subscriber. Over the past year, people left more than 1.3 million comments from the Reader, on posts from more than 74,000 blogs.

Reading helps too, since every comment or follow you leave sends the writer a notification with a link back to your site. Last month, bloggers without any subscribers who commented on or followed other blogs in the Reader were about 10 times more likely to get their first subscriber.

Make the Reader your own

Just a few favorite blogs, subreddits, or RSS feeds are enough to get started.

Open the Reader, follow a few sites you already love, and make your first shelf. Then tell us what you think in the comments.

Frequently asked questions

What is an RSS reader?

An RSS reader collects new posts from the sites you follow into one feed, so you don’t have to visit each site to check for updates. Most blogs, news sites, newsletters, and podcasts publish an RSS feed, including WordPress sites.

Is the WordPress.com Reader free?

Yes, the Reader is free. You only need a free WordPress.com account, and you don’t need a website or blog to use it.

Can I follow Substack newsletters, YouTube channels, and subreddits?

Yes. Click New subscription in the Reader sidebar and paste the address of the newsletter, YouTube channel, or subreddit. The Reader finds its RSS feed, and you subscribe from there. There are also tabs for Substack, YouTube, Reddit, and Tumblr that show which addresses work.

Can I move my feeds from Feedly or another RSS reader?

Yes. Export your feeds as an OPML file from your old reader. Then open Manage subscriptions in the Reader, click the three dots next to New subscription, and choose Import OPML.

Does the Reader sync across devices?

Yes. What you follow and what you’ve read stay in sync between the Reader on the web and the Jetpack app for iPhone and Android. You can also sync the Reader with RSS apps like Reeder and ReadKit, as long as two-step authentication is turned on for your WordPress.com account.

Can I read Bluesky and Mastodon in an RSS reader?

Yes. Connect your Bluesky or Mastodon account under Social feeds in the Reader sidebar to read your timeline and reply from there. To follow one person without connecting an account, paste their profile address into New subscription.

Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! You can now do more with the WordPress Agent on WordPress.com, more easily connect your site to a popular AI agent, and more efficiently review new content in the Reader.

WordPress Agent knows plugins

You can now ask the WordPress Agent about plugins! Activate, update, and install, directly from the chat.

Cursor (and Grok Bot) can now easily connect to your WordPress.com site

WordPress.com now has a plugin in Cursor’s marketplace, so you can manage your site straight from the AI agent you’re already coding in.

The Reader now remembers what you’ve already read

Do you use the Reader to stay on top of your favorite blogs, sites, and news sources?

Now, posts that you’ve already read dim automatically so you can spot what’s new at a glance. An unread count also now shows up next to Recent so you know exactly how many posts are new.

If you don’t need it, you can turn off this functionality from your preferences.

Site logs are now included on Personal and Premium plans

Personal and Premium sites can now see their own PHP error logs and web server logs to more easily debug if something breaks. Go to your Hosting Dashboard, select your site, and then click Logs.

More detailed logs related to monitoring, performance, and deployments are available on Business and Commerce plans.

WordPress 7.1.1 and 7.1.2 security releases

Two new WordPress releases shipped with important security fixes. On many hosts, that means logging in, running updates, and hoping nothing breaks. On WordPress.com, it’s already done. Your site is running the latest, most secure version of WordPress, and you didn’t have to lift a finger.

Fixes and improvements

We also:

• Closed several ways embedded content in the Reader could run unwanted code on the page. (GitHub PR)
• Fixed long domain names from getting cut off in your DNS records list. (GitHub PR)
• Polished the WordPress Agent’s account connections screen for clearer email, Slack, and Telegram setup. (GitHub PR)
• Updated the block editor with a new layout and media options, including a grid layout and quicker list indenting with the tab key. (Github PR)
• Fixed long support chats in the Help Center cutting off partway through, so you can now see the full conversation. (GitHub PR)
• Fixed a bug so you can now add your own text above the opening quote when participating in daily writing prompts. (GitHub PR)
• Added .es as a purchasable domain extension. Learn more about .es domains.

We compared current pricing ranges across major website platforms to show what a blog, business site, or online store costs in year one and beyond. 

So, how much does it cost to build a website? As an example, a straightforward DIY site on WordPress.com, built on open source WordPress, can cost as little as $4 per month in its first year. Better yet, you can start for free with hosting included and a WordPress.com subdomain (.wordpress.com).

