Thrive’s premium plugin suite reports more than 200,000 users. This includes Thrive Architect, a visual drag and drop page builder, an LMS course builder, and other marketing-focused plugins for generating leads, creating quizzes and testimonials, and doing A/B testing.
In 2013, Thrive Themes co-founders Shane Melaugh and Paul McCarthy began their company with early products Hybrid Connect, Viral Quiz Builder, and WP Sharely. Ten years later the product suite has grown to nearly a dozen conversion-focused tools that Thrive Themes sells for $299/year.
Although the co-founders will not be joining Awesome Motive, the team that is currently maintaining and supporting the plugin is being acquired. In the Thrive Themes announcement, Melaugh said the company’s products will not be rebranded or replaced. No price hikes are planned for existing customers and Awesome Motive plans to honor legacy memberships.
“It has always been our policy to reward loyal customers and that will not change,” Melaugh said.
“I’ve been watching Thrive Themes from the sidelines for a long time anyway. So my stepping away changes nothing on that front.
“It will still be the same people building the products, and the roadmap we laid out for 2023 and beyond won’t change because of this acquisition.”
WP Migrate, formerly known as WP Migrate DB and recently acquired by WP Engine, has long since expanded beyond its initial release as a database migration tool. Users may be familiar with the push/pull workflow of installing the plugin on two sites and migrating database, media, themes, and plugin changes back and forth. The most recent 2.6 release expands the plugin’s capabilities to include full-site exports for integration with Local, a popular free WordPress development tool, also owned by WP Engine.
This new remote-to-local workflow is included in both the free WP Migrate plugin and the pro version. The full-site exports bundle the database, media, themes, plugins, and other files into a ZIP archive, which can be seamlessly imported into Local.
After clicking Export inside WP Migrate, users are taken to the next screen where they can configure what is included in the export file. This ZIP archive can be dragged and dropped into the Import screen in Local.
The WP Migrate team collaborated with the Local team to match environments as closely as possible when exporting for Local import.
“Each site exported with WP Migrate includes a wpmigrate-export.json file which contains metadata such as the PHP and MySQL versions that were last used on the site,” WP Migrate Product Manager Kevin Hoffman said. “During the import, Local reads this file and attempts to match the environment to that of the exported site, so the local site works (and breaks!) just like its remote counterpart.”
In this migration scenario, the WP Migrate plugin can be included in the list of plugins so it is activated on the Local site, speeding up the workflow for setting up a local development site. Previously this required configuring plugins, add-ons, and license keys across both environments.
“In the last year, we really embraced our new identity as a full-site migration solution,” Hoffman said. “One of the goals we set for ourselves was to handle the migration of an entire site from within WP Admin without ever having to touch cPanel, phpMyAdmin, or FTP. This new workflow is the culmination of those efforts delivered as a free end-to-end solution for the WordPress community.”
Customers who have purchased the pro version may still opt for pushing and pulling directly between sites, but this new workflow makes it easier for users (both free and paid) to set up a local development environment for the first time.
“When we realized how much simpler we could make the remote-to-local workflow by embracing full-site exports, we reached out to the Local team who helped make it happen,” Hoffman said.
The WP Migrate team is looking at expanding the integration beyond matching the WordPress, PHP, and MySQL versions to give users the ability to predefine migration profiles for pushing local sites back to the remote host.
“When configuring an export, we could also let users set up one-click admin access in Local,” he said. “Imagine dropping a ZIP into Local and landing in WP Admin without ever having to log in. There are lots of possibilities, and I’m sure more will pop up as the community starts to use it.”
Thrive Themes is the company behind some of the most powerful growth tools for WordPress. Over 200,000+ smart website owners use the Thrive premium plugin suite to easily convert website visitors into email subscribers, paying customers, and raving fans.
Introduction to Thrive Themes – Quick Overview
Thrive Themes is a popular brand among business owners because their suite of tools give you everything needed to build and grow your online business at drag & drop speed.
Although the brand name is Thrive Themes, it’s actually an ecosystem of powerful conversion focused WordPress plugins that work seamlessly together to help you start and grow your online business.
