Rebalance, Karuna, and Sidespied

We have three Automattic-made themes now available on WordPress.org.

Rebalance is a fresh take on the classic Imbalance 2 theme. Designed by Mel Choyce and developed by Allan Cole, Rebalance is a contemporary portfolio theme for photographers, artists, and graphic designers looking to showcase their work, and features an elegant Masonry grid for displaying both blog posts and Jetpack portfolio projects.

Rebalance screenshot

Another Mel Choyce-designed creation, Karuna is a clean business theme crafted with health and wellness-focused sites in mind. With bright, bold colors, prominent featured images, and support for customer testimonials via Jetpack, your business’s brand is sure to shine with Karuna, which was developed by Caroline Moore.

Karuna screenshot

Child theme Sidespied puts a new spin on Espied, a classic portfolio theme. Created by Tammie Lister, Sidespied shows off photos and images of all kinds in a clean grid layout.

Sidespied screenshot

Author: Kathryn P.

Theme Whisperer at Automattic, web designer, WordPress enthusiast and baker extraordinaire.

8 thoughts on “Rebalance, Karuna, and Sidespied”

  1. Reblogged this on Michael Musgrove and commented:
    I’m always interested in what the pros come up with theme-wise. There are so many themes out there that most originality anymore is subtle. But these, and quite a few other more unique, themes from Themeshaper, who’s part of Automattic, who’s associated with WordPress, are among the best of the crop. If you’re looking for a solid free theme, Themeshaper/Automattic should be a primary stop.

  2. Hello,

    1. Will ThemeShaper talk about the preparation and/or progress and/or difficulties and/or differences of getting the Twenty Seventeen theme on WordPress.com (which still has not been released on WordPress.com yet, and so I think that it would be interesting to hear about this whether now or later once or if it is released one day)?

    2. Will ThemeShaper start talking more often about WordPress.com related themes and WordPress.com theme issues and theme backstories/et cetera and some other WordPress.com somewhat theme related topics this year compared to previous years?

    3. Will ThemeShaper get a contact form so that we can ask non-support questions and ThemeShaper related questions here because the current Contact Page lacks a contact form for questions like that (even I have a contact form on my blog)?

    4. Will ThemeShaper start updating their theme to the new default WordPress theme (whether default state or modified) each year (like the Twenty Seventeen theme for this year)?

    Thank you,
    -John Jr

    1. Hi John Jr. – Thanks for all the thoughtful feedback about ThemeShaper.

      1. That will be up to the Twenty Seventeen developers. It’s possible they might want to share this process after it’s done, but that’s a bridge they’ll cross a bit later.

      2. Again, a good idea we’ll consider.

      3. We won’t be adding a contact form, since people’s eyes often go straight to it and we end up with support questions by mistake. Feel free to post in the Themes forum to reach us.

      4. That’s not something on the radar; we just did a remake last year and think it’s still working pretty well. 🙂

  3. The themes are great, really nice.
    The problem I get into, is that when looking at a theme demo, it lacks pages, features and all the “eye candy” in the description.
    For example, if I take a look at he Karuna (https://wordpress.org/themes/karuna/) theme in the wp.org theme library, and click on preview, I can hardly see anything, even the elements in the design print screen are missing from the preview.
    I would suggest, like in premium theme shops, to create a full theme demo showcasing all or most of the themes features and options: Menus, pages, featured images, blog posts, portfolio, about us pages etc…
    This will make it a lot easier for stakeholders to go ahead and download a theme from wp.org rather than going to theme forest and paying and downloading a full blown theme (non standard coding, bloated , and most of the features they will never use), just because the demo is so much better looking.
    I understand that creating a good theme demo for every theme is hard work, but how about setting up a team of volunteers through make.wordpress, giving them some tools (image bank, graphic assets, content) and have them help create these demos.

    Thanks for your time and effort,
    Dan

    1. Hey Dan, thanks for the feedback! As theme authors, we have no control over the automatically generated demo sites on WordPress.org, and we agree that they aren’t often representative of a theme’s potential.

      For all our themes, we suggest you visit the WordPress.com demo to get a better sense of what the theme looks like when set up. Here’s Karuna, for example: https://karunademo.wordpress.com/

      Hopefully one day the WordPress.org directory will allow a way for theme authors to set up demos that better represent their themes.

      Thanks for taking the time to write!

      1. Hi Kathyryn,
        Then what I would suggest is to link to the wp.com demo site rather than the .org demo. (in the wp.org theme page).
        Also, in the post itself, on this page, I didn;t realize the screenshots were links to the demo site. It might be wothwhile captioning the images, stating that they link to the demo site.

        Thanks,
        Dan

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