Category: Free WordPress Themes

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 a newsletter, add a blog, or serve as a placeholder for a coming soon website.

Oaknut includes just three templates: Home (displays posts on the homepage, or on the Posts page if a static homepage is set), Index (displays posts), and 404 (displays when no content is found). Users who want to expand the theme beyond the basic use case can add more templates through the Site Editor or even create their own custom templates.

The demo looks just like the screenshot, and there are no other pages to view. After installing and activating the theme, clicking on Customize will go to the Site Editor where everything you see in the demo is already in place, ready to be replaced with your own profile data and links.

If the bright mustard color is too much for your taste, you’re in luck with Oaknut, because it packages a whopping 23 different style variations. Norén has also included 14 font families, eight button styles, and five styles for social links.

As one of the pioneers in the block themes category Norén ensured Oaknut was ready to showcase new features released in WordPress 6.1. The theme supports fluid typography, spacing sizes, root padding aware elements, pseudo selector styles in theme.json, and theme.json styling for elements like buttons, captions, and headings.

“This enables Oaknut to have a really small CSS file,” Norén said. “It comes in at less than 150 lines, and 120 of those lines are for the custom block styles included in the theme. Combine that with locally hosted variable fonts and the complete lack of JavaScript in the theme, and you end up with some pretty speedy profile pages.”

Norén shared a screenshot of a website using the theme with a Lighthouse performance score of 100.

Oaknut is a good choice for WordPress users who want a simple, attractive theme that shows how people can connect with them. It is also great for those who are just starting out with a web presence or domains that need a nicely- designed placeholder.

The theme is available on WordPress.org to download for free. Norén has also created a GitHub Sponsors account for anyone who wants to support the continued development of his 26 free WordPress themes and future theme releases.

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 and sizes. The color palette is dark with a bright lemon-yellow accent color. It’s bold without being overly splashy, making it suitable for professional use cases.

Arc FSE does not come with any style variations, but users can easily change the accent colors for buttons, headings, and anything else by editing the templates.

The theme comes with 20 custom patterns, which make up different sections of the design. They are all conveniently grouped together under “Arc FSE” in the Patterns explorer, so you don’t have to hunt for the ones that belong to the theme. It includes full-page patterns for the home, about, services, and portfolio pages. There are also section patterns for things like the default footer, 404 page, a promotional video, sidebar, search cover block, services, and more.

When first installing Arc FSE, the home page is set up to be nearly identical to the demo, making it easy for users to get started customizing. It would be helpful to have a style guide for the theme, but for the most part you get what you see with the demo for the free version. Olive Themes also makes a pro version, which includes additional features, WooCommerce support, and more blocks for things like testimonials and star ratings.

Arc FSE is good option for businesses, agencies, foundations, or artists with portfolios. After less than a week, it’s already being used on more than 100 sites. The theme is available to download for free on WordPress.org.

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 a darker color palette in the navigation and above the fold, with a lighter background for the rest of the website. The video on the sample homepage uses the free WPZOOM Video Popup Block plugin, which supports Vimeo and YouTube. It’s a simple, lightweight block that allows users to customize the play button and play icon.

After activating the theme, clicking on ‘Customize’ will prompt the user to install the video plugin. It can also be converted to a Custom HTML block or removed entirely at the user’s discretion.

UniBlock’s 19 custom block patterns include everything one might expect from a business theme but, most impressively, it ships with five full-page patterns:

• Front Page
• About
• Services
• Blog
• Contact

Alternatively, users can assign the page template in the post settings to get the same effect.

These full-page patterns are convenient for speedy page building. They make it possible to get a basic business website up in a matter of minutes. Here’s an example of the Services full-page pattern that will instantly embed when selected. Users can delete any sections they don’t need, add more blocks and patterns, and quickly fill in all their own information.