Thrive Suite consists of four key areas to help you grow your online business: Build, Convert, Sell, and Engage.
Powerful WordPress Website Building Tools
They offer two powerful drag & drop WordPress design building tools called Thrive Architect and Thrive Theme Builder. They work together to help you build high-converting websites without any coding needed.
Thrive Architect is a visual drag & drop page builder for WordPress that helps you build custom landing pages and blog post designs faster than ever before. It comes with over 350+ conversion focused landing page templates and conversion elements that you can use to build high-converting websites.
Thrive Theme Builder is a marketing centered custom WordPress theme builder that lets you visually build the conversion focused site of your dreams no matter your experience level (all drag & drop). Basically you can launch your site in under 15 minutes, update your brand everywhere in seconds, and everything is professionally designed with conversions in mind.
It comes with hundreds of design and site building elements to improve your workflow, and it integrates with just about every powerful business tool like WooCommerce, email marketing services, CRMs, and more to help save you time.
Don’t take my word, see what the users are saying.
WordPress Lead Generation & Conversion Tools
Thrive Suite is built by marketers for marketers which means there’s a big focus on creating advanced lead generation tools to help you get more email subscribers and grow your sales faster.
Their conversion tools for WordPress include Thrive Leads, Thrive Quiz Builder, Thrive Optimize, Thrive Ovation, and Thrive Ultimatum.
Thrive Leads is a drag and drop builder that allows you to create any type of lead generation form imaginable. It comes with a huge selection of opt-in form templates, or you can create your own custom one within minutes.
You can use it to create popups, sticky ribbons, in-line forms, 2-step optin forms, slide-ins, screen filler overlay, content lock forms, scroll mat, yes / no or multiple choice forms, and more.
The best part is that you get advanced targeting features that lets you display relevant and hyper-targeted offers to visitors based on posts, categories, tags, and more. You also get A/B testing for opt-in forms as well as actionable reports.
Thrive leads integrates with all the popular email marketing services and CRMs.
Thrive Quiz Builder is a WordPress quiz plugin that lets you create highly engaging quizzes to help grow your email list, social shares, while giving you the data you need to grow your business.
It lets you build those viral social media quizzes with branching logic with zero coding. You can also use it to build personalized product recommendation quizzes to help users make a decision on which product they should pick on your website.
The best part is that each answer helps you segment visitors based on their interests, so you can build a hyper-targeted email list and improve your email open rates.
You can also further improve your quiz conversions with A/B testing various quiz stages, and this is basically every marketers dream come true.
Thrive Optimize is a WordPress A/B testing tool that helps you launch tests faster, more often, and for crazy cheap prices compared to SaaS alternatives with no coding needed.
You can use it to create unlimited tests, unlimited variations, setup conversion goals, choose traffic distribution, and everything is done with visual editing (no code). Once the test is done, it automatically chooses your highest converting test as a winner.
Thrive Ovation is a set-and-forget testimonial plugin for WordPress. Studies show that testimonials can boost conversions by 34%, and this is the easiest way to start taking advantage of one of the most underestimated conversion boosters.
It lets you gather testimonials without a hassle where you can transform WordPress comments into testimonials in a single click. You can also automatically convert any social media comment into a beautiful testimonial card.
Lastly, it has a built-in auto-pilot testimonial gathering feature to help you collect more relevant and meaningful testimonials for your business.
Thrive Ultimatum is a powerful scarcity marketing tool for WordPress. You can use it to create both fixed and evergreen countdown timers on your website.
It comes with dozens of countdown timer designs that you can customize to match your style & brand with drag & drop ease. The targeting feature allows you to show the offer to the right audiences.
This is a must have tool for increasing product sales, building a buzz around your launch, and even boost established eCommerce sales.
Sell Online Courses with Results Focused LMS Plugin
Thrive Apprentice lets you create pro-looking courses straight from your WordPress dashboard. It’s a WordPress membership and LMS plugin to build and grow your online business.
