Hallway Hangout: Community Themes Initiative

As far back as the summer of 2022, when the initial TwentyTwenty-Three theme was under development, several people within the community were chatting about creating a community themes initiative. The idea has floated around in various forms well before that too.

Technically, the launch of TwentyTwenty-Three itself was a form of this initiative. In total, 19 designers from 8 countries came together to build 38 style variations for it. From that pool of designs, 10 variations were chosen and shipped within the TwentyTwenty-Three theme and bundled with WordPress 6.1.

This announcement is the proposal of a new community themes project. The goal is to bring together a squad of people to build blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. themes all year around the same way the default themes are built.

Why a community themes project?

Is there any reason necessary other than having a lot of fun building themes? 

In all seriousness, the following are the primary reasons for this proposal:

  • Increase the number of quality block themes in the theme directory
  • Add variety to the existing block themes in the theme directory
  • Serve as a reference for coding standards that others can follow
  • Foster community collaboration and empower new contributors to participate and learn how to build block themes
  • Keep the momentum going when no default theme is being actively developed
  • Onboard people who are not familiar with development but can still build themes this new way
  • Create a continuous feedback loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. to GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ whenever bugs are found, or solutions are needed that can’t be built with the current tools

How will the project work?

All community themes will live in the WordPress Community Themes GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository and be submitted to the theme directory through the WordPress username. Contributors will collaborate through design, code, and/or reviews.

Join the conversation

Join us for a casual conversation covering the purpose and goal of the community themes initiative and ways that anyone, regardless of skill level, can contribute to the effort.
A hallway hangout-style discussion will be held on Tuesday, March 7, 2023, at 10:00 AM EST. A meeting link will be shared through the Learn WordPress meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. group. RSVP for the event to access the link.

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