and on the scale of world events it matters not a jot. Yet trivia is quite harmless as momentary relief and so I’m taking these few moments to be picky in a minor protesting way. The subject being WordPress themes.
When I first joined 11 years ago, WordPress stood out as offering much better choice of web templates, compared to Blogger, with some very nice designs. It still does except …
the ability to take free themes and choose font and colour etc has now become so restrictive. I used to enjoy scrolling through the myriad palettes and literally trying them on/out in the ‘try and customise’ section. But looking at some of the newer themes this option seems to have been removed and they are being offered as one restrictive free one with customization only available on premium and above.
Fair enough you might argue, as WP is a business but what I find most irritating is the cumbersome try outs of themes on current blogs. Gone are the days when it felt as though I could go into a virtual changing room and literally ‘try on’ a different theme. The process of temporary transformation was quick and made the decision making process accurate.
It is quite the opposite now with the ‘preview and customize’ mode on the newer block (full site editing) themes. It just shows what the blocks will look like but does not preview my blog with changes so I have no idea of how it will look until after commitment i.e. Activate. This I’m loathe to do in case I cannot return to the previous theme.
I have 3 blogs and pay for having ads removed on all of them. On two I also pay to have a unique web address. All three themes that I use I’m completely satisfied with – they are:
Toujours – here at PoetryPix
Penscratch 2 – My Japanesque Garden
Revelar – Qi~ways
My worry is that these older, versatile themes will gradually be withdrawn and/or not updated. It’s called being retired, akin to what happens to replicants! And for sure, any older ones, being CSS heavy, will be retired until only Block themes are an option. I don’t mind blocks and have used them from the start – it’s the rest of the changes I’m complaining about here.
To round up this picky post, I do not know who the designers are for the latest batch of five themes but frankly the background colours and fonts remind me of playgroup artwork – my personal opinion only of course. I wonder if they make the free version so undesirable that we are being ‘nudged’ into upgrading to premium etc so we can customize to something much better looking (oh the cynic in me is never far away!)
If you want to comment, I would be interested on what themes you use, whether you have tried the newer ones, or attempted a change etc
P.S. This blogger gives some good information on themes and changes “Who do you blame for your blog not working?”
Please note: No windows were broken in the making of this post .They were just props to enliven the prose.
PoetryPix 
Laura, I’ve had two of the new FSE themes disappear to be replaced with new themes. It’s frustrating. Each part of the theme can be adjusted to suit your needs. But, like you said you have to go into the editor. Search for the themes you currently use in the theme menu. If they appear, they are still active. If they don’t appear, they have been discontinued. You’re not the only one with these complaints. The themes are nowhere as nice as the classic themes used to be. The ease of use is gone. I’m getting used to the FSE themes now, but it took awhile. I dislike the lack of side widgets. Only a few themes offer them now. I’ve looked at WIX. They are more expensive but the themes look better. However, there is no community like we have on WP.
Colleen I’ve read of your problems just today by searching ‘WordPress themes’ in the reader. Aside from the awful designs, I would like to be able to preview the blog with any new theme but since most of the free ones permit very little in the way of customization I suppose it hardly matters. So far my 3 themes have not had the Blade runner treatment.
Thank goodness for that, Laura. I’m disappointed in the themes, as well. It doesn’t appear we have any choices.
Maybe when a company starts calling their tech staff “happiness engineers” it’s time to duck & cover. Think my theme is already unavailable, but continues to operate. I selected it for its simplicity. Really I just want it to “lay there” and mind its own business. If ever it “fails” I would seek another company, not WP, although I doubt genuine solutions abound. Even though I too pay for no-ads & a non-WP name, that’s not much and I’m sure it buys little if any consideration for me as a user. I am an old-timey user, can’t stand blocks, not afraid of a little HTML – only wish is that they leave me alone. Fingers crossing.
Haha… yes. Happiness Engineers indeed. I’m sure at one point I (as a paying customer) had direct help access to one of them, but that option appears to have disappeared.
In the forums which I don’t bother with any more the happiness seemed to have departed from the engineers but to be fair contacting Support recently I had plenty of help, feedback and follow up. It was not easy to locate though eventually found it at the bottom the centre panel of admin panel. I think you first encounter a bot before live chat pops up!
Hi Neil -if you read the link above it explains that retired themes are no longer updated and having problems with comments or leaving likes is one of the signs. I can’t tell what your current theme is but there are one or two simple/unadulterated free Block themes that would fit the bill as it were and would not be hard to adapt to. Look at the Hey theme for example. I adapted to blocks at the outset and its not hard though I had to overcome my natural resistance!
I used to try out different themes back in the day and as you say, you could play around quite a lot and se how it looked on older posts. Some themes I changed back when I saw how they had messed up my layout on old posts. I suppose that’s not hugely important as not many people look in the archives, but I use my blogs as a sort of diary. I do not us the Block Editor. I hate it, like Neil I am not afraid to use HTML and prefer the classic editor. As long as that remains I will. I too pay for no ads and a domain for my two main blogs and I am happy with the layouts, though I haven’t played for a while. The Travel Words theme is quite old now, but it is one of the few (if any) that allow a full drop down menu on the side bar.