It comes with a drag & drop course builder that lets you create modules, chapters, lessons, and more in a well-organized manner.
You get access to advanced drip functionality such as unlocking content at consistent intervals for each student or unlocking new content on specific weekday or day of the month.
You have the option to unlock lessons based on the results of a quiz in Thrive Quiz builder, and you can even add custom tags to each user for personalized communication using Thrive Automator.
Thrive Apprentice lets you protect content based on the user’s membership level, award certificates to those who complete your courses, and so much more.
Last but not least, it gives you detailed insights about your students and courses, so you can get insights like where are students dropping in your course, how many lessons did a particular student complete, overall engagement reports, and so much more.
Boost Your WordPress Engagement with Smart Comments
Thrive Comments help you turn the most overlooked feature on your WordPress website into your most valuable asset.
You can supercharge your WordPress comment area to spur engagement like Reddit and Facebook. It basically adds the most addictive elements of social media and community forms into your WordPress comments.
Users can get satisfaction by seeing likes / upvotes on their comments, unlock achievements through badges, get validation through being featured in comments, and get a chance to have their comments shared on social.
Basically Thrive Comments help you turn your comments into conversions. Based on what the user does, you can show selective actions such as redirecting first time comments to a welcome to community gfit page, or repeat commenters to a share modal, and more.
And unlike third-party comment systems like Disqus, there is no lock-in, and definitely no intrusive ads. This is your comment area and you get to customize it the way you want.
Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketer, I highly recommend adding Thrive Suite to your WordPress toolkit.
And now that you know all about Thrive Themes, I think you’ll find the background story of this acquisition even more interesting.
Background Story – Why Thrive Themes?
In 2009, when I started WPBeginner, I spent hours every day learning and writing about new WordPress plugins, themes, and tools to help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys.
In the process, I came across Shane and Paul’s work when they created Hybrid Connect back in 2012. It was a WordPress popup plugin that I tried before I ended up building OptinMonster in 2013.
Ever since then I have closely followed their journey as they launched multiple products and eventually rebranded everything under the Thrive Themes brand.
Over the last 8 years, we have been friendly competitors working on the same mission: helping small businesses grow & compete with the big guys.
What a lot of beginners don’t often see is that WordPress is an open source platform. Unlike other industries, the competition is fair and friendly. Most of us WordPress product owners have great relationships with each other, and we even collaborate at times. This type of competition is known as co-opetition. We have learned from Thrive, and I’m sure Thrive has learnt from our brands.
While there are similarities in few of our existing products, there are also unique differences in our offerings. For example, Thrive has a powerful quiz builder for WordPress, an engaging comments plugin, and a proper A/B testing solution. Whereas the WPBeginner family of brands offered solutions like AIOSEO, WPForms, and MonsterInsights. Between us, we had a lot of mutual customers.
That’s why the brands will continue to operate independently and serve our respective customers (of course with deeper integration with each other).
Last year, Shane reached out to me through the WPBeginner Growth Fund page because he was looking to move on to the next chapter of his life. But he only wanted to sell the business to someone who will carry his legacy forward while taking care of customers and protecting the team, and they chose us because of our reputation and values.
I was extremely familiar with Thrive Suite and have a lot of respect for what Shane and Paul had built, so it was a no brainer for us.
We worked through the logistics, and outside of the two co-founders, the entire team will be joining Awesome Motive. The team will be led by Brad Stevens, the current General Manager of Thrive Themes.
I will be working closely with him, and I’m super excited about bringing you more powerful solutions to help grow your website.
Note: Want to join our remote team to work on something awesome & make an impact? We’re hiring. Come work alongside me and help shape the future of the web.
What’s Coming Next?
Our work is just starting.
While I have some ideas and features I’d like to add in certain Thrive suite plugins, there is already an amazing feature roadmap in place based on existing customer feedback.
My goal is to do everything I can to help make those features become a reality, as quickly as possible.
I’m really looking forward to doing a deeper dive in some of the conversion tools, especially quizzes because I know they can be a game changer when used properly.
If you have suggestions on features you’d like to see in the various Thrive plugins, then please let us know by sending us a message via WPBeginner contact form.
