The WordPress.com Reader brings together all WordPress.com sites—those hosted at WordPress.com and those connected through Jetpack —in one central location.
The WordPress.com Reader is a feed aggregator. It brings every WordPress.com blog together in one easy-to-search place. For sites that you follow, it displays all posts in the order they were published, with the most recent content appearing at the top. Posts from Jetpack sites don’t appear in the Reader immediately—you may need to wait up to 24 hours before you’ll see your posts there.
To start, log into your WordPress.com account.
Getting Started with the Reader
A link to the Reader is available in the top navigation of your dashboard.
Return to the Reader at any point by clicking Reader near the top of your screen. The Reader is part of the Admin bar that appears when you are logged into your WordPress.com account.
Find and Follow Blogs on the Reader
On the left, you’ll find a few tabs that help you discover great things to read:
Search lets you search for posts and sites on any topic and suggests great reads based on your activity. While all public WordPress.com sites appear in search results, only posts from self-hosted sites where the Jetpack plugin is installed and has any Jetpack paid plan (standalone plugins or the core Jetpack plugin) will appear in the Posts search results in the Reader. Otherwise, your site will only appear in the Sites search results.
Followed Sites shows you the newest posts from the sites you follow and is the default Reader view. Here, you can manage your preferences for these sites — you can choose to receive new posts by email as well as in your Reader. If you don’t want to receive email notifications from sites you follow, click Manage. Then find a site you wish to stop receiving email notifications from. Click the arrow on the left to open the site’s settings. Turn off the setting next to Emails for new posts.
If you want to turn off email subscriptions for all sites, follow these steps:
- Click on your avatar in the top right to access your profile.
- Click on Notifications.
- Go to Reader Subscriptions in the top menu.
- Scroll down and check the box next to Block all email updates from blogs you’re following on WordPress.com.
- Click Save Notification Settings.
Conversations allow you to read and reply to all of your conversations in one place. WordPress posts you’ve liked or commented on will appear when they have new comments. You can follow or unfollow a conversation using the ellipsis menu (the three dots to the right of a title) in the reader.
My Likes lets you go back to blog posts you clicked “like” on. Liking a post is a great way to save it for later if you want to read the post again or join the conversation later.
You can add new sites to the Followed Sites section of your Reader by clicking on the Follow button in the bottom right-hand corner of any WordPress.com blog. (You must be logged in to see it.)
You can add any non-WordPress.com site with an RSS feed to the Reader by clicking the Manage button next to Followed Sites. At the top of this page, you can enter the URL of any site or some search terms.
Note: Custom Post Types will not appear in the Reader, as the Reader is only compatible with the default post type.
How to Import/Export Blog Subscriptions
When you follow a blog, you are subscribed to receive updates. You can use the Reader to follow all of your blogs in one place, even blogs that aren’t WordPress.com or Jetpack sites. There are a couple of methods for adding blogs to your Reader that we cover in depth here, but if you have an OPML file, you can use the Import option to bring in several subscriptions at once.
From the Manage Followed Sites page, you can import your feed using the Import button and select your OPML file from your file picker. OPML links subscriptions between different services in a standard format, like HTML.
You can also export your blog subscriptions to another service using the Export option.
Managing Lists with the Reader
Lists allows you to sort the blogs you follow into groups. You can browse your lists for your own reading pleasure or share them with the world for others to discover.
To create a new list, type a name into the New List field and click the plus sign. This will create your list and open its settings, where you can give the list a description and add topics or specific sites:
Learn more about creating and managing lists.
Following Specific Tags
In the Tags section, you can browse sites by topic. Click Tags to open the list of tags you’re following or to start following more.
To read the latest posts on a topic, type the tag name into the “Add a tag” field and click Add. Your Reader will load up the newest posts published with that tag, which will be added to your Reader so you can find it easily when you return.
You can follow as many tags as you like. When you’re in the Reader, the tag you’re currently browsing will be highlighted in blue. Remove a tag from your list at any time by clicking the “X” to the right of the tag.
Stats on Reader views
Approximate view counts for posts are shown in your following feed, when available. For more information, see the Reader views page.
Mobile Reader
You can also access the Reader using the Jetpack app on an Android or iOS mobile device.
Blocking Sites on the Reader
The option to block a site is offered in the ellipsis menu on posts in Reader:
You can see a list of your current site blocks (and remove existing blocks) at:
https://wordpress.com/me/site-blocks
Your site content in the Reader
When you connect Jetpack, any WordPress.com user who follows your site will start to see your posts in their Reader. From there, they can visit the post on your site or like, share, or comment directly from the Reader.
When using the Reader’s search bar, your Jetpack site will appear in the Sites search results for matching search terms. Please note that we need at least one subscriber/follower on the site before we start crawling the site to make it appear in Reader (this can be the site owner). The reader relies on your site’s feed in order to fetch your posts. If there’s an issue with your feed, then the Reader won’t be able to display your posts. You can check if your site has a valid feed using the W3C feed validator.
For more information about the Reader, please see our support page on WordPress.com
If you are having any trouble with the Reader, feel free to contact us.
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