But for any plan, the first-year introductory price is only part of the story. The more useful number is what that same site costs to keep running in year two when your plan comes up for renewal.

What actually goes into the cost of a website?

Before you compare prices, it helps to know what you’re actually paying for. Your website-building cost starts with a platform and a hosting plan. Most people will also want their own domain name. Everything else depends on what you need your site to do.

Here are the main website costs to consider:

• Website platform + hosting: The software you use to build your site and the servers that keep it online.
• Domain name: Your web address. A free site might use an address like yoursite.wordpress.com; your own domain name gives you something like yoursite.com.
• Business email: An email address using your domain name, like hello@yoursite.com.
• Themes, plugins, or apps: Extras that change how your site looks or what it can do.
• Selling fees: Fees charged when someone pays you through your site.
• Professional help: Paying someone to design, write, or build your site.

Those are the basic bill items. The mistake is budgeting for every feature you might want someday as though you need it from day one.

How much does a blog or portfolio website cost?

A blog or portfolio is the least expensive website you can run. You need somewhere to publish, a domain name that’s yours, and a way for readers to follow your posts. Everything else is optional, and most of it can wait.

All in, a blog or portfolio setup typically costs about $5–$22 per month after introductory offers end. Most of that spread is the platform, not the domain.

What you can skip for now: a premium theme, extra storage, an email marketing platform, a professional email address, a store.

On WordPress.com, you can get this setup with the Personal plan and a .com domain.

With annual billing:

• Year one: $4 a month
• Year two: $5 a month

How much does a small business website cost?

For a consultant, a local service, or a freelancer, the site should give people a reason to hire you and make it easy to get in touch. 

That’s five pages (home, services, about, testimonials, contact), a form, and an email address at your own domain. When you’re putting time into promoting your services, analytics help you see which efforts bring visitors and which service pages they read.

All in, this small business setup typically costs about $12–$35 per month after the introductory offers end, billed annually.

What you can skip for now: a booking system, a client portal, live chat, a CRM, a store, a second mailbox.

On WordPress.com, you can get this setup with the Premium plan, a .com domain, and one Professional Email mailbox added separately. With annual billing:

• Year one: $10 a month
• Year two: $12 a month

How much does a small online store cost?

First question: do you need to accept payments, or do you need a store? If you sell one or two things occasionally, a payment button on a regular site is enough. A store is for a catalog: product pages, a cart, checkout, and order management. 

All in, a small store typically costs about $24-$41 per month after introductory offers end, plus roughly 3% of sales.

What you can skip for now: subscriptions, abandoned-cart automation, advanced shipping rules, multi-currency, point-of-sale, and most extensions.

On WordPress.com, you can get this setup with the Business plan, a .com domain, one Professional Email mailbox, and the free WooCommerce plugin. With annual billing and current first-year offers:

• Year one: $27 a month
• Year two: $29 a month

Before you choose a plan, ask these five questions

Whatever platform you’re weighing, the same five questions turn its pricing page into the bill you’ll actually receive.

1. What is the renewal price?
   Find three numbers before you buy: the charge today, the period it covers, and the price it renews at. “$4 a month” is usually billed annually upfront, and the lowest advertised rate often requires a two- or three-year commitment. Then check the extras on their own terms: an included domain is typically free for the first year only, and an email trial bills on its own schedule. On WordPress.com, every subscription’s renewal date and price is listed under Purchases. The page also flags an expiring plan and the features you would lose.
   
2. What’s still included in year two?
   Count the features you’ll rely on: your own domain, no platform ads, storage, support, and any tool the site needs to run. Backups are the one to read closely: check what the plan lets you restore, and how. WordPress.com plans include managed hosting, SSL, and security protections on every tier; the rest varies by plan, so price the setup you need, including any separate services.
   
3. What do you pay when you sell?
   Look up the fee for the payment tool you’ll actually use; a payment button and a store checkout can carry different fees on the same platform. There’s usually a percentage and a fixed amount per transaction, and both are deducted from every sale. If a pricier plan promises lower selling fees, run the numbers on the sales you realistically expect before upgrading.
   