As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner.
Every time I share an announcement like this, I realize that I’m only able to do what I love every day because of you, our amazing readers, and I’m extremely grateful for your support throughout the years.
WPBeginner and Awesome Motive would not be here without YOU, and I just want to say how much I appreciate all of you.
And I look forward to continuing serving you, and the larger WordPress / web ecosystem for years to come.
Although GitHub is primarily used for code collaboration, WordPress’ Community team is considering adopting the platform to standardize their project management tools.
Contributing to open source can already be challenging but when it requires signing up for multiple services in order to access the team’s many spreadsheets, trello boards, Slack groups, and other modes of communication, onboarding new contributors becomes needlessly difficult.
A new proposal, authored by Community team rep Leo Gopal, outlines the benefits of using GitHub as a central communication tool. These benefits include improved collaboration and communication using the platform’s commenting system and the ability to track progress and assign tasks.
Gopal contends that standardizing on GitHub would increase transparency and accountability while supporting better organization with tools like issues, labels, milestones, and project boards.
“By adopting GitHub for project management and issue tracking, the Community Team will standardize our way of working, making it easier for new team members to get up to speed and enabling more effective cross-team collaboration,” Gopal said. “This standardization also makes it easier for Community Team members to track progress, identify issues and make data-driven decisions.”
Other Make teams, such as Learn, Hosting, Meta, Marketing and more, are already successfully using GitHub to manage communication and prioritize projects. Gopal proposes the Community team learn from their efforts and adopt these tooling methods for a quarter as an experiment.
“If after the first Quarter the consensus is that this does not suit our team, we will revert back to initial project and tracking practices and explore more,” Gopal said.
A few participants in the resulting discussion have concerns about transparency and losing track of conversations, as they would not be linked to WordPress.org profiles.
“The truth is that I am unsure about it,” Weglot-sponsored Community team contributorJuan Hernando said. “I think the community team is not particularly technical, and using GitHub may pose certain barriers we didn’t have so far. Maybe for many people opening an issue, requesting a pull request, or similar is their everyday life, but for others, it can be a bit blocking.
“I’m also afraid that discussions will move from this Make site to GitHub, and we shouldn’t lose the spirit of owning our content (linked to our .org profile) and lose the use of this space for decision-making and public discussions like this one.”
Gopal addressed this concern stating that there would be no code and that users who can work with Trello boards will have no problem adopting GitHub’s tools for planning.
“Trello was used for planning and often forgotten until time for reviews or recaps,” Gopal said. “There was no way other teams would know what we are working on or add to the conversation unless they dug up our trello boards AND if we took their suggestion and weighed it in.”
Gopal said using GitHub would allow the team to incorporate advantages like automations, assignments, and inter-team collaboration with advanced reporting capabilities. Overall, GitHub has the potential to increase the visibility of their work for those collaborating across teams.
Milana Cap, who uses GitHub to help organize the Documentation team for reporting issues and automating tasks, recommended adopting the platform and shared how the Docs team is using it.
“All the other benefits: version control, precise contribution tracking, all sorts of project management tools etc., can not be found all in one tool other than GitHub, and I can not recommend it enough – for everything,” Cap said.
Discussion is still open on the proposal and Gopal has published a Proposal Poll for Community Team members to give their feedback on standardizing communications on GitHub.
Gutenberg 15.0 was released this week with some exciting new features for working with blocks and an improved UI for managing controls in the inspector panel. This release marks the end of the block inspector tabs experiment, which is now stabilized in the plugin.
Users will notice that some blocks will now have separate tabs in the inspector for displaying settings and design controls, and optionally a list view tab that is included in the “off canvas navigation editor” experiment. Taking the block inspector tabs out of experimentation paves the way for the Navigation block’s off-canvas editor to become the default experience.
Version 15.0 introduces a new “paste styles” feature that works in a similar way to the “paste” or “paint” formatting function in Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Users can click on any block, select “Copy block” from the menu in the block settings panel and then paste those styles onto another block using the “Paste Styles” menu item.