Separately there are patterns for a footer with text, links, multiple arrangements of featured boxes with text and button, multiple designs for call-to-action sections, pricing tables, team members with social icons, testimonials, header cover, sidebar, 404 page, and more.

Users can delve even further into customizing the templates with the site editor, as UniBlock is packaged with nearly two dozen templates and template parts. Here they can also edit the menu and adjust global styles.

WPZOOM is developing a Pro version of the theme to release in a few weeks with support for importing the whole demo, multiple color schemes, multiple demos, premium block patterns, and additional header and footer layouts.

Check out the demo on the WPZOOM website to see the theme in action. WPZOOM has also written documentation for UniBlock, which covers general topics like how to use block patterns, how to set up the front and blog pages, and how to create a menu in the site editor. Since the company’s most popular themes are what would be considered classic themes, UniBlock is new territory for most of their customers. It is so far the only block theme among WPZOOM’s collection of 31 themes.

Block theme adoption is slowly making its way across WordPress’ major theme shops and the official directory is now hosting 160 themes tagged for full-site editing. As more longtime theme companies make their block theme debuts and develop a base for future themes, WordPress users may start to see a rapid acceleration of the number and variety of block themes available. UniBlock is so far one of the few block themes in the directory with a singular focus on business websites. It is available to download for free from WordPress.org or via the admin themes panel.

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.

When it comes to full-site editing support, the WordPress directory still leans a little heavy on blog themes, but Raft was designed to suit a wide-ranging variety of use cases, as stated in the theme’s description:

“It’s perfect for blogs, small business, startups, agencies, firms, e-commerce shops (WooCommerce storefront) as well as personal portfolio sites and most types of projects.”

Although the default homepage looks simple, it’s the block patterns that make this theme ready for anything. Raft includes patterns for creating a cover image with title and background, image galleries with a title, post query loop, two columns for features or services, three columns of features, call to action, FAQ, inverted background, and a hero section.

When users first install the theme, it prompts them to install the free Otter Blocks plugin, which adds more page building blocks and customization options. Raft also has compatibility with Elementor, Brizy, and Beaver Builder, in addition to Gutenberg, and support for WooCommerce. The Pro version of Otter Blocks contains more advanced WooCommerce blocks for building complex store layouts.

After activating the theme on a new install, clicking “Customize” takes the user to the Site Editor where it will be pre-filled to look nearly identical to the demo. There’s not much to the demo – it keeps the pages fairly simple and showcases the patterns on a separate page. Raft isn’t quite a blank slate but it does leave some room for the imagination, as it’s not stuffed full of content and animations.

The theme comes with eight beautifully designed style variations, each with harmonious color combinations that create a different vibe for the website.

Rift packages full-site-editing templates that users can edit to further customize the main pages like 404, single blog posts, the front page, archives, and more. It also includes a blank page template.

Themeisle markets its popular classic themes on WordPress.org with pro versions that include starter templates, additional header and footer options, custom layouts, WooCommerce layouts, and other features. The company has not created a pro version for Raft. They may still be developing upgrade options but the world of blocks changes the game, since custom layouts are much easier to create with the block editor. User expectations are different. It will be interesting to see how Themeisle markets its first block theme compared to its classic products.

Rift is a good option if you need a lightweight theme that isn’t too opinionated but still provides the basic design as a starting place for building pages and customizing them with more advanced tools as necessary. If you are already one of the 100k+ Otter Blocks users, this theme integrates seamlessly. Raft is available to download for free on WordPress.org.

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 marketing site for the theme so there is no demo at this time. One drawback is that it does not include any full-page patterns where you can quickly build a homepage or menu page without having to think about how the design should go together. You will have to rely on your own sense of design but Molten comes packaged with ample patterns for building pages.

Molten has four different hero patterns, three “coming soon” patterns, and six “call to action” patterns in various layouts (media and text, full width cover with text and button, and three columns with images and content). The theme also comes with a large gallery block pattern and multiple location pattern designs.

