I’d like to give you a quick preview of this years upcoming new default design for WordPress.
The current default WordPress theme Twenty Twelve was not well received by many WordPress users. It’s the perfect design for creating child themes however many people felt that it was a little too plain. I love it’s minimal look but I do feel that the design was not a huge evolution from the previous default theme, Twenty Eleven.
Last week WordPress lead developer Mark Jaquith gave everyone a peek at this years upcoming design Twenty Thirteen. WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg wanted a design that had “a focus on blogging and great support for post formats.
First thing you will notice is how colourful the design is. The previous three default designs (2010-2012) were all minimal designs with no colour. They have stated that “this theme was meant for blogging, and it’s not a blank canvas”. This is contrast to all previous designs which were purposely designed with a minimal style so that people could modify theme easily. This theme has been designed as a theme bloggers can use right out the box.
(Click on the image for a full preview of Twenty Thirteen)
As you can see, the design has been created with a single column in mind. I’m of two minds as to whether this is a good thing or not. It does make it easier to read content but I don’t like moving important things such as the search box, recent post links and newsletter sign up box right to the bottom of the page.
Thankfully, the theme can support a sidebar, there’s just no demo of this as yet. Hopefully a sidebar can be accomodated without affecting the design.
It supports post formats and he header image has a fixed height and width so larger images will be cropped to fit the design. It also has an interesting 404 template.
The colourful design of Twenty Thirteen may divide opinions however I think it’s great. It’s a beautiful design and I can see a lot of bloggers using this theme when it’s released. No release has been set as yet though we do know it will be launched as some point this year.
What do you think of Twenty Thirteen?
Kevin