When using this feature, users may have to give the browser additional permissions in order to read from the clipboard. If permissions are denied, Gutenberg will display a warning snackbar to notify the user.
Another major feature in this release is the ability for users to give blocks “sticky” positioning on the page. This will keep the block in the viewport even when scrolling down the page. The sticky/fixed positioning sticks the block to the top of the direct parent block. It can be previewed on the frontend and equally as well inside the editor.
Gutenberg contributors concluded that although sticky positioning will be valuable for headers, footers, and creative instances, it is not likely to be used frequently. For this reason, it is de-emphasized in the UI. This is the first iteration of the sticky positioning feature, and contributors are tracking a list of follow-up tasks to improve it.
A few other important changes in this release include the following:
Edit block style variations from global styles (46343)
Constrain image sizing to the width of the container (45775)
Allow resizing the Site Editor’s sidebar and frame (46903)
Activate copy/cut shortcut in the site editor (45752)
If you want to take advantage of these new features before they land in WordPress core, you will need to have the Gutenberg plugin installed. Check out the 15.0 release post to visually explore the highlights with more videos and links to all the pull requests for the release.
WooCommerce Blocks maintainers are asking the developer community to share feedback on any performance issues they are experiencing with the Cart and Checkout blocks.
“We’re aware there is work to be done in this area and we want to improve,” WooCommerce developer Alex Florisca said.
“We’re specifically interested in any performance related issues that may be stopping merchants or developers from adopting the Cart and Checkout blocks over the shortcode version.”
The plugin’s repository has nine open issues categorized as related to performance. Most of them are not straight forward and require more research and testing. For example, an issue with running multiple blocks of product grids was reported as having increased response times of 4+ seconds. Contributors have proposed a few different ideas to address performance issues, such as experimenting with useSuspenseSelect to improve the perceived loading experience for various blocks and finding a way to track the performance of the Cart and Checkout blocks. Neither of these tickets have seen much movement yet.
Store owners will not be eager to switch over to a checkout experience that is slower, so the WooCommerce team is seeking feedback that will help them make the cart and checkout blocks faster. So far, one user reported that due to a bug in a third-party plugin, he got a glimpse of what the block-based checkout adds to the JS asset payload.
“I think this adds at least ~300 kB (compressed) JS payload (initial numbers, my measurement process is still ongoing),” Leho Kraav said.
“We don’t plan to convert our classic theme to a block theme any time soon, but still, I feel uneasy about this direction.”
Florisca followed up on this feedback with a few cursory benchmarks comparing the legacy shortcode checkout with blocks checkout and Shopify:
Blocks Checkout
Shortcode Checkout
Shopify
Total Payload
2.9MB
935kb
6.1MB
Total Transferred
2.1MB
1.3MB*
3MB
Number of requests
144
77
146
“The number of requests has almost doubled for Blocks, which isn’t great so this is something that we can look into,” Florisca said. “I suspect the reason is because we rely on a few layers of abstraction on top – WooCommerce and WordPress, each with their packages and set ways of doing certain things. We can investigate if we can simply this.”
The discussion on how to improve cart and checkout block performance is still open for more developers to give feedback, and investigations are ongoing. The good news is that WooCommerce maintainers are aware of how much weight the block-based checkout adds and are actively looking for ways to improve it for users.
WordCamp Europe announced the first batch of tickets on sale for the 2023 event that will be hosted in Athens, Greece, June 8-10. General tickets are € 50.00, a fraction of their true cost, which is heavily subsidized by sponsors. It includes admission to the two-day event, lunches, coffee, snacks, Contributor Day, a commemorative t-shirt, and an invitation to the After Party.
WCEU is also offering micro-sponsorship tickets at € 150.00, which organizers say is closer to the real cost of attendance.
Speaker applications are still open but will close soon in the first week of February. Applicants will be notified by the second week of March and organizers will announce the lineup in mid-April.
