Magnus is a beautiful new photoblogging theme that landed in the WordPress Theme Directory last week. It was created by Hugo Baeta, whose work you may have seen in the WordPress.com design handbook and last year’s subtle refinements to the default admin color scheme. Magnus is Baeta’s first theme to be approved for the official…
The development team behind TGM Plugin Activation released its new generator last week. The popular tool is a PHP library that allows WordPress developers to require or recommend plugins for a theme or plugin. It essentially helps walk WordPress users through installation and activation of plugin dependencies in the admin. Bundling a bunch of plugin-type…
After two years in business, Jami Gibbs is selling Rescue Themes. The niche theme shop specializes in products for nonprofits, politics, breweries, and e-commerce websites. Gibbs did not publicly disclose how much revenue the shop is generating, but Rescue Themes has seven products available on Themeforest ranging in price from $16-$59. She also has several…
Automattic’s team of theme developers announced the release of Components today along with a suite of themes that extend the popular Underscores starter theme for specific use cases. These include a classic blog, modern blog, portfolio, magazine, and business theme. The new Components website lets theme authors download a theme that includes reusable components tailored…
Last April, WordPress Theme Review Team member Jose Castaneda proposed that the team adopt a standard change log format. Theme authors are not yet required to keep a change log but the general consensus is that it’s a good practice that benefits users. Castaneda revived the topic of change logs during the team’s most recent…
Today is normally Thank a Plugin Author Day which motivates users to thank plugin authors but based on discussions from last year’s event, I’ve decided to add theme authors to the mix. The purpose of the day is simple, give thanks and express gratitude to WordPress plugin and theme developers. There are several ways to…
Jack Slingerland started hacking on WordPress in 2008, but recently his career has taken him a bit further afield from it than he would like. By day he is a Senior Software Engineer at CA Technologies in Raleigh, working in React/Redux, Node, ElasticSearch, Grails, and Groovy. But at night he is busy building Kernl, a…
Briar is a new minimalist theme that landed in the WordPress directory last month. It’s the type of bold, non-flashy theme that puts the spotlight on content and images without trying to stuff widgets into the reading experience. Briar was created by the folks at Slicejack, a Croatia-based development company and a brand new WordPress.org…
The WordPress.org Theme Review Team has just wrapped up a busy year of adding new themes, approving updates, and overhauling procedures. In 2015, the team reviewed and approved 910 new themes with the help of 236 reviewers, according to TRT member Ulrich Pogson. Despite their best efforts, the team cannot keep up with the massive…
Most of the themes created by the professional design team at WordPress.com are geared towards bloggers. Business themes make up a much smaller segment of those designed in-house. That’s why the latest Pique theme is an unusual and exciting release. Although the theme was originally designed for coffee shops, it also works well for other…
If you’re looking for a blog design that emphasizes the words of your content without a requirement for big, flashy featured images, Reyl Lite is a super minimalist option. It is one of the most bare bones blogging themes to hit WordPress.org in recent weeks. Throughout 2015, the single-column, centered layout has been a mainstay…
When the WordPress theme review team announced it would require theme authors to use the customizer to build theme options, many voiced their displeasure in the comments. Bruce Wampler, lead developer of the Weaver Xtreme WordPress theme, commented that his theme received a death sentence due to the requirement. Eight months later, Wampler has changed…
After three months in the WordPress.org theme review queue, Morten Rand-Hendriksen‘s new mobile-first theme is now live in the official theme directory. Popper is one of the few themes worthy of the “accessibility ready” tag, which requires the author to meet all of the WordPress Accessibility Guidelines. This includes features such as semantic markup and…
Back in October, we explained how to mark themes as favorites in the WordPress theme directory. Although users could install their favorite plugins in WordPress 4.3, they couldn’t install their favorite themes. I created a Trac ticket asking the WordPress development team to consider adding the ability to install themes marked as favorites. Thanks to…
Politics is a new free theme on WordPress.org designed to support politicians, campaigns, causes, and government agencies. The theme was created by Jami Gibbs, author of the Gateway theme and founder of Rescue Themes. After just three days on WordPress.org, it is already active on more than 700 sites. Politics features a homepage template with…