Over the past few weeks, the Meta team has been working on a new theme for the Theme Directory, which is now powered by blocks. This visual refresh is part of the continued effort to establish a consistent design language across WordPress.org. The updated site launched today. Congratulations to everyone involved in this effort.
With this update, the site now uses a block child theme alongside the shared WordPress.org parent theme, setting the stage for future improvements. The primary changes involved converting everything to blocks and standardizing the layout, typography, and colors. Additionally, the theme previewer was updated to include style variations and patterns registered by the theme. This update builds on the launch of the Plugin and Pattern directories introduced in April.
Here’s a look at the new homepage, followed by a single theme page, the theme previewer, and the updated theme filters.
When navigating the new theme, you will notice a few minor functional changes. For example, the homepage no longer includes a “Load more themes” button. Pagination is used instead, which also improves accessibility. This is a result of rearchitecting the site using a block theme and incorporating as many core WordPress blocks as possible, the Query block in this case. Previously, the Theme Directory was powered by a Backbone.js application, which was difficult to maintain and inconsistent with other directories on WordPress.org.
Next steps
The Theme Directory refresh is now live for WordPress.org and all foreign-language sites (Rosetta sites). Some translation work may need to be done for each locale, and that can be managed in the WordPress Theme Directory project.
It’s important to reiterate that this refresh was not a complete redesign. The aesthetic and architectural updates in this iteration purposefully did not alter how the Theme Directory works at a fundamental level. Future updates should build on this work and address the functional changes requested by the community.
If you find any issues or have suggestions for improvements, please add a ticket to the WordPress.org issues queue on GitHub or add a discussion item.
Finally, if you are interested in additional updates coming to WordPress.org and want to contribute, make sure to join the #website-redesign Slack channel. Thanks!
Props to @ryelle, @joen, @cbringmann, and @laurlittle for reviewing this post and providing feedback.
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