WCEU is also seeking a host city for 2024. The minimum requirements are considerably less stringent than in previous years. Hosting the event is open to any team that has organized at least one successful in-person WordCamp in a European city in the last four years with a community that has been active during 2022. Organizers have also published an update to the selection process:
For this year, we have tweaked the selection process to concentrate more on the local community and the city instead of deep knowledge about how to organise a successful WordCamp Europe.
The selection of the WordCamp Europe 2024 host city will be based on the overall evaluation of the application, instead of ranking different parts of it. We don’t ask your team to prepare a budget for the whole event, but estimated costs for the proposed venue(s) should be available.
Contributor Day registration for this year’s event is not yet open but will be free with the purchase of a conference ticket.
At the time of publishing, only 257 tickets remain in this first round, but more batches will be released in the future. Register now to lock in your spot or sign up for email updates on the registration page to be notified of future ticket releases.
WooCommerce Blocks version 9.4.0 was released with support for a new block-powered Local Pickup option under shipping settings. The feature plugin offers users early access to new blocks and improvements to existing blocks before they become available in WooCommerce core.
Local Pickups introduces two new blocks: a shipping method toggle block that allows shoppers to select between regular shipping or pickup from a specified location, and a pickup location block that displays local pickup rates.
These blocks can both be enabled and configured via a new local pickup settings page. Store owners can even rename Local pickup to something else, and optionally add a price for this option.
It’s important to note that the new Local pickup blocks can only be used with the Checkout block. WooCommerce Blocks also introduces a change with this new Local Pickup experience that will support location-based taxes based on the pickup address, improving tax reporting. Previously, WooCommerce based local pickup taxes on the store address.
WooCommerce Blocks 9.4.0 includes a handful of other small enhancements and bug fixes. Check out the release post for a more detailed look at everything that’s new in the latest version of the plugin.
WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy published a summary of the project’s “big picture” goals for 2023. The goals fall into three major categories: CMS, Community, and Ecosystem.
WordPress development will focus on completing the remaining tasks for Phase 2 (Customization), and will move on to begin exploring Collaboration in Phase 3.
“As we prepare for the third phase of the Gutenberg project, we are putting on our backend developer hats and working on the APIs that power our workflows,” Haden Chomphosy said in her recent Letter to WordPress.
“Releases during Phase 3 will focus on the main elements of collaborative user workflows. If that doesn’t make sense, think of built-in real-time collaboration, commenting options in drafts, easier browsing of post revisions, and programmatic editorial and pre-launch checklists.”
The vision for the first two phases was “blocks everywhere” and Haden Chomposy said this will be updated for Phase 3 to be centered on the idea of “works with the way you work.â€
In addition to the Phase 3 APIs, Haden Chomphosy identified the following items as part of the CMS goals for 2023:
Openverse search in Core
Navigation block
Media management
Simplify the release process
PHPÂ 8.2 compatibility (Core and Gutenberg)
Block theme development tools
Under the Community category, WordPress will be focusing on planning the Community Summit, which will be held at WordCamp US in 2023, contributor onboarding, improving Polyglot tools, establishing mentor programs, revamping WordPress.org designs, and keeping pace with learning content. The project is also aiming to develop a canonical plugin program, which should be helpful as some Performance team contributors recently expressed that they don’t fully understand what the process is for canonical plugins.
The Ecosystem category will focus on the WordPress Playground, an experimental project that uses WebAssembly (WASM) to run WordPress in the browser without a PHP server with many useful applications for contributors.
WordPress contributors also prevailed upon Matt Mullenweg to consider having the project devote some time to working through old tickets and fixing bugs. Mullenweg said he is amenable to tackling one long-standing ticket (the kind that are stuck because of missing decisions or multiple possible solutions) each month in 2023.
Every year, WordPress releases a new theme to serve as its default theme — the one that comes with every fresh WordPress installation. As we head into 2023, WordPress has released their latest theme offering into the world, Twenty Twenty-Three, which we will review here.
WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg introduced Twenty Twenty Three in his State of the Word address. This theme aims to be fast, lightweight, and accessible, with a focus on simplicity and easy customization. In other words, it’s the perfect blank canvas for your next WordPress project. But what sets it apart from previous years? An intense focus on community involvement.
