General design

While this course won’t deep dive on how to fully design and build your website, we do want to give you some guidelines and resources to help.

There are some specifics that will come into play later in the course when we dive into content design, but if you’re at the very start of your website and blogging journey, you might be stuck on choosing a theme for the site. Or maybe you’re ready to refresh or revamp your site, and aren’t sure where to start.

To help with that, we want to cover some basic considerations, expectations, and what you should know when it comes to WordPress themes and your site.

First are some important factors to understand.

1. You can change your theme at any time throughout your blogging journey and you won’t lose any of your posts, pages, media, content in general – provided you’ve created that content using one of the built-in WordPress editors.
2. There are some caveats to this that we’ll cover below.

There are different types of themes that function differently and some play nicer together than others.

What are the types of themes?

You might have heard a variety of terms used in relation to WordPress themes. While we’re trying to get some standardization around these terms, it’s tricky with an open source software that has such a massive contributor base. But for the sake of simplicity, let’s describe them using the most commonly found terms.

Where to find themes:

Custom themes

Often these are themes you’ve contracted a web developer to build for you. They may fall into one of the categories below as well, but they’re often unique in various aspects. All support for a custom theme will come directly from the developer who built it and WordPress.com can’t fix bugs or errors that occur within these themes. They also require a WordPress.com plan upgrade that will allow you to install themes.

Third party themes

This is a term often used within the WordPress.com ecosystem. Third-party themes are any themes that aren’t built by Automattic. They include our Partner themes, the WordPress.org Community themes, and any theme acquired from an external source. 

Third party themes also require a WordPress.com plan upgrade that will allow you to install themes, and the support comes from the developers who create them. This includes free or paid themes that are downloaded from external websites, the WordPress.org Community themes↗︎, and WordPress.com Partner themes. 

It’s a good idea to view the theme’s info page for details on where the support for any given theme comes from. If a theme is made by “Automattic” then our Happiness Engineers can help. If it’s a partner theme or lists another designer then you would want to reach out to them directly.

WordPress.com themes

These are the themes that you’ll find in the WordPress.com showcase found under Appearance > Themes↗︎ in the left sidebar of your admin Dashboard and that have the author of “Automattic”. These are themes that our in-house developers are continually working on, and we’re able to provide support for these themes if there is a bug or problem with them.

Two categories of themes:

Block themes (aka Full Site Editing (FSE) themes)

• Fully compatible with the Block Editor and the Site Editor.
• Under Appearance there is a link to “Editor”.
• Are best used when the Site Editor is being fully embraced.
• Provide full control over the templates separate from the aesthetics.
• Are configured to use the Default Homepage (not a Custom Homepage).
• Do not require use of the Customizer.
• Installed plugins may still utilize the Customizer for configurations and settings.
• Do not have (or need) access to widgets.
• Manage menus through the Site Editor using the Navigation block.
• Have a “Preview & Customize” option that opens the Site Editor.
• Can be searched for with the filter of “Full Site Editing↗︎” (which will include Universal* themes near the bottom of the search results).
• Block themes are becoming the standard theme type and the majority of the materials provided in our learning hub focus on these themes.

*Version 1 of the Block themes are called Universal themes, while mostly similar to regular Block themes, the primary difference is that they still offer access for some menu management in the Customizer. (Note: these menus only partially communicate with the Site Editor and Navigation block and it’s best to default to using the Navigation block in the Site Editor for these themes.) These themes are also configured to use a Custom Homepage instead of the Default Homepage. These themes are gradually being phased out.

Classic themes

• Use the Customizer for most site-wide visual changes.
• Provide more options in the Customizer than other types of themes.
• Are adapted to work with the Block Editor, but might have some feature gaps for various Blocks.
• Are not compatible with the Site Editor.
• Under Appearance there is no link to “Editor”.
• Have access to widgets and may include sidebar and/or footer widget areas.
• Often include unique features and options that are specific to the particular theme.
• Control both the aesthetics and the templates of your site.
• Manage menus through the Customizer.
• Have a “Try & Customize” option that opens the Customizer.
• Can be searched for with the filter of “Classic Theme↗︎”
• Classic themes are gradually being phased out in favor of the more versatile Block themes.

Hybrid themes

• These are a type of Classic theme, but with a few less features.
• Differences include:
  • Have access to widgets but only include a footer widget area.
  • Are the simplest of themes to work with, and have minimal features beyond what is possible with the Block Editor (which is still a fair bit).
  • Do not have a “Try & Customize” option.
• Can be searched for with the filter of “Hybrid Themes↗︎”

Pro Tip:  In WordPress.com you can filter themes under Appearance > Themes by: Classic, Hybrid, Universal, and Full Site Editing to see exactly which current themes are available in each of these theme type buckets.

Changing themes

As mentioned above, switching themes is a safe process. No matter what themes you’re switching between your content will never be “deleted”. So you can safely switch back and forth between different themes, even returning to a previous theme, without fear of losing your original content.

There are some caveats and important considerations when approaching this process.

1. Different types of themes may have different features, customizations and settings – these components might not transfer between themes, so you’ll want to check your site thoroughly after switching themes to see what might be different. If something is “missing” it’s because it was unique to your previous theme – but it is still in the database of your site and switching back to the previous theme will restore it.
2. If your WordPress.com active theme is a “retired” theme, and you want to revert back to it after trying a different theme, you’ll need to reach out to our support to reactivate it.
3. Templates and Template Parts created within the Site Editor might not transfer between Full Site Editing themes.

But the important thing to remember is that any content created with the WordPress.com Block editor (as opposed to a page builder plugin or special features of a custom theme) will be completely safe after a theme switch.

If you have custom content of any kind within your site, it can be a good idea to copy/paste that content into a text editor program of some kind so that it’s easier to re-add it to the site after switching themes (if necessary).

Beyond the process of choosing and/or switching themes, the design of your site is a journey that you’ll continue to explore and expand on with the aid of features such as Page Layouts, Block Patterns, Full Site Editing, and an ever growing list of Blocks, to name a few. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

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Resources

• WordPress.com Plans (Support Guide)
• After Switching Themes (Support Guide)
• Learn WordPress.org Fearless Theme Switching (Workshop replay)
• Search WordPress.com Classic Themes
• Search WordPress.com Hybrid Themes
• Search WordPress.com Universal Themes
• Search WordPress.com FSE Themes
• Page Layouts (Support Guide)
• Block Patterns (Support Guide)
• Full Site Editing (Support Guide)
• List of Blocks (Support Guide)