4. What if you’d rather have someone build it?
   Paying for a build buys back your time; you’ll still have running costs after launch. Get a quote that specifies the pages, features, content, and rounds of revisions included, plus any ongoing support charges, and keep it separate from the plan, domain, and services you’ll pay for each year after launch. WordPress.com’s Website Design Service starts at $499 for a five-page site, plus the required Premium plan.
   
5. Can you start for free?
   On some platforms, yes. The free WordPress.com plan gives you hosting and a yoursite.wordpress.com address, with WordPress.com ads on the page. It’s enough to start publishing and build out your pages. Move to a paid plan when you want your own domain and to get rid of the ads.

You’ve done the math, now make it yours

Your first website probably needs less than you think. 

Start with what you want it to do: publish your work, bring in clients, or sell what you make. Use what’s already included, budget beyond the first year, and add tools when you have a reason to use them.

WordPress.com bundles hosting, security, and support into every paid plan. Take a look at what’s already included before paying for another tool or moving to a higher tier. 

At the time of writing, WordPress.com is the only major hosted website platform that comes in under $50* on a standard one-year paid plan. You can also start for free with hosting included if you’re happy to have ads and use a WordPress.com subdomain. 

*Lower advertised rates require a multi-year commitment.

With OpenStation, you can keep both open, side by side, in the same browser tab. The same goes for your media, your pages, and any other WP Admin screen.

It’s the same plugin that we introduced in June as Desktop Mode, now called OpenStation. Since then, we’ve redesigned the workspace, made it faster, and begun bringing the experience to phones.

Your WP Admin screens, side by side

Open a post, then open your media next to it. When you find the photo you want, drag it into the post.

The media picker in the editor works well for a single image. For a recipe with a photo for every step, keep your library open beside the draft instead of opening the picker again and again.

Photos on your computer work the same way. You can drag a few of them, or even a whole folder.

Preview your post while you write

Every post and page window has an eye icon at the top. Click it, and your draft moves to the left half of the screen while a preview opens on the right, showing how your visitors will see the post.

Keep writing. Every time you save, the preview updates, so you can check how a new title wraps or how a photo looks in your theme without switching tabs.

Come back to exactly where you were

Windows in OpenStation stay open until you close them. So, switching back to one is instant.

We compared navigation times in OpenStation and classic WP Admin. In the classic WP Admin, going back to a screen you had left a moment earlier took between 2.4 and 3.7 seconds. In OpenStation, there was nothing to load.

Your layout is saved too. Close the browser, come back again (even from another computer), and your windows will be right where you left them.

A desk for each job

Some days are for writing. Others are for answering comments or sorting through photos. Workspaces give each of those jobs its own desk, so you can focus more easily on the right task.

Jump between workspaces from the dock or with the arrow keys (nothing closes when you switch to another workspace).

Make it look like yours

Pick a wallpaper, or use one of your own photos. Change the accent color, move the dock to the left or right side of the screen, or enlarge it.

You’ll find all of it in System -> OpenStation Preferences → Appearance.

Use it as an app on your phone

You can install OpenStation on your phone via the System -> Install web app option in the dock.

The phone layout is still experimental, so we’d love to hear in the comments or our OpenStation support forum how it works for you.

Why the new name?

Desktop mode is best known as a setting in mobile browsers, so searching for it mostly turned up browser help pages.

The plugin had also grown past the idea of a mode you switch on. It’s closer to a workstation for your WordPress site, and it’s open source, so we called it OpenStation.

If you already use Desktop Mode, you don’t have to do anything. It’s the same plugin; it keeps updating as usual, and your windows and settings are still there.

Your site stays the same

OpenStation changes how WP Admin looks only for the people who turn it on. Visitors see your site as they always have. If you deactivate the plugin, WP Admin goes back to the way it was.

OpenStation is open source. You can read the code on GitHub, and the team writes about what they’re building on the OpenStation blog.

Try OpenStation

On WordPress.com, you can install OpenStation on any paid plan.

1. From your site’s dashboard, go to “Plugins“, search for “OpenStation,” and click the “Install and activate” button.
2. Click the “Switch to OpenStation” link at the top right of the admin bar.

3. To go back to the classic WP Admin, click the “Exit OpenStation” icon at the end of the dock.

Want to try it before installing anything? This live preview runs OpenStation in your browser, with nothing to install.

