Why creating a child theme might be a bad idea

Over the last few months, we have been refreshing a bunch of themes, the latest one being Radcliffe 2. A couple of weeks ago I was tasked to refresh an old photo blog theme on mine: Cubic. I built this theme as a child theme from Boardwalk as I wanted them to share a similar …

What’s Coming in WordPress 4.9

As y'all might remember, I'm currently co-leading the release of WordPress 4.9. Since we're winding down toward release, I wanted to take the opportunity to walk through some of the key features of the release. Drafting and scheduling changes in the Customizer In WordPress 4.9, you'll be able to draft your customizations before publishing them, or …

Staying Positive When Your Product Causes Pain

I make and think about WordPress themes all day with the WordPress.com Theme Team. They control the appearance of a WordPress website, and it's a heck of a fun job. Most of the time. What I often hear from customers who use our products: "I just want to get it to look how I see …

Styling Radcliffe 2

Yesterday, the theme team launched our first collaborative theme, Radcliffe 2. This theme was a refresh of an existing theme by Anders Norén. Ola Bodera wrote a great summary of our typical theme refresh process. (Though it may change down the road, right now this blog is using that theme!) In Radcliffe 2, we introduced …

An interview with a Theme Wrangler

The main task of a Theme Wrangler is to create themes for WordPress.com. Thomas Guillot tells us a bit more about himself and what he does. Hi Thomas, can you tell us about how and when did you become a "Theme Wrangler"? After I graduated from University in 2012, I got a job at a …

From a marathon to a sprint

Developing and launching a theme on WordPress.com is a long, multi-step process that can take weeks, if not months in some cases. We would typically do it all alone, working in relative seclusion, sharing our progress only at certain points. This approach has a few drawbacks — it limits the potential for synergy, it makes …

Fixing the theme customization experience

Have you ever used Instagram? If you did, you’re probably familiar with the filters it offers, that let you change the look and feel of a photo instantly. It's very easy and satisfying - just swipe through available filters and apply with a tap. Under the hood, each of these filters is a combination of …

Improving Maintenance Workflow

For as long as I've been a part of a WordPress-centric company, I've had to maintain a large catalogue of products. Keeping track of bugs to fix and enhancements to build has been a challenge, as originally at WooThemes we kept track of this on SVN in combination with our own custom forum. Since joining …

Many Hands

The theme team at Automattic handles much more than just building themes, and we work collaboratively on many projects. However, when creating themes for WordPress.com -- designing and developing new themes, or converting an existing GPL theme — we tend to work alone. Occasionally one person will design a theme and another will build it, …

Themes are Mission Control

When we think of space flight, we often think of the thing that gets us there: the shuttle, module or rockets that take us out of this world. However, in the early days of space flight programs at NASA, one man realized how important control from the ground would be to quickly evolving missions. Christopher …