I recently began receiving emails from WordPress informing me that another blogger has recommended my blog.
Of course, there’s an easy way to recommend another blog simply by writing and publishing a post and linking to that blog, but this new way of recommending another blog was something I thought was much better.
After all, once you read a post recommending a blog, it isn’t long before that post gets pushed down your reader list, until it’s probably forgotten about. So, if you haven’t read the post or maybe thought you’d come back to it later, you probably won’t.
However, this new method of recommending a blog is better because the blogs you recommend appear on your Gravatar profile when using the WordPress Reader, which means that anyone checking your Gravatar will see a list of the blogs you recommend.
It’s easy to add the blogs you want to recommend. I’m using an Apple iMac desktop computer to demonstrate this. Here’s how to do it.
- On the dashboard of your blog, click the ‘Reader‘ icon (represented by a pair of spectacles).
- On the Reader menu, open ‘Lists‘ and click on ‘Recommended Blogs.’
- Click the ‘Edit‘ button and open the ‘Sites‘ tab. As you will see from the image below, I’ve already recommended some blogs.
- To remove a recommended blog, click on the ‘Remove‘ button.
- To add a blog, start typing the name of the blog in the ‘Search or enter URL to follow‘ box, and a list of suggestions will appear.
- Click the ‘Recommend‘ button to add a blog to your Recommended Blogs list. Note that if you are already following a blog, you’ll see ‘Subscribed‘ next to it.
- The blog you recommended is now added to your Recommended Blogs list and will appear whenever anyone hovers their mouse over your Gravatar profile in the WordPress Reader. Click the ‘View All‘ link to see a list of all the blogs they recommend.
Whenever another blogger recommends your blog, you should receive a notification email from WordPress with the details of who has recommended your blog, provided you have not switched off notifications. However, I’ve not yet seen these notifications appear under the notification bell icon.
Based on my observations, after clicking on the Gravatars of many bloggers, few have recommended any blogs so far. Additionally, some bloggers haven’t included their blog details on their Gravatar, making it harder for others to find their blog. And remember that if you leave comments on other blogs, your Gravatar will appear next to your comment.
Have you seen this new feature on WordPress? Has anyone recommended your blog in this way? Will you start using the ‘Recommend Blog’ feature? Have you added your blog details to your Gravatar?
Layout, content, settings, and format might differ on self-hosted blogs.
The featured image in this blog post is taken from Pixabay. AI checked spelling and grammar mistakes.
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Thanks Hugh I have finally figured this out thanks to your post. It has been fun seeing people recommend my blog too.
That’s great. Glad to hear you got to use this feature, Wayne. Thanks for recommending my blog.
You’re welcome Hugh!
Thanks for the insights Hugh. I suspect many people won’t know about this. I didn’t. Off to check it out now
You’re welcome, Brenda. This feature is relatively new to WordPress, but it’s great to see some bloggers now using it.
Cheers Hugh; someone had recently recommended my blog but I didn’t realise it was a new feature, so thanks for explaining.
You’re welcome, Paul. Hope you are well and that the writing is going well.
To be honest Hugh, it’s a bit of a strain at the moment. I moved out of my old house and nearly 10 weeks later I’m still at my sisters house in northern Cumbria in her spare bedroom whilst the legal stuff drags along at the solicitors pace. I’ve limited resources to create much and no completion date as yet. It’s a nice part of the world but I’ve seen enough now and I want to get on with my normal life 130 miles away. And if one more person tells me moving house is one of the most stressful things you do well I won’t be responsible for my actions!
But thanks for asking!
I’ll keep everything crossed that it won’t be long before completion, Paul.
I appreciate it, thanks Hugh.
Thanks, Hugh. I didn’t know anything about this. Great information, as usual.
It’s a relatively new feature on WordPress, Olga. One I wanted to share with you all, as I think it’s a neat feature.
I think this is a great feature, Hugh. I’ve recommended 6 blogs, yours being one of them. My blog has also been recommended, which I appreciate. Thank you for taking the time to explain this feature in detail.
Thank you so much for the recommendation, Eugi. This is a great new feature that I think many bloggers will use.
You’re most welcome, Hugh.
Thank you for the tip Hugh, I had not seen this feature and did not know of it.
It’s a new feature from WordPress, not one that has been around for long, but I’m delighted they’ve introduced it so we can recommend our favourite blogs other than in a blog post.
I’ve seen notices of recommendations, but I honestly didn’t know what it was all about. I don’t use the Reader very often, but I think I’ll give this feature a look. Thanks for the information, Hugh.
I don’t use the WordPress Reader much either, Dan. However, I do use it when searching for particular posts on WordPress from blogs I’m not already following. I hope the ‘recommended blogs’ feature will one day also apply to Gravatars when not in the WordPress Reader.
I have (happily) received several of these notices that my blog has been recommended but I didn’t know what caused that to happen. Thanks so much for the information… now I intend to use your tutorial to recommend a few blogs that I love (including yours, of course 😊).