If something doesn’t work the way you expect, tell us in the OpenStation support forum or open an issue on GitHub.

Now you can go ahead and close a few tabs.

eCommerce Expo brings together retailers, brands, and ecommerce teams to talk about everything from finding customers to getting orders out the door. The expo shared the floor with Technology for Marketing, so it felt like two events at once. 

With that much going on, it’s easy to leave with a bag of swag and a blur of buzzwords. With the holiday rush coming up fast, one panel felt especially relevant: Preparing for Peak Shopping Seasons: How to Win Christmas with Chris Hutchins (Audiense), Ellie Bradford (Clearer.io), Naomi Boonin (WPP Media), and James White (Klaviyo).

The idea is simple: Start preparing now for the peak shopping season, so you can serve your holiday shoppers better and give them a reason to come back long after December.

The problem with “set it and forget it”

Peak season isn’t a great time to put your store on autopilot. What people search for, which products are selling, where shoppers hesitate, and what they complain about can all change quickly.

The speakers discussed a habit many of us know: you set something up for the holidays, let it run, and don’t really watch it. The campaign goes live, the site stays as it is, and you check back in January.

Their alternative starts with something you already have: last year’s data.

Your customers have already left you clues 

The speakers pointed to two useful places to start: onsite search data and customer reviews.  These show what customers are looking for in their own words. 

Here are three signals to look for: 

• Top searches: What people wanted most. Make sure those products are easy to find, in stock, and front and center.
• Zero-result searches: What people looked for and didn’t find. Every one is a lost sale and a clue about a missing product or a naming mismatch.
• Review data: What customers said after they bought. If “shipping took forever” came up again and again last December, you know what to address this year: put clear cut-off dates and delivery expectations on your site before anyone has to ask.

Nothing here needs a new tool. Start with the data you already have, and follow the clues: the unexpected search term, the product someone couldn’t find, the review you wish you hadn’t received. 

Don’t bring a sledgehammer to Q4

Q4 is loud. Every brand is in every inbox and every feed. Keep filling their inbox with more of the same, and the next click may be “unsubscribe.”

The speakers’ advice was to be selective: prioritize the channels where your customers actually are, and make the message personal. Blasting everywhere might win a sale, but it rarely wins loyalty.

To show what that looks like, they used KitKat’s sharing bar launch as an example. Nestlé built it around one clear, human idea – shared moments with friends and family – and the whole team pulled in the same direction. It was focused, playful, and memorable.

The holiday shopper is a different shopper

Your holiday visitor may not be your regular customer. They’re probably buying for someone else; they may not know your brand, and they’re short on time.

This part landed hardest for me – just how little context a gift buyer may have. They might not know your brand, the product category, the right words to search, or even exactly what the person they’re buying for would choose.

Our panel provided an example of shopping for a coffee-loving relative. You know you want to buy them something they’ll love, but you may not know the name of a particular coffee press. That’s when clear gift collections, categories, and filters really matter.

So design for them. A gifting collection filtered by price (“gifts under $25,” “under $50”) gets them straight to what they came for. On a WooCommerce store, product collections and filters make this quick to set up.

A fast, easy on-site experience during the busiest shopping weeks of the year might be what turns a one-time gift buyer into a repeat customer.

Get curious before you get busy

The theme running through the whole session was curiosity: What drives your shopper? What are they worried about? What would make their day easier?

Curiosity helps both sides: customers find what they need, and merchants earn trust that lasts past the holidays. The speakers also reminded us that small human touches, like a handwritten note in the box, still matter a lot.

London was a beautiful, easy city to love, and I’m already planning my return. But the thing I brought home was a notebook full of ideas and one question for every merchant I talk to this season: what is your data already telling you?

If you’re getting ready for Black Friday, start with your search bar and your reviews and choose one thing to improve. 

The terminology is new, but most of the work is not. AEO is largely an extension of good SEO and good writing: make useful information clear, credible, and easy for AI tools to cite.

What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?

If you’ve heard generative engine optimization (GEO), AI optimization (AIO), or LLM visibility tossed around and felt a step behind, you’re not missing something obvious. The terminology (and the operations behind it) is genuinely still settling. 

