Transcript [00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast, from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley. Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case the underpinnings of modern theme development and artistic exploration within WordPress. If you’d like to subscribe to the …
WordPress Themes Repository Now Houses 1000 Block Themes
The WordPress Themes Repository has hit an exciting milestone of 1,000 block themes. As of today, the repository has over 12,000 free themes. Block themes were introduced in WordPress 5.9 allowing users to create and customize all aspects of their site using the block editor. This ushered in a new era of site design, and in July 2022, the Themes …
Meet WordPress 6.7 Release Squad & Default Theme
Last week, the lineup for the eighteen-member release squad and the default theme for WordPress 6.7 were revealed. This will be the third and final WordPress release of the year. WordPress 6.7 Release Squad As usual, Matt Mullenweg leads the release, with David Baumwald serving as the Release Coordinator. The Core Tech Leads are Peter Wilson (sponsored by 10up) and …
Which WP Theme is Best? Fun With Theme Download Stats
Today I embarked on a mission to figure out which WP.org themes are used the most and why. As you likely know, “Top 5” lists, as a rule, are generally very opinionated and based on fuzzy assumptions and non-standard use cases. I want to assure you – this article is no exception to that rule. I had to make some …
ElmaStudio Releases Moog: A Free Block Theme for Blogs
Moog is one of the latest free block themes to be released on WordPress.org. It features a minimal and bold layout with a responsive, masonry style grid on the homepage. Moog is well suited to blogs or even small magazine websites, with options to radically change the style with the click of a button. Moog’s designers went wild with style …
WP Data Dashboard Tracks WordPress.org Themes Ecosystem
Munich-based digital agency owner Hendrik Luehrsen has been tracking the usage of themes with the FSE tag (block themes) using a spreadsheet that pulls in data from the WordPress.org API. Wrangling the data in a spreadsheet became too cumbersome, so Luehrsen launched WP Data Dashboard over the weekend as a “centralized hub for exploring, analyzing, and visualizing data across the …
Ollie Dash Plugin Now Available for Ollie Block Theme
The Ollie block theme, created by Mike McAlister and Patrick Posner, now has a companion plugin available called Ollie Dash. The theme made headlines earlier this month after a contentious WordPress.org review process led its authors to remove the innovative onboarding features. Ollie was approved for WordPress.org but without the time-saving onboarding features its authors initially hoped to include. Testing …
WordPress Contributors Speed Up Twenty Twenty-Four Default Theme Performance by 40%
WordPress 6.4 will be shipping a new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Four (TT4), expected in early November. This theme is more feature-rich than previous default themes, and contributors have been working on identifying potential performance improvements that can be made ahead of the release. As a starting point, Google-sponsored Performance team contributor Felix Arntz conducted several benchmarks comparing TT4 with the …
Ollie Theme Now Available on WordPress.org
The free Ollie block theme, created by Mike McAlister and Patrick Posner, is now available for download on WordPress.org. A contentious review process led the team to remove the onboarding features, despite having gotten the green light from WordPress’ leadership who advocated for moving forward with the experiment. The version of Ollie available on WordPress.org is simply the theme without …
New Chrome Browser Extension Enables One-Click Plugin and Theme Testing with WordPress Playground
WordPress Playground, an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser, makes it possible for users to quickly test plugins and themes without having to set up a local development environment. Ordinarily, testing a plugin or theme with Playground requires visiting playground.wordpress.net, which will instantly create a real WordPress instance with admin access without having to install PHP, MySQL, or …