For a holiday gift that’s absolutely brimming with possibility, look no further than our brand new feature which allows any reader to gift a WordPress.com subscription renewal to their favorite website.

As a website owner, this is a way to allow your most ardent fans to show their gratitude for all the hard work you’ve put into your passion project over the years.

As a reader, this is a way to show a bit of thanks to your favorite creators — be they bloggers, artists, small business owners, or even your pesky-but-loveable little brother who’s finally trying to give his site some attention.

This feature will be displayed as a black banner across the top of the site, from which readers will be able to click “Gift” and then be taken right to a checkout page.

Easy as that!

As of today, we’ve rolled out this feature to a small number of sites, but that number will be growing every day as we continue to test and iterate. For now, gifting is available on sites that are within 54 days of their annual subscription expiration date or within 5 days of their monthly expiration date. Soon, however, it will be available much more widely.

How to activate the gifting banner

You can activate this new feature in about 15 seconds:

After you’ve activated the banner, be sure to spread the word by writing a post about how your readers can help you out in a brand new way!

A few more important details

Gifting applies to whichever plan the website is currently on. For example: a subscription gift for a site on a 1-year plan will be for the entire amount of a 1-year plan renewal; a gift to a site on a monthly plan will be in the amount of 1 month on their current plan tier. (Note that gifts are made in the site owner’s currency.)

Once a gift is paid for, both the website owner and the person who gave the gift will receive an email confirmation.

You can find even more nuts and bolts here.