There isn’t a strong consensus on which term is “correct” yet. You’ll see several names for roughly the same kind of work. The boundaries appear fuzzy, but here’s the simplest way to think about them:

• AI search optimization → umbrella term
• AEO and GEO → two overlapping names for getting into AI answers
• LLM visibility → the result you measure
• AIO → another broad label with no settled definition

AEO describes the practice of making content easier for AI to understand, cite, and recommend in generated answers. This means optimizing content for AI systems’ answers (i.e., SEO for AI search), not traditional search rankings.

What mentions, citations, and recommendations actually mean

In traditional search, visibility means your page appears in the results; a click means someone visits your site from that result. 

Being mentioned, cited, or recommended by AI isn’t the same thing, and the difference matters:

• Mentioned: Your brand is part of the conversation.
• Cited: The AI used your content as a source.
• Recommended: The AI suggests your brand as an option for what someone’s looking for.

It’s worth noting that simply showing up in an AI-generated answer isn’t the same as being the option someone ultimately chooses. 

A mention can build awareness, a citation can send someone to your site, and a recommendation can influence what they consider next. Each one tells you something different about how your brand is showing up.

For a beginner-friendly walkthrough, try our free Master SEO and AIO course.

Where AI answers get their information

AI tools don’t all cite the same sources, and the mix varies depending on the question, industry, and tool.

Broadly speaking, citations come from three places:

1. Company websites: Product pages, blog posts, guides, and documentation. This is good news for smaller brands: your own useful, specific content can be cited directly. Large cross-platform studies find company-operated websites are the biggest source category overall.
   
2. Independent sources: Reviews, comparison articles, news sites, and industry publications. These give AI tools authoritative information about your brand that doesn’t come directly from you.
   
3. Communities and social platforms: Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, forums, and other places where people discuss products and brands. These can matter, but which ones matter most changes significantly by topic and AI tool.

It’s also worth resisting the urge to chase this month’s citation winner. Reddit became a popular target for AI search strategies, only for its share of visible ChatGPT Search citations to drop by about 86% in a single week. The drop happened around the same time ChatGPT changed how it searched the web.

The lesson isn’t to avoid Reddit. It’s not to build your AEO strategy around any one platform’s current citation share. Start with useful content you own, then build a genuine presence in the places your audience already trusts.

Where smaller brands can win in AI search

Bigger brands may have an edge in AI search because they’re already talked about across more of the web, not necessarily because they publish more or better content than everyone else.

That existing footprint can give bigger brands a head start. But it doesn’t mean smaller brands are locked out.

Smaller businesses and creators are often closer to the people they actually serve. You know the specific questions your customers ask, the trade-offs they weigh, and the details a generic answer from a household name tends to miss.

That firsthand knowledge can make a focused, specific answer more useful than something broad from a brand everyone’s heard of. Take your customer’s FAQs and address them head-on with highly targeted content. 

You don’t need to outpublish a bigger brand. You need to publish the clearest, most useful answer in the space you already know best and give other people good reasons to talk about it.

One question, several decisions

A person might type one question into an AI search tool, but the answer they actually need often depends on several smaller ones.

Take someone asking, “What’s the best website builder for a small bakery?” They’re not just asking about website builders. The AI is also weighing hosting reliability, ecommerce features, pricing, ease of use, and online ordering before it combines all of that into a single answer.

Google calls its version of this query fan-out: AI Mode and AI Overviews can run several related searches behind the scenes and stitch the results into a single response. It’s a useful example of how the process works, not a rule that every AI tool follows the same method.

Google’s query fan-out video shows this process in action:

That matters because a page that only answers the headline question can miss the details people actually need to act on. Answer the main question clearly, then cover the follow-ups that naturally come next — you don’t need to chase down every possible sub-question to be useful.

Those same follow-up questions are useful for content planning, too. Our guide to building an endless stream of content ideas with WordPress and Claude shows one way to work through them.

How AEO compares to SEO

The biggest difference between AEO and SEO comes down to what you’re actually optimizing for. 

Traditional SEO focuses on earning clicks from search results. AEO cares about earning mentions and citations in AI-generated answers — so a click isn’t the only outcome that counts anymore. In that sense, AEO builds on SEO instead of replacing it. 

The same practices that help people and search engines understand your content also help AI systems cite and recommend it. 

Google’s own guidance supports this: established SEO fundamentals still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode – no separate playbook required.

