A Week of Responsive Themes
A new year. A new beginning. A new theme?
This week, we’ll highlight our responsive themes on WordPress.com. Maybe you’ll find a new design that’s perfect for your site in 2013.
Of 220+ themes in the WordPress.com Theme Showcase, over 50 themes are responsive: they provide a tailored layout depending on the device you’re using. In other words, sites using our responsive themes will look their best not only on desktop browsers, but also on devices with smaller screens, such as the iPad and iPhone. In our Theme Showcase, you can sort through these themes by selecting the “responsive width” feature.
Today, tomorrow, and Thursday, we’ll highlight some of our responsive themes and share how WordPressers showcase their work with these layouts. On Friday, we’ll unveil a new theme which — like many of our new themes — is responsive.
First up: Ever After and Sight.
Ever After
Nat, the bookbinder behind The Smallest Forest, has more than just another arts and crafts blog. Sifting through her posts is very much like turning the delicate pages of a beautifully crafted, handmade book.
The Smallest Forest
Her post series on Designing a Creative Travel Journal is worth a look — she approaches her craft projects with both meticulousness and love. Ever After is a wonderful theme for this blog — its wide one-column layout shows off her colorful creations, close-up shots, and how-to images. If you activate Ever After on your site, your content and photographs will look their best on the smaller screens of iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices as well.
Another blog using this theme, Sandy Anger Studios, publishes an assortment of lovely wedding photographs and family and couple portraits. Take a peek at snapshots of a backyard wedding in St. Thomas, Ontario, and an elegant fall event in Morriston, Ontario, to see more examples of this responsive theme.
Sight
Jessica, an architecture student in New York, explores a number of topics on her blog, Architessica. In addition to architecture and urban design, Jessica writes about the environment, historic preservation, and the history and development of New York City (and beyond). Her blog’s name is boldly displayed at the top — an immediate way the Sight theme grabs a reader’s attention.
Architessica
Simple yet elegant, Sight works for a personal blog like Architessica. The featured slider on the home page allows her to highlight specific content with a prominent featured image — which is perfect given her array of interests. Sight is also appropriate for other types of sites, such as online magazines. The theme has numerous customizable features — menus, a header and background, and more — and the layout looks great on all devices.
Check out Sight in action on another notable blog, Everyday Ambassador. A collaborative site, Everyday Ambassador supports the movement for responsible global citizenship in a digital world, focusing on individual public service and grassroots diplomacy. Posts are published by multiple authors, and the theme presents their content in an accessible way. Versatile and responsive, Sight is a great choice.
Go Mobile
We’ve just highlighted themes that look their best on all screen sizes, including mobile devices. You can enable a mobile theme on your own site in your dashboard by going to Appearance » Mobile. Check “yes” next to “Enable mobile theme” and click “Update.”
And if you haven’t browsed WordPress on your mobile device, learn more about our apps:
Tomorrow, we’ll highlight two more responsive themes: Oxygen and Confit (which we recently launched at the end of November).
WordPress.com News 
FINALLY! I have waited for this a long time. 🙂
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Thanks for doing all this to make WordPress accessible to so many devices. We are a demanding lot and I am glad to see WP so reponsive.
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“…our responsive themes will look their best not only on desktop browsers, but also on devices with smaller screens, such as the iPad and iPhone.” If you’re going to use generic language like ‘desktop’ and ‘browser’ (which I’m all in favour of), and you’re not going to quote individual brands of desktop or browser (which I’m similarly in favour of), please use the words ‘tablet’ and ‘smartphone’. It’s a better way to describe things, and it keeps the language consistent, not to mention being less offensive to the tiny dwindling minority of us that don’t have an iSomething. (I was half-joking in that last part [but only half!]).
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I liked Ever After 🙂
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I am using Ever After for my Proverbial Wisdom blog because it is the best looking of WP themes for it. It is set up so that one chapter of Proverbs is a page. Just click the page and you are there with the chapter for that day. I like that it has a nice grey font color, too. Its one of my favorites. I can surely see it is also great for photographs as I see from the sites you provided.
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I like the concept of responsive themes.
However, only one of those three screens is tall, and I have yet to see a theme that takes advantage of the extra width of a computer screen.
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Sherry, you are right!!! Ever After theme really have a good look on it and it looks like a small book in hand. Vote for it.
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I chose the Oxygen theme! One of the first things I do when visiting a site is test to see if its responsive. It’s very important to me!
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The Theme Foundry have a lovely set of responsive themes, React, Potfolio, Duet, Watson, will they be covered here?
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Thanks for your comment. No, those themes won’t be covered this week — there are others that we’re highlighting, but we appreciate the mentions of these great themes and will take this comment as a suggestion for future posts. Thanks so much.
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Dear Cheri,
I’m not sure if you are independent or speak in part of word press. Anyway, I have a wordpress private BLOG for men in my Building Better Relationships group. Anyway, I am such a novice at using all the tools wordpress has to offer. I’m kind of like a old person who just got a new iPhone 5 and uses it to make local calls, and occasionally may even text someone.
If there is any one on one instruction or tutorials for how to get the most out of my wordpress blog I would appreciate knowing about it.
Sincerely,
Rick
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Rick, if you are new to WordPress.com, this is a great place to get started: http://learn.wordpress.com
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Very classy response to Tu’s comment Cheri.
I have been blogging for a little bit now, Up to 80+ posts and 400,000+ words.
Still haven’t gone looking for a theme. I have NO IDEA how to pick a theme. Maybe through this feature you could come up with some do’s and don’ts for successful blogs – from the people that brought us the blog? 🙂
Thanks!
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Thanks so much for your suggestions. We’ve begun to highlight blogs/sites that illustrate specific features on this blog (as well as the Daily Post with the blogger profiles, quick tip posts, and other blogging how-to posts). We’ll continue to look at successful sites in various ways (from these responsive theme posts to other recent posts on Custom Colors, cool music sites, etc.) In a few weeks, we’ll zoom in on one site using a particular theme and talk about why it’s great, as well as illustrate how the blogger/site owner has made it look the way it does.
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So glad to see this! This prompted me to find a new theme. I switched to Aestica and it’s gorgeous. Looking forward to being able to change the colors. I just don’t get CSS 🙂
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My “LessFatChick” blog uses this theme, and I’m really happy with it.
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Now if only i could get my reader to be responsive like it was before the format change!
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We keep improving and iterating on Reader. Are you on iPhone? The latest version looks quite sleek.
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I’m always on WordPress on my phone! It’s so frustrating when blogs don’t quite work properly…
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