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.

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.

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12 responses to “WP Engine Releases Frost, A Free Block Theme for Website Builders”

  1. I’ve been following the development of Frost on Twitter, and I was really excited to see this pop into my inbox overnight. After giving the directory-submitted version a go, I think the biggest standout w/ this theme is that it’s a much more well-rounded approach to block-based themes than what I’ve seen from most of the themes in the directory. The depth of the patterns and the flexible, core design make this very practical to use in live projects. Usually, I’ll tinker with block-based themes, but revert to Divi or Elementor to get the job done. I think if we saw a larger number themes with a more complete experience (like Frost), particularly for publishers (news, etc…), then I think block-based themes would reduce the need for heavy site editors more than they have so far in my personal experience.

  2. I love it. Was able to replicate the general feel of a code-fat theme of mine in a few hours with zero code. Taking a peek under the hood, I see only about 90 lines of PHP and 300 lines of CSS. theme.json and WordPress core do the heavy lifting. We’re designers again!

    More font options would be nice but it’s just a matter of time before a Site Editor friendly Google Fonts to local plugin shows up in the directory (hmmm). This is a great theme to fork or export and tailor more specifically. Very cool. Thank you, Brian!

  3. Elegant minimalism, yeah! I also like the font choice, Outfit is the only geometric typeface on GF that works for body text and headings equally well, way better than Jost/Futura as an allround font.

  4. Is this the third time this theme has been launched? Please correct me if I’m wrong but there was an initial paid version, then a free version when the purchase fee was dropped, and now a release in the Themes Directory.

  5. To provide context, yes, Frost was initially launched as a paid theme in the summer of 2021. However, upon its integration with WP Engine in December 2021, the business model shifted towards open-sourcing, making it freely accessible to users. Since then, Frost has been readily available on its official website, GitHub, and, more recently, the WordPress.org theme directory. In addition, the theme has continually evolved with enhancements in the block editor and has been regularly updated to incorporate new features and settings introduced to WordPress Core.

  6. When I started my web design business, the “Revolution” theme helped me a lot to show that WordPress was not just a blogging tool, but also a CMS for professional websites. Thank you so much for that Brian!!!
    Today, I am sure that the “Frost” theme will also help to show that FSE is the future of WordPress. I used it for my own site and just with a little “Litespeed” optimization, I only need 9 requests and 129 KB to display my homepage according to GTMETRIX… Revolutionary, isn’t it?

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