There’s almost nothing worse than a restaurant website that makes you download a PDF menu. It’s not mobile or SEO-friendly, and downloading a separate file is a terrible user experience. Restaurateurs have traditionally used PDFs because it’s easier to update it by uploading and replacing the old files. It’s also easier to design it to approximate the printed menu. Blocks can make it easier for restaurants to abandon this practice of using PDFs. A block-based menu can be quickly edited and expanded as necessary without messing with uploading any files.

Molten includes four Menu block patterns with different layouts for wine lists, dishes, and pricing.

Molten packages nine templates and five template parts for users who want to dig into full-site editing. There are multiple light and dark footer and header designs, search, archive, a completely blank template, and more. It includes four style variations which can significantly change the mood of the website.

Overall, the theme has just about anything a restaurant or “coming soon” establishment may need in terms of layout and design. The default color palette has a simple black and white typography-forward design that puts the emphasis on the food. Molten is available for free from the WordPress Themes Directory.

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 hat into the ring again with his latest release. Design Mode is a new block theme created for freelancers and agencies to showcase their services and work. After its release, several of Gardener’s contemporaries, fellow theme designers, remarked on how refreshing it is to see a block theme with “real world use cases,” as so many seem to be geared at bloggers.

Design Mode features Outfit, a geometric sans serif Google font, designed by Rodrigo Fuenzalida, a Venezuelan type designer based in Santiago de Chile. It is used for both headings and paragraph text throughout the theme.

The demo gives the best idea of what the theme looks like with a curated set of images, titles, captions, menus, and buttons all filled with content. Once installed and activated on a new site, the theme looks very similar to the demo but has a placeholder image instead of the photos used in the demo. This is because the photos did not have the right licensing for distribution on WordPress.org, but the way it ships has the advantage of giving users a visual blank slate for those featured sections.

Design Mode includes 10 different patterns, which are essentially all aspects of the design deconstructed into parts. There are multiple patterns for sections with cover, heading, text, and button, a query grid with three columns, a section with text and separators, a footer, and a header with site title and navigation perfectly spaced. The theme also conveniently includes a whole page pattern that will instantly reproduce the homepage in the demo.

Design Mode is an opinionated theme. Users can adjust colors for background, text, and links, and adjust various templates via full-site editing, but it does not come with additional style variations. Personal blogs may benefit from a kaleidoscope of style variations but a well-designed portfolio theme does not usually lend itself well to wide variations in style. In this case fewer options is a good thing that should preserve the simple palette the theme packages.

This is a very fast theme by itself. Gardner reports that Design Mode scores 99 and 100 on Google page speed for mobile/desktop. Depending on what plugins and optimizations a user has active, this theme could be a good choice for performance-conscious WordPress users.

Design Mode is Gardner’s third block theme in the directory. It bears some similarities to his black and white minimalist Avant-Garde theme but has more of a friendly showcase vibe that is suitable for personal portfolios, agencies, and any kind of service business that would benefit from an elegant, structured design.

Design Mode is available for free on WordPress.org or inside WordPress via the admin themes browser.

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, a character in Stephen King’s The Dark Half.

The new theme features the same Albert Sans typeface used in Björk, his previous release, supported by STIX Two Text in text content. Beaumont was inspired by the design he is using on his personal website, which Norén said people have requested he make into a theme. It has that faded paper look that instantly puts the focus on text content.

The demo of the single post template has an elegant design with drop caps, pullquotes, a custom “Preamble with a separator” pattern, and a minimal previous/next post navigation at the bottom. The spacing and typography are exquisite in this theme and lend themselves to a bit more of a formal presentation for longform content.

Beaumont comes with nine block patterns, which writers will enjoy, as most of them are dedicated to text presentation. The patterns include a long author bio, short author bio, paragraph with drop cap, paragraph with pullquote aligned left, paragraph with pullquote aligned right, large pullquote, preamble with a separator, wide quote with diamond separators, and a resume full page pattern.