It seems our chosen themes mean a lot to us for different reasons – side widgets, drops downs etc and for me its white pages on a coloured background that looks clean, simple and uncluttered! Best for displaying images on as well as a clear font.
Most of the classic themes are currently compatible with the block editor plugin but a rumour suggests this might end at the end of 2024 and we will all have to have FSE block template themes. I hope they get some better designers before then!
Apologies for the missing e in places (it’s misbehaving which causes me no end of problems using passwords that you can’t reveal…)
I lost my os recently!
I have a hard enough time just writing something simple and find all of a sudden my post has changed. A friend set up my original blog in 2015 and I’m afraid t change anything. I realize WP is a business but can we please have some ads that are not disgusting?
We are all at different levels of know how with the technical so if WordPress want us to ‘move forward’ with the block themes they need to make them more inviting and maybe be more proactive with help and guidance. They make the adverts a blot on our blogs deliberately to encourage payment not to have them – I had to concede on that one
I’ve never even attempted a change to either of my blogs, although they were both “updated” to blocks which I personally hate. I don’t want bells and whistles and dislike cluttered design–because Nina and I share memadtwo it has more on it than I would have on my own, but that’s partnership. I really dislike the pop ups that everyone seems to have now too.
While I’m ranting, I can’t read text on dark backgrounds, and I don’t understand why people double space their poems.
I have no attachment to either theme (I don’t even know what they are nor do I care), and I didn’t try out a bunch to pick them out. I was just looking for something simple. Look at the art, read the text. Don’t keep making things more complicated is what I keep telling the Happiness engineers when there’s a new problem. But they need complexity to justify their jobs I suppose.
I’m with you on uncluttered design (and pop ups) which is why I dislike so many of the FSE templates that can’t be altered unless one goes premium or above! this was the right place to rant as we all have our bugbears with WP and the like – what has surprised me is how little a particular theme means to some as well as how disliked blocks still are! I guess as long as the site works it does not matter but I’ve read that a purge is probably coming in 2024 –
The Happiness Engineers insist that everyone loves the blocks.
Tech people like to change things. They don’t care how or if it works for the users. That’s true of everything, not just WordPress. They never heard the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
it certainly seems so -and another saying I like is: “don’t go digging up any trouble for yourself”
Hi Laura,
Thanks so much for linking to my recent post.
I’m still using a Classic theme. When I last looked, there were still over 50 available to use. And until WordPress sort out the problems, I keep hearing about the FSE themes, and I’m sticking to Classic themes.
However, although I first disliked the Block editor, I’m now a big fan of it and would never return to the Classic editor. The Block editor has taken blogging to a whole new level. It’s not hard to use, just different. And as I have discovered, only use the blocks you want to use. You don’t need to use all of them.
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but you can now view what your blog will look like when using some of the free FSE themes. This post has all the details.
It looks like FSE themes are beginning to go in the right direction, but I’m staying put with my Classic theme for now.
firstly thank you for that post of yours that I linked to as it was so informative. Secondly I too use classic themes with the block editor and have no problems with blocks but so far the FSE themes are so uninviting visually. I had already tried the preview and customise a few FSE themes as per the post you link above but cannot get it to edit easily or in any way that I can preview properly (unlike the classic customizer) – as such I certainly cannot commit to paying for a theme change when I can’t even evaluate it first
I’ve not checked the preview option yet, so I can’t comment, but from what you’ve said, it doesn’t sound up to much. Thank goodness we still have Classic themes available…for now.
maybe you can get it to work – I can’t – its so clunky!
I’ll certainly give it a go.
Hi Laura, blog themes is a subject that I have banned from my thoughts in 2018 when I finally found a good one for photos… I’ve been using ILLUSTRATR for my photo blog and Triton Lite for my food blogs, hoping they won’t go “out of support” at some point. I have a “sandbox blog”, a free one that I used to try new themes on but haven’t even felt inclined to play with for a few years; as you said, the new themes seem to be so restrictive, even if you pay for them.
As Colleen said, widgets are not what they used to be; on my themes it used to be so easy to make changes to them, though nowadays I’m having difficulties remembering how it’s done.
As for the happiness engineers, I was very disappointed as a paying customer to have to deal with a bot now first; however, the bot solved two of my problems, and for the third, a real person was available, and I still like how they handle problems and solve them.
The link above to wpcommaven.com, that’s where I go to for help. The lady is a great source of all things WP, testing new stuff and giving advice if you find something’s not working to your liking.
I like Illustratr but when I search Triton lite its not coming up so I wonder if this is one that’s withdrawn.
I like the fact that we are each other’s source of help as I find the WP forums virtually useless – perhaps we need a monthly ‘how do you do it’ post and those who know can input – beginning with widgets ;
To me you are the master of block editing 😁. I would never have tried it without your encouragement. And there are certain things that I do go back to the classic editor for.
Took me a while to realise where and how to edit a given block – I think this facility has evolved since initially they were fixed