Unless you are some kind of wizard with the block editor, starting a WordPress website from a blank slate can be overwhelming and ultimately defeating. Mike McAlister, maker of the free Ollie theme, is developing an onboarding experience that aims to drastically reduce the amount of time users spend setting up a new site. “I…
Hey is a block theme designed by Automattic for users on WordPress.com and also released for free in the WordPress.org Themes Directory. It’s the kind of simple theme that enables you to quickly get started writing online, without having to configure a bunch of design elements. The homepage features a profile image (Site Logo), site…
During the 2022 State of the Word, Matt Mullenweg announced a plan to add new “Community” and “Commercial” taxonomies for the theme and plugin directories that would help users more quickly ascertain the purpose of the extensions they are considering. Shortly after the announcement, instructions were published for theme and plugin authors to opt into…
Shufflehound made a big splash in March when it released Lemmony, a free WordPress block theme with more than 30 patterns. This was the company’s first block theme on WordPress.org and it is already active on more than 1,000 websites. Building on the success of this theme, Shufflehound has created a child theme for agencies.…
WordPress is approaching its 20th anniversary, and for the majority of those years, contributors have cranked out a new default theme. Even though the structure and supported features of default themes have drastically changed over the years, contributors are still actively maintaining all 13 of the “Twenty” themes. A new proposal on WordPress.org recommends winding…
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…
WordPress’ Themes Team has released a new block theme called Stacks as part of the Community Themes initiative proposed earlier this year. The goal is to bring together representatives of the team to build block themes year round, the same way that default themes are built and officially supported. Stacks was designed for one purpose…
WordPress developer Mike McAlister has launched Ollie, his first block theme, into public beta. McAlister, whose theme company Array Themes was acquired by WP Engine in 2018, along with the Atomic Blocks plugin, recently departed from his role at the company to pursue other projects. Ollie supports all the latest Site Editor features, including global…
Lemmony is a new WordPress block theme designed by the team at Shufflehound, a theme development company based in Europe with commercial products on Themeforest. This is the team’s first block theme on WordPress.org and it is a strong debut. Lemmony is a beautifully-designed multipurpose theme that would work well for businesses, agencies, and portfolio…
WordPress contributors have updated the legacy default themes to bundle Google Fonts locally in the theme folder, instead of loading them from Google’s servers. In years past, loading fonts from the the Google CDN was the recommended practice for performance reasons, but new privacy concerns have emerged following a German court case, which fined a website…
Automattic has published its Lettre theme to WordPress.org. The company launched its newsletter product at the end of December 2022 using Lettre as the default theme. The self-hosted version of this block theme is for those who want to publish a newsletter using Jetpack. The theme puts the focus on the subscription form, which is…
One of Matt Mullenweg’s announcements at the 2022 State of the Word was the addition of new taxonomies for the theme and plugin directories that will help users more quickly ascertain the purpose of the extensions they are considering. With nearly 60,000 free plugins available and more than 10,000 free themes, it’s not always immediately…
Sensei LMS, Automattic’s teaching and learning management plugin, has released a new free block theme called Course. In February 2022, version 4.0 of the plugin introduced support for full-site editing with its bundled “Learning Mode” theme. Course features a new bold design made to be customized in the Site Editor. Although Sensei works with neaerly…
Divi, the popular commercial WordPress theme and page builder created by Elegant Themes, has announced major changes coming in version 5.0 that constitute a complete rewrite of Divi’s core technologies. The update, which is expected to be released in beta next year, will focus on performance, stability, scalability, and extendability, but it will not introduce…
Automattic has released a new block theme called Loudness that is available on both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. It’s an artistic and opinionated theme based on the company’s Block Canvas starter theme. Although Loudness’ brief description suggests the theme was created for “music and learning,” the design and custom patterns lend themselves to a variety of different…