If you notice a discrepancy in how post content appears in the editor, this is a bug in WordPress, not a problem with the theme.

“Currently, text will be set in Albert Sans when you edit your content in the Post Editor, despite it being set in STIX Two Text on the front-end,” Norén said. “This is because WordPress currently doesn’t apply the core/post-content theme.json settings to the Post Editor preview. This should be fixed in WordPress 6.1, which is scheduled for November 1.”

Beaumont packages 11 different style variations in the Styles panel that can totally change the look of a website – a couple of different yellows, multiple dark variations, and several subtle variations on the default. Users can select one and further customize the background, text, links, and more.

Since this theme is geared towards writers, it includes seven different layouts for blog archives, which means users can opt for a more visual display using featured images or keep it simple displaying just titles. These different loops are packaged as Template Parts and can be further edited using the Site Editor.

View the demo to see how all the pieces work together or check out the Matt Report, an early adopter, to see how a podcast is using the theme.

Beaumont would work well as a blog, a writing portfolio, or a resume site, but, thanks to the wide world of blocks, it could also be used as a base for nearly any other type of website. Anders Norén has hit another home run with this theme. It is simple and elegant with just 16K of CSS and no JavaScript, visually distinct from his other themes, and designed for readability. Download it for free from WordPress.org.

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 fan of the Icelandic singer, his new theme is named for his favorite tree. Björk is the Swedish name for birch.

“Birch trees are incredibly resilient, which is why you can find them closer to the tree line on the Swedish fjäll than any other type of tree,” Norén said. “They’re also very pretty to look at.”

The default style for the theme certainly has a birch-like appearance with its white background and use of Albert Sans, a Google font designed by Danish type designer Andreas Rasmussen who was inspired by the type-characteristics of Scandinavian architects and designers in the early 20th century.

Desktop viewers will see a sticky sidebar menu for quick navigation links. This disappears on smaller screen sizes in favor of a hamburger menu.

“Björk has a very classic blog theme structure, with a sidebar navigation to the left and the content to the right,” Norén said in a post introducing the new theme. “You’ve seen hundreds of these WordPress themes before – I’ve released like six of them myself – but with the advent of block themes, everything old is new again. There aren’t a lot of block themes with this structure on the theme directory yet.”

Björk includes seven different theme styles, in addition to the default, which can instantly change the look of the website.

Norén has also included more than 15 block patterns, which enable users to mix and match and quickly build their own layouts for the front page or other pages. Patterns include designs for featured items with an image, heading, paragraph and button, a testimonials section, multiple hero patterns, call-to-action patterns, and more.

When you install and activate the theme for the first time, you get all of the layouts in place, including the front page. This makes it easy for users to get started by simply replacing the content or rearranging it to suit their unique needs. Check out the demo to see approximately how it will look once installed.

Björk was built using Norén’s Davis Blocks theme as a foundation, the same framework used to build Poe, his last release. It’s a small package, with just 500 lines of CSS and no JavaScript.

Björk is available to download for free on WordPress.org or via the “Add New” themes screen in the admin.

“The Site Editor has really come a long way in a short amount of time,” Norén said. “The most noticeable difference is that I’m having a lot more fun building block themes now compared to when I released Tove, my first block theme, a year ago. With the features coming in WordPress 6.1 in October, it’s only up from here.”

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 the work of creative artists of all kinds. For example, the header uses the Cover block featuring a gradient image with the focal point picker set at a certain point. Site identity and navigation are organized within a group, followed by a Media and Text block header section.

Upon install and activation, Pentatonic delivers a good experience for users. Clicking “Customize” takes users to the Site Editor with the front page loaded, looking nearly identical to the demo for the free version.

