ThemeShaper

ThemeShaper

  • AboutIn a nutshell, we’re a bunch of people who really care about WordPress themes and want to see them get better and better — on WordPress.com and every self-hosted WordPress site. This is our blog. We are Ian Stewart, Lance Willett, and Matías Ventura. First formed in early 2010 at Automattic, we develop themes for the millions of users on the popular blogging service WordPress.com. While improving themes from the community as well as crafting our own we work hard to ensure our improvements make it back to the open source community. Our Goals Every WordPress.com user should feel like there’s a theme that fits them perfectly, that is exactly how they want to present themselves to the world, that they’re excited to show to their friends. We want everyone to feel a sense of momentum and ever-increasing possibilities, and to do so we will present as many perfect-fit WordPress themes to as many WordPress.com users as we can. We will ensure all of our public work represents the best in coding practices, web standards, and technical excellence. We will craft all of our themes to have consistent user experience and meet our users expectations and hopes. We will teach…
  • ContactWordPress and Theme Support Need support for your theme or have a WordPress question? Help is just a click away. WordPress.org Support If you pay for your hosting, post questions on the WordPress forums and get help from hundreds of WordPress developers and volunteers. Tip: tag your post with the name of your theme. WordPress.com Support If you have a site on WordPress.com start here: WordPress.com Support. If you don’t know which applies to you, you can can read more about the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. Of course if you want to talk themes, WordPress, web design, the weather in Winnipeg — or just to say howdy — you can reach us via email at themes [at] automattic.com.
  • X
  • How to add typographic fonts to WordPress block themes

    How to add typographic fonts to WordPress block themes

    Nov 28, 2022

    ·

    Matias
    in Education, Theme Development

    The easy and compliant way that every theme developer should know.

  • Block Theme Building Tips

    Block Theme Building Tips

    Feb 28, 2022

    ·

    Ben Dwyer
    in Uncategorized

    When building block themes there is often more than one way to achieve the same thing. It’s often not clear which of these options is preferable. Below I outline some tips and guidelines that I find helpful. The guiding principle here is to remove as much complexity as possible from the theme; instead block themes…

  • Create A Blockbase Child Theme

    Nov 17, 2021

    ·

    Ben Dwyer
    in Uncategorized

    We have been working on a plugin to help you create a Blockbase child theme. The idea is that you can use the existing tools to make changes to a Blockbase theme, and then export a bundle of templates and theme.json as a new child theme. I tried to create a new theme called “Typewriter”…

  • Universal Themes

    Oct 6, 2021

    ·

    Ben Dwyer
    in Uncategorized

    Since our last post about Universal Themes we have fleshed out this idea and are using it to build all our themes. The Problem WordPress is introducing the Full Site Editor and with it new ways to build themes.  These themes are called “Block” themes and integrate deeply with Gutenberg Blocks. These types of themes…

  • Resources for block theme development

    Resources for block theme development

    Jul 13, 2021

    ·

    Anne McCarthy
    in Community, Theme Development, Theme Tips

    With WordPress 5.8 launching on July 20th, it seems like a great time to round up some resources to help theme authors prepare for the future. By now, you’ve probably heard about block themes and the upcoming future of full site editing. Perhaps you have even begun to explore creating a block theme or adapting…

  • Universal Themes: Customization

    Universal Themes: Customization

    Jul 12, 2021

    ·

    Ben Dwyer
    in Theme Development

    Making Global Styles and the Customizer work together

  • Theme patterns for the Site Editor

    Theme patterns for the Site Editor

    Jun 25, 2021

    ·

    Kjell Reigstad
    in Theme Development, Themes

    Learn how to use Template Part and Query Loop patterns to provide users with more design options.

  • Universal themes: Some ideas

    Jun 23, 2021

    ·

    Ben Dwyer
    in Theme Development

    With the Full Site Editing project well underway, theme developers need to be thinking about what the future holds for themes.  Why block themes? To take advantage of the Site Editor, themes need to be built out of blocks – this is why we need block themes. Block themes are an entirely new way of…

  • Using Blockbase for a theme experiment

    Using Blockbase for a theme experiment

    Jun 7, 2021

    ·

    Kjell Reigstad
    in Design, Theme Development

    A glitchy theme, built with Blockbase.

  • Blockbase: A parent theme for block themes

    Blockbase: A parent theme for block themes

    May 27, 2021

    ·

    Ben Dwyer
    in Theme Development

    Phase 2 of Gutenberg introduces Full Site Editing to WordPress; to make this possible, we need a new way of building themes – using blocks. How do block themes work? Block themes use templates made entirely of blocks. The layout is configured using a combination of theme.json and CSS. The settings in theme.json are used…

  • Getting Started with Block Themes: Patterns

    Getting Started with Block Themes: Patterns

    Jan 11, 2021

    ·

    Jack Lenox
    in Theme Development

    Block Patterns, or simply patterns, enable theme developers to create custom blocks that are compositions of blocks provided by the standard block library, and if desired, with additional design flourishes. For example, Twenty Twenty One includes support for blocks designed with overlapping images and text, among others. In the blocks version of Twenty Twenty One,…

  • Getting Started with Block Themes: Global Styles

    Getting Started with Block Themes: Global Styles

    Jan 8, 2021

    ·

    Jason Crist
    in Theme Development

    Global Styles is a new mechanism for a theme to define a site’s styles. An important goal of Global Styles is to make it easier for users to change how their site looks without having to know or write any CSS.  These theme styles are defined via a json configuration file.  Importantly, it opens the…

1 2 3 … 33
Next Page

Popular Categories

  • Asides (56)
  • Community (8)
  • CSS Tips (8)
  • Design (32)
  • Education (8)
  • Ideas (1)
  • Site News (9)
  • Thematic Child Themes (20)
  • Theme Development (125)
  • Theme Launches (56)
  • Theme Team (12)
  • Theme Testing (9)
  • Theme Tips (51)
  • Themes (42)
  • Tools (16)
  • Uncategorized (5)

Subscribe to our blog

ThemeShaper

ThemeShaper

Shaping WordPress themes since 2008.

Topics

Asides

Community

CSS Tips

Design

Education

Ideas

Site News

Thematic Child Themes

Theme Development

Theme Launches

Theme Team

Theme Testing

Theme Tips

Themes

Tools

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • ThemeShaper
    • Join 3,296 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • ThemeShaper
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar