The Theme Team
I’m super-excited to announce to you today that WordPress.com now has an official Theme Team. In a nutshell, we’re a bunch of people who really care about WordPress Themes and want to see them get better and better—on WordPress.com and for every WordPress.org user. And yes, that means we’re getting more themes, more often. 
You’ll be hearing more from us individually in the coming weeks but I thought, to get started, it’d be a good idea to share a few of the Theme Team goals we’ve been discussing. Just some rough thoughts really. But I’m hoping that by sharing them here you can get a better idea of what we’re up to—and get as excited as we are about it all.
- Every WordPress.com user should feel like there’s a theme that fits them perfectly, that is exactly how they want to present themselves to the world, that they’re excited to show to their friends.
- We want everyone to feel a sense of momentum and ever-increasing possibilities, and to do so we will present as many perfect-fit WordPress themes to as many WordPress.com users as we can.
- We will ensure all of our public work represents the best in coding practices, web standards, and technical excellence.
- We will craft all of our themes to have a consistent user experience and meet our users expectations and hopes.
- We will teach WordPress developers to become the best theme developers in the world. If you’re a WordPress theme developer—commercial or 100% free—we want to help you be the best.
- We will ensure all our improvements make it back to the open source community.
I love the idea of meeting the “expectations and hopes” of everyone here by delivering to you the best in WordPress themes. Pretty, painless, perfect-fit ones that just plain work.
Keep watch here for more announcements—and more new themes!
April 15th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
well, that’s great! hoping to see some exciting new themes (featuring drop down menu, hint hint) soon!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Wow!
I just wished for a theme for a bilingual blog with two equal side-by-side columns, and there it is…Inuit Types.
Thank you!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:18 am
Wow, one of my million prayers has been answered. Hallelujah.
Thank you and good luck, The Theme Team!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:32 am
If we could have some gaming themes, that would be nice.
Thanks,
Remain.Simple
April 16th, 2010 at 12:34 am
As always, WordPress just gets better all the time.
Thanks, everyone, lots!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:38 am
Lately I’ve been previewing a bunch of themes and wanting a piece of this one and a piece of that one. Maybe I’ll wait and see what’s in the pipeline before I switch…
…or maybe I’ll suggest you offer a modular “build-a-blog” theme that lets me assemble my favorite features like building blocks. What do you think? Is that too much to ask for free?
I really appreciate what you offer at WP, but maybe I should also learn CSS.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:50 am
Oh, this is really great! I just love your themes especially the new ones that came recently. They are all splendid!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:52 am
Great news!
Hope this team has more success than the New Jersey Nets…
April 16th, 2010 at 1:18 am
Thank you, Ian, and the entire Theme Team, for this marvelous initiative. As I’ve told all of my friends for years, WordPress is simply the best in (free) blogging platforms. I, too, would love to be able to participate in the Theme Team project, and would be more than happy to serve as a ‘guinea pig’ for new themes, provide feedback, etc.
On a side note, please don’t retire older themes…I still revert back to them upon occasion (especially Patricia Millers’).
Again, great stuff! Keep us posted.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:42 am
Excellent news! I can finally do some REAL customization!
Thanks you guys! your awesome!
April 16th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Awesome and amazing! You guys rock as always! Looking forward for the new theme announcements! Love it!
April 16th, 2010 at 2:07 am
Woah! That’s great news! I can’t wait for new themes!
April 16th, 2010 at 2:15 am
You WordPress people are fantastic. You keep coming up with new designs and make me want to switch all the time. It’s terrible
Thank you for your artistry and generosity.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:41 am
This good idea and I need good theme with 3 column….. hehehe…..
April 16th, 2010 at 2:45 am
Totally excited about this idea…
Theme Team … amazing!!!
April 16th, 2010 at 2:48 am
That’s definitely going to give WordPress the creative edge and allow more individual personalities to shine, which is great. Personally, I’m waiting and hoping for more themes with the organization capabilities of iNove with the texture and feel of Dark Wood, without the girly flowers and tiny fonts. Not being able to adjust font size is a complaint I get from readers.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:08 am
This sounds great! I love my current theme!
April 16th, 2010 at 3:11 am
I hope you guys will do a theme or two with the fonts not such ridiculously small like in all themes that are already available at wordpress.com. But I’m affraid it’s just another Automattic’s effort to incentivise people to pay for Custom CSS upgrade.
April 16th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
We want to see more themes with larger fonts too! Everyone should have a theme that’s just right for them.
April 16th, 2010 at 3:34 am
I would love to see wordpress themes that allow for artists and designers to create easy to update galleries, similar to Indexhibit.com, but much, much easier to use.
and o a purely aesthetic note, please keep the themes clean and simple, or if you could make it easy for the user to add background images or fades or colors…something not currently offered in your free service tier.
just some suggestions, can’t wait to see what you develop!
April 16th, 2010 at 3:38 am
Good news – hoping to see additional new themes that are less “serious” – more appealing to bloggers who prefer a lighter, whimsical look and always with a customized header for our own images.
April 16th, 2010 at 4:15 am
There are already lots of beautiful themes out there for self hosted wordpress. I think you guys should contact authors of the top themes and include them in wordpress.com. The whole idea of more themes is just wonderful, but the resent additions have not been that impressive.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
We’d love to hear which themes you think are the “top themes,” too. You can either contact support with the request or drop a line in the Themes Forum.
April 16th, 2010 at 4:23 am
wowow……….. sounds great……
April 16th, 2010 at 4:36 am
Brilliant stuff – I am brand new to WordPress.com (3 days to be exact) so I look forward to growing with all your new developments.
April 16th, 2010 at 4:59 am
That is so great can I join you. I already love the way themes for WordPress are easy to obtain and a Theme Team would make life for WordPress users much easier. The idea is welcome. thanks to the team Cheers!
April 16th, 2010 at 5:08 am
I love wordpress themes. Can we get some with custom headers though?
April 16th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
More themes with custom headers are on the way.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:30 am
Great news! I’m exited to see what the Theme Team can do
April 16th, 2010 at 5:37 am
this is another effort from you guys that’s much much appreciated. thanks for this update.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:50 am
Douze points! Thank you WordPress.com for putting themes on the fast track. Very welcome news indeed.
April 16th, 2010 at 5:55 am
Hurrah! Not before time either! YES! The best news yet! Being able to choose from lot’s of themes is a must! We all want our particular blogs look to reflect who we are as an individual so obviously the more choice there is available the more likely it is that a user will find one that just summarises who they are.
I look forward to seeing some great themes in the not too distant future and hopefully one that is ‘just me’
April 16th, 2010 at 6:25 am
i skimmed the comments but will there be a feedback where we can tell u what we want or a theme that has options so that we can make it exactly how we want??
April 16th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
You can either contact support with the request or drop a line in the Themes Forum.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:57 am
You are making some lovely Themes, but I’m already very happy with ‘Black Letterhead’ – Goal 1 is already in the back of the net as far as my blog is concerned. Thanks folks!
April 16th, 2010 at 7:46 am
this is awesome!! love new themes!! new themes every month, every week or even everyday!! ;p
April 16th, 2010 at 7:58 am
Fantastic, great news! There are a lot of nice themes I could use, if they only had customizeable headers… Will it be possible to ask for variants of themes, so that some that now don’t include customizeable headers will in the future?
April 16th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Absolutely. You can either contact support with the request or drop a line in the Themes Forum.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:44 am
Sounds great! I just wanted to thank the author of my WordPress theme and everybody involved at WordPress.com for your great work! I am enjoying using your software every day and would recommend everybody starting a blog with WordPress.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:45 am
It would be nice to have less themes with a fixed with. If you are blogging code, fixed width is a pain in the butt.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:59 am
Great news! Thanks WordPress!
April 16th, 2010 at 9:02 am
You guys are awesome!
April 16th, 2010 at 10:09 am
Bingoooo!! Very good idea!!
April 16th, 2010 at 10:32 am
outlining and sticking to the team goals is great ……
i hope i will find more themes in future …..
best of luck Ian Stewart and the theme team
April 16th, 2010 at 10:41 am
This sound like an amazing idea. Make some more fun themes though. Some with more color. Some that would be for girls and boys. Some that are more mature is ok but personally I like fun ones. Thanks.
April 16th, 2010 at 10:41 am
great idea!
It sounds good!