Pentatonic comes with 17 block patterns that users can easily mix and match to create their own unique pages. These include patterns for About Us, Call to Action, Featured Content, Sidebar, Music Podcasts, 404 Header, Archive header, Default footer, Footer with three columns, Default header, Recent with blog sidebar, Post header, Header with buttons, and more. Each section on the homepage can be recreated using a pattern on other pages or repeated/rearranged on the front page.

The theme also includes 11 templates and eight template parts, allowing users to make customizations to the 404 page, blog single posts, search results, post content, and others.

The pro version of the theme includes access to custom blocks, such as a playlist, case study, skills bar, masonry, popup video, and more. The demo for the pro version has a sticky music player at the bottom of the page, promotional popup video, podcast playlist, and other custom media additions that bands and artists may require.

Pentatonic has been optimized to respond well to all screen sizes and looks just as good on mobile as it does on desktop. The theme is available for free on WordPress.org where you can preview all the patterns and check out a preview of the whole theme in action that strongly resembles the demo hosted on Catch Themes.

Brian Gardner, founder of StudioPress and co-creator of the Genesis Framework, has a new block theme in the directory called Bright Mode. The theme features a vibrant color palette with tasteful gradients, 14 beautifully designed block patterns, and so many fun variations tucked into custom block styles.

It’s difficult to nail down a niche for many block themes, as patterns and templates make them flexible enough to serve just about any use case. Bright Mode falls into this category. It could easily be used as a business or personal website, blog, or portfolio.

If you look closely, you can see subtle hints of Gardner’s trademark style. It’s forthright and minimalist with meticulous attention to typography and spacing. The colors are bright but harmonious and balanced, so it doesn’t preclude Bright Mode from use in professional contexts.

Gardner has a unique perspective as one of the OG theme authors from the early days of WordPress theming when everything was just getting started. He helped kick off the commercial theme ecosystem with his Revolution theme and continues to bring that same trailblazing spirit to the new world of block themes.

“Last summer, I read an article written by Justin Tadlock about block patterns and the pattern directory (which was in beta at the time,)” Gardner said. “He linked to it, and I spent a few minutes clicking around. Finally, I saw a pattern I thought was cool and clicked the ‘copy pattern’ button. I wanted to see how this all worked, so I opened up a post on my blog and pasted the code. Voila, there it was. At that moment, I knew—the potential of modern WordPress flashed before me.”

Gardner’s new theme makes use of patterns to define every section you see in the demo. Bright Mode offers a colorful array of patterns that users can insert into their sites, including a cover image with heading, text, and buttons, multiple testimonials, different query layouts, and multiple footer and header designs. View the demo to see them all in action with sample content.

Gardner is currently building more patterns to add to Bright Mode’s collection. He said the ones likely to come next are hero sections, featured boxes, call-to-actions, a link page, and portfolio patterns.

“I had spent several months iterating on the design for Bright Mode, so I felt the need to accomplish two things: Ship it and leave the door open to adding more,” Gardner said.

When you first install Bright Mode and click on Customize, it doesn’t look like the demo. Users would have to insert patterns to make it look closer to the screenshots. I asked Gardner about having patterns inserted in the home page by default to match the demo and he said it’s a possibility for a future update.

“As for inserting patterns by default, the only instance that might be useful is the Bright Mode home page, which is merely a welcome pattern, and then the grid loop below,” he said. “Of course, as I add more patterns, this could be part of an update.”

One of the unique features in this theme is the Headings block has a set of fun block styles that create a variety of color gradients for the text.

“Accessibility and color contrast were paramount with the design of this theme, so much that I even created the Colors page,” Gardner said. He aims to inspire more theme authors to make colors a consideration, given that many newly released FSE themes do not have any sort of intentional approach to colors. Gardner has identified a set of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors that are used in different block styles throughout the theme.

“The primary, secondary, and tertiary colors pass both WCAG 2.0 level AA and WCAG Level AAA contrast tests for the following: Normal Text, Large Text, Graphical Objects and User Interface Components,” Gardner said.

