WP Engine Releases Frost, A Free Block Theme for Website Builders

The WordPress Themes Directory is now hosting more than 300 block themes, a milestone for the dedicated theme developers who have persevered through the growing pains and evolution of block theming. WP Engine is one of the newest theme authors who helped put the directory over the 300 mark with its submission of Frost.

With its clean, minimal design, 36 patterns, and impeccable attention to detail on block styles, Frost is positioned to quickly become another blockbuster multipurpose theme. It already has more than 1,000 users as it has been in testing for awhile before landing in the official directory.

Frost’s typography features Outfit, a geometric sans-serif font, for both header and paragraph text.

The default color scheme is black and white with a vibrant blue accent color but Frost comes with eight different style variations. Frost designer Brian Gardner showcases a few in the tweet below, with Gutenberg’s full-screen previews for styles.

Feast your eyes on the latest Style Variations setting in the Site Editor, now with full-screen previews. It's currently in Gutenberg and will likely make its grand entrance in #WordPress 6.3! pic.twitter.com/r7r20GjcdS
— Brian Gardner (@bgardner) May 5, 2023

When first installing the theme on a new WordPress site, clicking Customize takes the user to the Site Editor with the homepage template pre-filled so there’s no guesswork involved. Users can immediately start customizing any of the included templates. Frost packages all the usual ones – 404, archive, home, index, page, search, and single, but also includes a blank template and a “no title” template to help users with content that works better without the requirement of a title.

Frost includes 36 patterns for building everything from pricing tables to portfolios, calls-to-action, testimonials, a grid of team members, various heroes, feature boxes, and more. Many of them have dark and light variations.

There are also four full-page layouts that users can insert to build pages and launch websites faster, including About, Pricing, Home, and Links pages.

Frost could easily be used for building agency websites, portfolios, business sites, and more. It’s easy to see developers using it as a starter for multiple projects given its minimal design. If website builders are looking for an even more minimalist starting point, Gardner’s Powder theme is a stripped down fork of Frost.

Check out the Frost theme on its own website at frostwp.com, which includes examples of all the patterns, layouts, styles, documentation, and more. Frost is available to download for free from WordPress.org.