So Simple: A Free Minimalist WordPress Theme from Press75

Last week the big news in the world of WordPress themes was Westwerk’s acquisition of Press75, one of the oldest theme shops originally founded by Jason Schuller in 2008. The folks at Westwerk began implementing changes immediately and announced new pricing options the same day the shop’s new owner was introduced. Single theme purchases are now back in the mix.

So Simple was one of the themes in Press75’s smaller subscription package, but after new management revised the pricing structure, they decided to offer it for free.

As you can see, this super minimalist theme is almost entirely free of post meta, displaying only the published date. So Simple allows you to select a page to assign for the intro area within the WordPress customizer. This unique intro area disappears when the visitor clicks on the circular indicator attached to the right side of the viewport. Check out the live demo to see how it works.

The theme adds options to the post edit screen which allow you to set a light or dark text color, or a custom permalink. The featured image you assign serves as a responsive fullscreen background image for the post in both the archive and single post views.

So Simple is probably most notable for what it removes, rather than what it adds. It has no menu, no header and no widget areas, so these areas are not visible in the admin when the theme is active.

The post writing experience is simplified as well, with tags and categories removed from the editing screen. (Please note that the admin tweaks can be disabled via the customizer.) The idea in using So Simple is to provide a distraction-free writing and reading experience.

This theme is a natural choice for Press75 to make into a free product, as it doesn’t promise much but caters to a specific type of website owner. If bare bones minimalism is your style and you don’t mind a severely pruned post editing screen, check out So Simple. You can download it for free from the Press75.com website.