Viewing the Style Guide, you can see the colors applied to buttons, quotes, and social icons.

Bright Mode offers multiple different style options within the Quotes block. They can be plain or have a colored background or a gradient background. Quotes with no background can also have a color gradient underline applied. The nice thing about this is that this can be changed on a per-quote basis and does not have to be the same for each blockquote. Users can have a lot of fun customizing their quotes with different designs. A few of them are pictured below. When used sparingly throughout the site they are quite striking.

One of the aspects of Bright Mode that Gardner said he loves most about the theme is the way the Cover Block is used on single pages. It pulls the featured image into the Cover block and also offers custom block styles for shadows and full-height options. (The fallback is just a black header with the title). “I feel as though this really presents what’s possible with modern WordPress.,” Gardner said.

After testing the theme, I was surprised by how many hidden gems there are to uncover in the block styles, and how much creative control users have over every aspect. The only thing I would change is ensuring the home page looks similar to the demo so users feel that they have a solid starting place without having to hunt down the patterns to reproduce the demo. Gardner has a talent for creating aesthetically pleasing patterns and in this case the more diverse set he is planning (portfolio, call-to-action, etc) would enable Bright Mode to be used in more contexts.

Although many traditional theme authors still have some resistance to block themes gaining more visibility in the Themes Directory, Gardner is privileged to have a day job as a Developer Advocate at WP Engine where he is paid to engage with the community and help users transition to the block editor and full-site editing.

“Essentially, keeping pace with Gutenberg development and what’s new with WordPress is what I get paid to do,” Gardner said. “So naturally, this makes it easy to experiment with themes (like we do with Frost) and give back with resources such as our newly launched site for Builders. On top of that, I spend my free time at night and on weekends digging deep to see how far I can take things creatively.”

Bright Mode is the result of his personal explorations into what is possible with block theming. It’s available for free on WordPress.org or via the Themes install screen inside the admin. More patterns, templates, and variations will be on the way in future updates to the theme. Bright Mode is among the first 100 block themes in the directory, a milestone WordPress.org passed today.

The WordPress Themes Directory is sitting at 99 block themes today and will soon cross a major milestone. This momentum has been driven in part by independent designers like Brian Gardner, Anders Norén, and Rich Tabor, to name a few, who have fully embraced the new era of block themes and are leading the way with a seemingly never-ending supply of inspiration.

Fresh on the heels of remaking his Davis theme to support full-site editing, Anders Norén has released another free WordPress theme with an opinionated, bold vibe, designed for portfolios and blogs. Poe, named for American writer and poet Edgar Allen Poe, features bright color combinations and a chunky layout.

Poe uses Davis Blocks as its foundation and Norén plans to continue using it as a starting point for future themes, as the theme is lightweight and doesn’t include any patterns.

“The new Full Site Editing features in WordPress allow block themes to be really small, and really fast,” Norén said. “Poe is no exception. It includes no JavaScript and less than 450 lines of CSS.”

Poe boasts a large collection of more than 30 patterns that users can mix and match when building layouts. These include unique designs like a work process description with multiple steps, a logo grid with title and description, portfolio filtration formatted as a row of buttons, various hero cover image patterns with buttons and header, call-to-action sections, different blog layouts, various footer designs, and more. With just a few customizations, a site using Poe can look very different from the demo’s default look.

Poe also offers 10 different style variations that instantly transform the design with artfully curated color combinations. The typography and spacing are also customized to complement the different styles.

Although the design is geared towards portfolios with several patterns for featuring past work and clients, the theme can easily be customized to be a blog, agency, or business website. Poe is available for free on WordPress.org or it can be added through the admin in the Themes install screen.

WordPress theme author Anders Norén has remade his popular Davis theme to support full-site editing. The new theme, Davis Blocks, is sporting the same clean design as its predecessor, and can be used as a starter theme or a lightweight blog theme.

