Back in the summer of 2022 I started experimenting with WordPress’s default Twenty Twenty Two theme. This was the first WordPress theme that made full use of the new Gutenberg editor and is a very lightweight theme with very little default styling, making it an ideal candidate for customising.
I created a child theme that basically just set a colour palette, added custom fonts, and set the dimensions of the site and fonts. A little while later WordPress announced its new Full Site Editing experience that would be available with the new Twenty Twenty Three theme.
So I downloaded a copy of this and adjusted my new child theme to work with it. This new theme from WordPress is a compete game changer for me. Although I’m still using a child theme to handle fonts, colours and dimensions this is now nearly all editable within the WordPress editor. This means I can spend more time building things visually.
I also add a few custom styling options for default blocks, and some ready made patterns – but these are generally specific to each website – so I add these as a custom plugin.
To me this feels like it could be the end of what we call Themes. With so much of the website now being editable in WordPress itself the need for different themes seems almost unnecessary. This would mean fewer issues when someone wants to try out a new look for their website.
I’ve built around ten websites for clients using Twenty Twenty Three and a child theme and seems to be working well. The full site editor’s export function is very useful – meaning I can start a new website using my default child theme, make all the customisations I need, then export my child theme ready for the client.
My hope is that by building off the top of a default WordPress theme means a longer lifespan for websites and easier theme switching further down the line.