For that and other reasons, let’s take a closer look at some of the key features of this theme in our Twenty Twenty-Three review.
A Focus on Community
From the very beginning, the strong community has always been a huge asset for the WordPress project. That’s one of the things that makes it so special. And with Twenty Twenty-Three, they’re doubling down on that commitment.
This theme is the result of months of feedback and collaboration from the WordPress community. In fact, they even held a series of workshops to gather input on what people wanted to see in the new default theme.
The end result is something that feels like it was made by the community, for the community. It’s a beautiful example of what can be accomplished when we all work together.
Simplicity Dominates the Design
When it comes to the design of Twenty Twenty-Three, simplicity is the name of the game.
The team behind it focused on two things: speed and accessibility. As a result, they’ve created a clean and minimalist design that does away with anything superfluous. And since it’s essentially a simplified version of the Twenty Twenty-Two theme, it’s already familiar and easy to use.
This focus on simplicity extends to both the front-end and back-end design. The goal was to make it as easy as possible for anyone to get started with WordPress, whether they’re building their first site or hundredth.
In that regard, we think they’ve succeeded. Twenty Twenty-Three is beautiful and uncluttered, easy to use, and easy on the eyes. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a closer look at simplicity in action.
Barebones Layouts Aimed at Flexibility
One of the things you’ll notice right away when you review Twenty Twenty-Three is that there aren’t a lot of pre-built layouts to choose from. In fact, there’s pretty much only one. Open any of the templates, you see a blank canvas and a handful of blocks to work with. From there, it’s up to you to build the layout that you want.
The focus on simplicity means that each layout is easy to understand and customize. And since they’re all based on a grid system, they’re also simple to change on the fly.
If you want to add a new column or move an element around, all you have to do is drag and drop it into place. No need to worry about messy code or breaking things — everything is flexible and straightforward to change.
This might sound like a recipe for disaster, especially if you’re used to more complex designs, but it’s actually quite liberating. It gives you the freedom to create any kind of layout you can imagine, without being constrained by pre-existing choices.
Layout Options
While there is only one default layout, Twenty Twenty-Three does include the usual options to adjust it. Access these by clicking on Layouts in the Styles menu on the right-hand side of the screen.
From there, you can select different widths for the main content area and create different spacing, padding, and block spacing choices.
Color Settings
In addition to the layout options, Twenty Twenty-Three also includes functionality to adjust the theme’s colors. You also find them in the Styles menu under Colors.
Here, you can select different hues for the background, text, links, headings, and buttons to change up the look and feel of your site. The theme’s default color styles include shades of white, green, and black. But you can definitely customize this to your liking with the usual settings.
Typography
Next up, let’s review the typography choices that the Twenty Twenty-Three theme includes out of the box. Naturally, you find these by clicking on Typography on the right-hand side of the screen.
Twenty Twenty-Three comes with a handful of font families, as well as a few different font weights and styles. The supported typefaces include:
DM Sans — A straightforward sans-serif font that would work great for body text.
Inter — Another sans-serif font with softer curves. Also a suitable option for body text.
IBM Plex Mono — A sans-serif font with mono-spacing featuring a typewriter style. Could go well for either titles or body text.
Source Serif Pro — A delicate serif font that would look fantastic as quotations or titles.
System Font — The fallback option should your browser not support one of the above font choices.
Typography in the Twenty Twenty-Three theme focuses heavily on the concept of fluid typography. That’s a fancy way of saying that the font size will adjust automatically to best fit the device it’s being viewed on.
This is a great feature, as it ensures that your content is always easy to read, no matter what device someone is using. And you can use it to establish a minimum and maximum font size value for your site if you wish to give it some parameters.
In addition to fluid typography, Twenty Twenty-Three also includes support for fluid spacing. This means that the distance between lines of text will also adjust automatically to best fit the user device.
In addition to the individual typography and styling options, Twenty Twenty-Three also includes a few style variations. The are the real highlight of the theme and were created with the contribution of community members.