If you’re looking for practical ways to structure your content for AI search, our AI search optimization guide covers the essentials in step-by-step detail.

How to tell if AEO is working

AEO measurement looks different from traditional SEO because there’s a new layer of visibility to track.

Dedicated AI visibility tools like OtterlyAI can show whether your brand is being mentioned or cited across answer engines. That tells you whether you’re showing up in the answer itself.

Traffic tools answer the next question. WordPress.com Stats and Google Analytics can show when those appearances turn into visits to your site and what people do after they arrive.

A no-budget way to track your AEO visibility

However, you don’t need an enterprise tool to start checking whether your AEO work is having an effect.

A spreadsheet and a few repeatable questions can give you a useful baseline. Treat this as a pulse check, not a ranking report.

1. Ask the questions your customers ask
   Pick five to ten questions that matter to your business and run the same prompts through tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Google AI Mode. Note whether your brand appears, whether your site is cited, and which competitors show up instead. Look at what those cited sources offer that yours doesn’t.
   
2. Ask AI about your brand directly
   Does it describe your business accurately? Does it associate you with the products, services, or topics you want to be known for? If the answer is vague, outdated, or inconsistent across tools, that can point to gaps in how clearly your brand is represented online.
   
3. Track the same prompts over time
   Record the prompt, platform, date, mentions, and citations in a simple spreadsheet, then check again monthly. If you publish something specifically aimed at one of those questions, record the result before publishing and compare it again later.

Taken together, these signals give you a clearer picture: Are you showing up? Are people clicking through? And is that traffic doing anything useful once it gets there?

AEO is still developing, so the exact metrics and tools will continue to change. Our AI Tools archive rounds up our latest coverage in one place, including our guide to AI discovery and a plain-English look at what’s new in WordPress 7.0’s AI infrastructure.

Prepare your website for AI search with WordPress.com

Most of what people are calling AEO right now is just being clear enough that a machine can quote you. It’s an evolution of good SEO and good writing, not an entirely new discipline.

The fundamentals haven’t changed: create helpful content, structure it clearly, and build credibility both on and beyond your own site. Those habits will continue to put your content in the best position to be discovered. 

If you’re ready to put that into practice, follow these 9 steps to prepare your WordPress site for AI search engines.

New stores on the WordPress.com Commerce plan start on Purple, a store-first theme built by WooCommerce. 

The shop page, product pages, the cart, and checkout are already there, designed to work together. 

Your first decision is what to sell.

Pages built to work together

Purple ships with a complete set of store templates: shop, category, single product, cart, and checkout, all sharing the same template parts and the same pattern library.

Your product page and your checkout look like they belong to the same store, because they were designed as one system, not assembled piece by piece.

Say you have 20 products ready to list. On Purple, that is not a design project. It is just adding inventory.

A checkout you can actually edit

Checkout is where you lose people. A confusing layout, a field that feels unnecessary, a form that does not match the rest of your store. Friction at that step costs sales.

On Purple, checkout is built from blocks, just like the rest of your site. Most themes don’t ship with a block checkout. Purple does. 

Open it in the Site Editor and change what you need to: the layout, the labels, the fields. Add a reassurance line before the payment step. Remove a field you do not need. It works like any other page.

A theme is one part of a store

You open a store on Purple and the infrastructure is already handled. Hosting, your domain name (free for the first year), SSL, and payment processing come with the Commerce plan. 

WooPayments is available for merchants in 38 countries; once set up, you can accept payment from customers anywhere in the world. 

There are no WordPress.com transaction fees on your sales, though payment-processing fees still apply. Your store includes analytics and SEO tools — no plugins to install. WordPress.com handles theme updates for you.

The design is yours to move. Colors, typography, spacing, headers, footers, page layouts, and templates are all editable through the WordPress.com Site Editor. Purple ships with a set of style presets. Change the whole look without rebuilding a single page. 

When the store is already built, you can spend more time on your products and customers.

Start your store with Purple

Start a new store on the WordPress.com Commerce plan with Purple’s shop, product, cart, and checkout designs in place. Add your products and make the storefront your own.

Already selling on the Commerce plan? Explore Purple in the Theme Showcase.

Questions about Purple? Reach out to our support team. We’re here to help.