Anders Norén, a Swedish designer and prolific WordPress theme developer, has released Oaknut, a new profile block theme reminiscent of services like Linktree and Carrd. The theme is for users who want a simple profile landing page with relevant social and work links, but it could also be easily expanded to capture email addresses for…
Olive Themes, a relatively new independent theme shop, has released its third block theme on the WordPress.org directory. Arc FSE is a high contrast, multipurpose theme, designed to enable a broad range of flexibility through support for full-site editing features. The theme features the open source and exceptionally readable Poppins web font in various weights…
WordPress.org theme previews just got a major improvement this week with the addition of Style Variation previews. The previews now appear on block themes that include style variations. Themes that have more variations than what fits in the space beneath the preview pane will display all variations in a carousel with little arrows to navigate…
WPZOOM is coming in strong with its first block theme approved for the WordPress Themes Directory. UniBlock is a beautifully designed theme that is well-suited for businesses and freelancers. The company plans to adopt the concept of full-site editing in other WPZOOM themes as well, following the release of UniBlock. UniBlock’s default look is sporting…
Themeisle, longtime masters of the multipurpose WordPress theme, has launched its first block-based theme with the same trademark style and flexibility of its previous products. The shop currently distributes its Hestia (100K+ installs) and Neve (300K+ installs) themes on WordPress.org, commercializing pro versions with upgrades and support. Raft is the latest addition to the lineup.…
In June 2022, WordPress.org’s Themes Team began strongly urging theme authors to switch to locally hosted webfonts, following a German court case, which fined a website owner for violating the GDPR by using Google-hosted webfonts. For years, theme authors have been enqueuing Google Fonts from the Google CDN for better performance, but this method exposes visitors’…
Molten is a new block theme from first-time WordPress.org theme author Paul Truong, designed for chefs and restaurateurs to showcase their work. The theme puts the spotlight on food photography offset with bold typography featuring the Playfair Display font for headings and Source Sans Pro for paragraph text. Truong is working on setting up a…
After a seven-month long effort across multiple contributor teams, the Twenty Twenty-Two (TT2) default theme will be tagged as “Accessibility-Ready” when WordPress 6.1 ships in November. It is the first block theme to meet the requirements for gaining this distinction. During its development the theme was also tested and found to meet WCAG AA level…
The count for WordPress block themes has reached 137. It’s a far cry from the 500 block themes WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden-Chomphosy set as a goal for 2022, but the number is steadily climbing as theme authors find their footing and discover how quickly block themes can be created. Brian Gardner is throwing his…
WordPress users looking for a block theme for blogging will have no shortage of options while Anders Norén is on a run with back-to-back theme submissions. Beaumont, his second theme release this month, is another one designed for personal sites and blogs but with an emphasis on longform content. It was named for Thaddeus Beaumont,…
If you watched Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A session at WordCamp US last weekend, it’s evident that there are significant parts of the community still clinging to the Classic Editor who would be happy for it to be supported indefinitely. For whatever reason, millions users are not ready to switch – some prefer the old editor, don’t…
WordPress theme author Anders Norén is at it again with a new minimal block theme for blogs and personal websites. Björk is the 129th block theme to hit the directory and Norén’s 25th free WordPress theme. It follows the release of Poe, a portfolio style theme, less than two months ago. Although Norén said he is a…
Block themes are expanding to include more niches beyond the simple one-column blogging themes, and Catch Themes is one of the companies at the forefront of this new frontier. Pentatonic, the company’s latest release on WordPress.org, is a free theme created for band and musicians. The theme uses core blocks to create sections that showcase…
In the days before Gutenberg, the maturity of the WordPress theme ecosystem offered a diverse selection of dozens of well-known starter themes where developers were likely to find one that suited their individual preferences or could easily be modified. Theme authors have frequently asked if there is a good starter theme for building block themes,…
In July, WordPress’ Themes and Meta teams collaborated to add a new “Block Themes” menu item to the filter menu on the directory homepage in an effort to improve block themes’ visibility. Block themes currently account for less than 2% of the directory’s 9,900 themes but activating one is the only way users can take advantage…