You find them in the Global Styles menu under Browse styles. Let’s go over them real quick.
Pitch
This is essentially a dark version of the default theme.
Canary
This style variation sports a yellow color scheme by default and utilizes a single type size and narrow columns.
Electric
Here’s another interesting option that features a gray background with a bold-colored text.
Pilgrimage
Another dark spin on the base theme.
Marigold
Marigold offers a softer color palette and straightforward layout.
Block Out
Living up to its name, this theme applies a duotone effect to your images by blocking out a portion of them.
Whisper
This style variation includes a border around the page and some unique styles for buttons and links.
Sherbet
Sherbet is bright and colorful — and it relies on a gradient background, meaning it’s right on trend.
Aubergine
If you’re looking for something darker, Aubergine might be a good fit. Its split-color background is definitely eye-catching.
Grapes
And lastly, there’s Grapes, which is a subdued option that would serve a text-heavy site well. You can see all of the style variations in action for yourself on Figma – as well as snag a copy of the base theme.
How to Create Your Own Style Variation
You can also use the Create Block Theme plugin to create your own style variations. After downloading the plugin, use the WordPress Site Editor to create a custom layout, change colors, typefaces, and make any other changes you’d like.
Then when you’re done, all you need to do is create a style variation out of your settings selections. To do this, go to Appearance > Create Block Theme then on the next screen select the bubble next to Create a style variation.
Give it a name then click Create Theme to automatically generate a new .json file on your site.
Available Templates
While Twenty Twenty-Three doesn’t include a lot of pre-built layouts, it does come with a handful of templates to help you hit the ground running. You find them in the Templates menu, which you can access by clicking on the logo in the upper left corner of the Site Editor.
From there, you can select from one of the following:
404
Archive
Blank
Blog (Alternative)
Home
Index
Page
Search
Single
Many of these are default WordPress templates anyway. Those that are unique to Twenty Twenty-Three include Blank, Blog (Alternative), and the one for the 404 error page. You can access the files for these templates in the templates folder as well.
Template Parts
There are four template parts available:
Comments
Footer
Header
Post Meta
These are pretty self-explanatory and accessible via the Template Parts menu or in the parts folder for the Twenty Twenty-Three theme.
Potential Uses for the Twenty Twenty-Three Theme
Sometimes it’s helpful to put a WordPress theme into a usage context to get a sense of whether or not it’s a suitable choice for your needs. So, what kind of sites would benefit from using the Twenty Twenty-Three theme?
It’s a pretty versatile theme, so it’s suitable for a variety of different types of sites. Here are a few examples:
A portfolio site for a photographer or other type of visual artist. The theme’s focus on images and its various style options make it a great choice for this type of site.
A personal blog. The simple layouts and easy-to-read typography make Twenty Twenty-Three ideal for content-heavy sites.
A corporate website. The clean, professional look of the theme would work well for a company site, too.
An online store. The WooCommerce integration means that this theme can also power a beautiful online shop.
A news site. The various layout options and styles make this theme a good choice for a site that relies heavily on text.
As you can see, the Twenty Twenty-Three theme is a versatile and flexible option for a variety of different types of sites. So, if you’re looking for a theme that to create a beautiful and modern website, this one is definitely worth considering.
Final Review of the Twenty Twenty-Three Theme: Is It Worth a Look?
So, does the Twenty Twenty-Three theme measure up?
If you’re in the market for a new WordPress theme, then the answer is definitely yes. The theme is packed with features and options, and it’s every bit as flexible and customizable as you need it to be. Plus, with its focus on images and various style options, it’s a great choice for a wide range of different types of sites.
In addition, the fact that this theme was derived from community involvement gives you all the more reason to give it a try. After all, ideas from devs actively working in WordPress served as the foundation of this slimmed-down theme.
So, if you’re looking for a new WordPress theme, be sure to check out Twenty Twenty-Three. It just might be exactly what you need as we move into 2023 and beyond.
What’s your personal review of the Twenty Twenty-Three WordPress theme? How do you feel about style variations? We’d love to hear your feedback below!
