On Wednesday, WordPress executive director Josepha Haden Chomphosy posted the next steps forward for themes and reviews for the official theme directory. In the post, she describes the tools and types of access the Themes Team needs. She also laid out some other goals for the system. The timeline is to have much of this…
[The Eksell theme] does such a great job of selling a block editor-driven WordPress. It was a missed opportunity to not pair something of this quality with the block editor when WordPress 5.0 was released. It’s responsive! I’m amazed this stands out as a highlight for me, but, as the official theme, Twenty Twenty-One breaks…
It is easy to become jaded after reading the same old keyword-stuffed theme descriptions. After viewing the same hero-plus-three-boxes theme designs. After seeing another theme with “block editor styles” that utterly fails to deliver on its promise. As I peruse the demo of Anders Norén’s latest WordPress theme, Eksell, I am reminded that artists still…
One of my favorite activities each week is to peruse the latest themes to land in the WordPress theme directory. Often, there are intriguing design concepts. However, much of the time, I am disappointed to learn that homepage designs of many rely on theme options instead of the block editor. While the editor has several…
Earlier today, the WordPress theme directory welcomed its fourth block-based theme. Built by UXL Themes, Hansen is one of the more stylish projects capable of working with the site editor in the Gutenberg plugin. The theme author also stepped it up a notch and included several block patterns. I have written about how patterns will…
Today, GT Basic became the second theme from GermanThemes to go live in the WordPress theme directory. Like the company’s previous theme, GT Ambition, it is built around the block editor. It also introduces several custom block patterns. The theme will not knock anyone’s socks off with its artistic merit. GT Basic is very much…
Earlier today, the Phoenix theme was merged into the WordPress Theme Experiments repository on GitHub. Like all themes in the repo, it is not meant for use on a live site. It is a project to test new ideas for the upcoming Full Site Editing (FSE) system. Imran Sayed of Codeytek Academy created the theme…
Perhaps the fates have stepped in to prove a point. After I wrote a 2,000-word piece on the lack of quality themes in the theme directory, they decided to send a message. Not once, but twice this week, a new WordPress theme has managed to catch my eye. My rational mind knows that it was…
Empt Lite, the latest theme by Rough Pixels, landed in the WordPress theme directory today. Like most of the company’s prior work, the design is on par with the best free themes currently available. I have come to disregard that icky feeling whenever I see “Lite” attached to a theme name, at least when it…
Automation. It is one of those dreams in the minds of many reviewers from the Themes Team. If there was a tool to take care of 90% of the issues, the team could focus on the 10% not easily found by automated scripts. Enter the Theme Review Action project. Steve Dufresne, a WordPress Meta team…
The WordPress.org theme directory is becoming little more than a crippleware distributor. I suppose it was inevitable given its reach, which can be worth $1,000s/month for theme authors. Justin Tadlock via Twitter As I think back on that tweet from 2019, I realize how unfair it was to refer to the themes coming into the…
On Monday, Automattic announced its Blank Canvas theme on WordPress.com. The goal is to allow end-users to build single-page websites, such as an “about me” or product landing page. Blank Canvas is a child theme of Seedlet, which Automattic’s Theme Team has been using as a launchpad. One example is its recently-released Spearhead child theme.…
Around 2010, child theming had finally caught its stride. Bigger theme shops were starting to take note, and some were implementing advanced parent themes that were meant to serve as a “framework” for creating child themes. The theme development community hit a bit of a brick wall amid this explosion of child theming. Grandchild themes…
I would like to ask, what is the best way to learn to create WordPress themes from scratch? I would like to learn, but there seems to be no comprehensive resource for this. Thanks for any help. Mark I have been around the WordPress community long enough to remember the days when there were sparse…
Twenty Twenty-One Blocks, now renamed to TT1 Blocks, is inching its way toward the WordPress theme directory. Kjell Reigstad mentioned the prospect in this week’s block-based themes meeting. Contributors to the theme, which is part of the Theme Experiments project, have pushed some much-needed code updates to the repository. TT1 Blocks is the block-based version…