Thank you for the blog recommendation, Janis. I’m delighted that this post answered some of your questions.
Thanks for this post, Hugh. When I saw it appear in my inbox and I read the title, I was going to comment: “Aha, that’s what happened. Thank you,” since I noticed a message recently about you recommending my blog and I’d never seen that feature before. I had been wondering how this happened, hence my delight about your post. I was double surprised when you used my blog in one of your example screenshots. :)
This is a wonderful WordPress feature, indeed! Since you mentioned in your previous blog post how your views and stats have gone up, I was wondering if it maybe had to do with this new feature and other bloggers recommending yours?
This is a new feature that WordPress recently introduced, Liesbet. However, I hear it’s also available on other blogging platforms.
I hope you didn’t mind me using your blog in the screenshots. It was my next recommendation while drafting the post, so it worked out.
While researching this post, I found that very few bloggers were already using the feature and promoting blogs they loved, although some of them might have been aware of it. I believe the rise in my stats during August is mainly due to the performance of some of my posts with SEOs. Some of my older posts are doing exceptionally well, especially the True Story posts I used to write. Search engines bring in the most traffic to my blog. I’m also good at promoting my posts on social media and gaining a lot of support from other social media users, too. It all helps.
I was flattered by the screenshot and seeing my blog mentioned here, Hugh. Please, feel free to use or do whatever you’d like regarding Roaming About. You have 100% my permission. :-)
Thank you for sharing the “how to” do the recommended blogs, Hugh!
I always include a ‘How To’ section on these types of posts, Miriam. I’ve been told that the screenshots also help.
Thank you, Hugh.
I just found out about this because I received an e-mail that my blog got recommended. This is really cool and I will go recommend blogs asap!
Thank you for recommending my blog, Erika. I hope you find this new feature beneficial.
It is my pleasure, Hugh, and I love this new way of supporting blogs I appreciate. Let’s see how this develops.
These changes make WordPress look like Medium.
I’ve not used Medium, so I can’t comment on whether that’s the case, but it’s great that on WordPress, we can now recommend other blogs.
Ah, that’s what’s going on. Thanks so much, Hugh!
What a cool new feature! I’m off to try it out!
You’re welcome, Jan.
Thanks for solving the ‘mystery’, Hugh. I hadn’t realised they would appear on my Gravatar profile.
Best wishes, Pete.
You’re welcome, Pete.
Thanks for explaining this so thoroughly, Hugh! I have recommended several blogs, including yours, but don’t see a recommended list anywhere on my Gravatar profile. I tried adding it as a link, but got a 403 Forbidden message. I checked your Gravatar profile and didn’t see a recommended list there either. Where do we find it? Thanks!
Hi Debbie,
How strange. Let me check this out. It’s possible that WordPress has removed it for maintenance or moved it elsewhere. I’ll come back to you.
Thank you!
Hi Debbie,
Apparently, you need to be in the WordPress Reader to view ‘Recommended Blogs.’ It only works there.
I’ll update the post.
Thanks, Hugh! I have now added it as a link to my Gravatar profile. You could do that as well. Initially, it gave off a 403 Forbidden message, but it’s there now.
I didn’t know you could do that. Thank you so much for the helpful tip. What would we do without your knowledge, Hugh? Thank you.
This is a new feature WordPress recently introduced, Esther. It was therefore no surprise that I didn’t see many bloggers who had already recommended other blogs.
This needs further investigation, Hugh! Thanks for the how-to! And thank you for the recommendation 😊
Speaking of sharing, I added Mastodon to my socials. But when I want to share after tapping the share button, im asked to add the url… strange. Perhaps I set something up incorrectly. I had some trouble…
The Mastodon sharing button isn’t very friendly, Terri. However, as long as you have set up all your new posts to share automatically on Mastodon, they will appear there.
If you want to share another blogger’s post on your Mastodon account, the best thing to do is either boost it from your own timeline (you need to be following the blogger on Mastodon) or copy and paste the full URL of your Mastodon account into the URL box that appears when clicking the button. The best place to find the URL address is by going to your blog’s dashboard, clicking on Jetpack – Social, and looking for the Mastodon connection.
Hope that helps.
It does, thank you!
I don’t see ‘Recommended Blogs’ when I click on ‘Lists’. I wonder if this isn’t available for free WordPress sites?
I have another blog, hosted on a free WordPress plan, which I use for testing and other purposes. The ‘Recommended Blogs’ feature is also available for me to use there.
Oh, I’ll have another look. Thanks Hugh.
I hope you find it, Stevie. The only reason I can think of as to why you can not see it is that you’re using a retired theme no longer supported by WordPress. But hopefully, you’ll find it.
Great post Hugh. I have saved this to investigate further when I have time but I’m definitely in favour of promoting my favourite blogs for others to enjoy.
Likewise, Wayne. It’s great to be able to promote the blogs you love the most through something that isn’t in a post and is visible to anyone checking out your Gravatar.