Norén said he built Davis Blocks to be as small as possible, while retaining the same appearance as the original theme. The updated theme has no JavaScript and weighs just 248K, most of which is the PT Serif font files and the theme screenshot. It stands in stark contrast to Norén’s first block theme, Tove, which was loaded with 52K custom CSS.

“The promise of block themes is that eventually, themes won’t need to include any custom CSS at all,” Norén said. “A basic theme, without any custom block styles, should be able to get by just by using theme.json. Core is not there just yet – there are a couple of blocking issues, like alignment styles – but it’s getting pretty close.”

Norén’s introductory post for the theme covers many of the current challenges block theme authors face, such as structural issues like giving alignments to an outer margin on smaller displays, the necessity for overwriting some core styles, the inability to style buttons in the file and search blocks with theme.json settings, and more. He is eager to remove more of the CSS included in Davis Blocks as these issues are resolved.

Although Norén identifies Davis Blocks as a classic blogging theme with an emphasis on typography and long-form articles, it can be transformed into any kind of theme thanks to its support for full-site editing features.  Users can easily customize the header and other templates to add or remove blocks and change the color scheme to suit their own needs.

Davis Blocks is packaged with six template files (404, Archive, Index, Page, Search and Single) and three template parts (Header, Footer, and Loop). Although there has been a lot of buzz around how indispensable patterns have become, Norén opted to forego including any in this theme.

“With the progress being made on the WordPress.org pattern directory, bundling block patterns in the theme folder felt like a step in the wrong direction,” he said. More than 800 patterns are now available in the directory, so it will be interesting to if other block theme authors go in a similar direction or insist on including their own custom patterns.

Davis Blocks is available for free from the WordPress Themes Directory and can also be installed via the admin Add New themes menu. The addition of Davis Blocks brings the directory’s count of block themes to 91.

Anders Norén’s new Eksell theme is now available for download from the WordPress Themes directory. Eksell was inspired by Swedish graphic designer Olle Eksell. It arrives a year and a half after Norén’s popular Chaplin theme was released.

Last week Justin Tadlock published a preview of the theme while it was still making its way through the review system. Since that time, Norén has added to the five block patterns he originally submitted with the theme. There are now 12 block patterns that help users create stacked galleries, calls to action, multiple columns with pullquotes, and more.

Eksell also includes a unique “Blank Canvas” page template that only displays content added in the block editor, which Norén said offers a preview of what users will be able to do once Full Site Editing (FSE) is merged into core.

The Eksell announcement post is a sobering reminder of the uncertainty facing even the most experienced theme developers with changes coming later this year. Norén said he is not planning to update his existing 20 themes to support FSE:

My current belief is that I won’t update my existing themes to take advantage of Full Site Editing. Not because I don’t buy into the vision of Full Site Editing, but because I don’t think anyone would be well-served by six year old themes (like Hoffman) very much not built for FSE being updated to sorta-kinda support it. I would rather spend that time on themes built from the ground up to take advantage of the new tools Full Site Editing gives us.

Once FSE is released, Norén said themes not updated to support it will immediately feel outdated “much like Classic Editor themes felt in the spring of 2019.” Theme developers don’t yet know what shape themes will take or how difficult it may be to update them once FSE is in core.

Norén is considering updating Eksell to bridge the gap between the world before FSE and whatever themes look like after it lands in core, but reserved the right to leave it behind with the others. For the time being, it is one of the best themes around for the block editor, but it may be the last of the truly classic themes before the dawn of a new era in theming.

Anders Norén has released Chaplin, his 20th free WordPress theme, designed specifically for use with the block editor. Chaplin could be loosely described as an agency or business stye theme but the capabilities of the block editor enable users to create advanced page layouts that would suit many different types of websites.

The layout for the front page shown in the screenshots can be easily recreated by adding a new page, selecting “Cover Template” for the page template, and adding a featured image. Users can then add columns, images, and paragraph text using the block editor to recreate the structure of the demo. Norén has included detailed instructions in the theme’s readme.txt file for setting it up to look like the demo.

Font and color settings can both be found in the Customizer and these styles will be reflected in the block editor for a more realistic preview of the content. Chaplin comes with infinite scroll built in and additional settings for displaying and hiding specific post meta on archives and single posts. The theme has logo support, widget areas, a social menu with icons, sticky header support, and a search overlay. Check out the live demo to see all the features in action.

Shortly before the release of WordPress 5.0, Norén worked to get all of his themes compatible with the new block editor. Most of his previous themes were created to be niche-specific and easy to have looking just like the demo upon activation. One drawback was that the only way to really customize his themes was to create a child theme and add/or custom CSS, something that is out of reach for most WordPress users.

In a post introducing the theme, Norén described how the new block editor inspired him to start building themes differently than he had in the past.

“For a while, though, I’ve been thinking about how I could build a theme more customizable than the ones I’ve been making so far,” he said. “With the introduction of the Block Editor in WordPress 5.0, any page on a WordPress site can accommodate pretty much any layout, making WordPress itself a lot more flexible than it was just a year ago. If the Block Editor would enable users to create any layout on their site, and the theme would allow them to style the layouts however they want, then that could end up being pretty useful.”

Chaplin is a successful departure from Norén’s previously static themes that gives users more freedom simply by making the block editor the main vehicle for creating and rearranging the home page layout. No two customizations will look exactly alike because users can arrange blocks in any combination.

This theme is a good example of the possibilities that the block editor opens up for users who want more control of their sites’ layouts and content without having to wade through pages of documentation and dozens of panels of Customizer options. In many ways, themes that fully embrace the block editor are beginning to make older themes seem two-dimensional. This shift in focus is an important milestone in the evolution of theme development.

WordPress Theme Authors Discuss Better Ways to Promote Quality Themes on WordPress.org

Based on the community response to Chaplin’s release, it’s clear that there is a real demand for themes made specifically for the block editor. However, WordPress.org is not currently set up to promote themes like this.

If you filter for “block editor styles” and “wide blocks” when searching for themes, WordPress.org search currently returns just 26 themes.

Unless you already know about a specific theme and search for it, the best themes are difficult to find. The Featured and Popular Tabs inside WordPress’ theme browser do little to surface block-ready themes.

In a related discussion that popped up over the weekend, long time Theme Review Team member Justin Tadlock contends that the WordPress.org theme directory is “becoming little more than a crippleware distributor.” He is referring to those themes that do not enable users to further customize them but rather lock away certain features behind upsells.

“Essentially, many themes submitted are a ‘lite’ or ‘free’ version of a commercial theme with extremely reduced functionality,” Tadlock said. “For example, we had a theme author trying to upsell access to post formats (a core feature) the other day.”

Fellow Theme Review Team member Danny Cooper cited Elementor’s Hello Theme as one example of “the new breed of themes that only exist to ‘sell’ something else.”

Participants in the discussion suggested WordPress.org employ stricter enforcement of upsells or implement a more nuanced tag system that would identify themes that have some features locked for users who don’t purchase an upgrade. Others suggested theme authors meet the minimum accessibility requirements as a new threshold for entry into the directory, which would likely slash the number of themes waiting to be reviewed and incentivize companies to invest in accessibility testing to improve that process.

“Honestly, I would prefer all themes with upsell to be filtered out into their own section of the directory, so it’s clear to visitors what themes are free and what themes are ‘free,’ Norén said in response to the discussion. “It would also reduce the incentive for theme shops to flood the directory with crippled themes.”

Norén is one of a handful of theme authors who are submitting high quality themes to the directory that are truly free from upsells. In a time when it’s still not common to find new themes built specifically for the block editor, WordPress.org might benefit from featuring these themes in the same way it does for block-enabled plugins.