April 16th, 2010 at 10:54 am
excellent! i see way too many blogs with the same theme as mine, which sucks cus i actually really like it… i guess now i can find a different one that suits me equally well
April 16th, 2010 at 11:13 am
This is actually very exciting. Thank you!
April 16th, 2010 at 11:26 am
This is for you WordPress Team :
I can be like the guy next door
who always avoids doing more
But thats simply not me
Thats the way I choose to be
Improving myself is a constant goal
Thats how I am – Mind, body & Soul !
Kudos on yet another brilliant effort to keep getting better
.
April 16th, 2010 at 11:28 am
It would be nice to have some more themes with as much functionality and flexibility as Vigilance.
April 16th, 2010 at 11:45 am
Some requests:
- Drop down top navigation menus
- Ability to optimise pages for search engines better – can’t insert tags into pages just posts
- Better widgets for showing slideshows, videos, photos without heavy branding eg vodpod bad, flickr widget good!
- Slideshow tool to insert into posts and pages – the slide.com one is ugly
- Means to insert buttons for payment into posts and pages eg paypal buttons
Thanks
Catherine
April 16th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Thanks for the suggestions, Catherine! If you’re looking to insert a slideshow in your posts I hope you’ll like our new slideshow feature.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:13 pm
exactly was I was missing! a theme team and more themes.
I know this isn’t a wishing well, but I hope to see themes with more width. it would be better for publishing pictures.
April 16th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
My wish is simple, more one-column themes (with drop-down menus, and larger space for the blog content. Oh, with custom header too). I really love WP! And good luck for the Theme Team!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Very good news….
April 16th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
…would love to see a really workable site built specifically for an artist to display a portfolio on! I love how easy WordPress is to use…
April 16th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
sosososo excited!!
April 16th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
YAY i love the theme i have now but definitely welcome more.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
This sounds GREAT! I would love to have a theme that would really showcase my photo. I’d like the photos to look big and beautiful (like the do on the photoblog themes) AND be able to load more than one per post AND have the theme be text friendly at the same time. Multiple big, beautiful photos with lots of text. That would suit me just fine.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Woohoo! So excited about new themes for WordPress.com-ers! Thank you, Dankie, Yabonga kakhulu!
April 16th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Totally brilliant! Keep it going
ps: I know what gabby (hi!) means. I love the theme I have and unless something else comes along with the same or similar specs, layout, borders, side-menu, and so on, I want to stick with the one I’m using…. but….. of course I can never say “never”…. because you will probably come up with a new one that I can’t resist.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
I would love to see more customization for free users. Paying to save my custom theme is annoying. It was one of the reason I was hesitant to join the WordPress communty.
I love to customize and theme things but having to pay for it seems like charging the kids on the playground to play in the sand box. I believe you would have a lot more themes available if customizing them was free.
April 16th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
We love the idea of more customization too. And more choice. More of everything, really.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Thank you. This is a fine idea. And of course more new themes with PAGES Navigation.
April 16th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
sounds awesome! thanks!! i look forward to seeing more awesome themes! (wider ones!)
April 16th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
nice nice! great news!
i’m lovin’ WP everyday!
thank you WP!
April 16th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Sounds great!
I’m reeeeeaally hoping for a theme–like Vigilance–that doesn’t cut off larger photos, but a theme that also allows you to underline links (Vigilance doesn’t).
Here’s hoping…
April 16th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Nice! Would love a nice basic theme with a vertical menu with nested sub-menus for child pages, and maybe duplicate text links at the bottom, widgetized left sidebar and maybe cufon for headers?
April 16th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
great. i think its a really good idea. the existing themes are nice but there not enough.
i’m really happy that there’s a team now that cares about it and i hope you will bring up some amazing themes – looking forward to that.
thanks alot
April 16th, 2010 at 4:37 pm
Really great news… I love WordPress.
April 16th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
I am with Denise, more photo themes, please!
April 16th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
Yesssss! That´s why i LOVE wordpress. I know it´ll be awesome!
April 16th, 2010 at 5:09 pm
I am excited to hear this. In fact, I am waiting for the DAY when we can approach wordpress to make desired changes in already selected (and activated) theme, of course for a modest payment.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Yippie! That sound great!
That’s the plan of Wor(l)dpress for world domination:-D
Looking forward for your funtastic work…
April 16th, 2010 at 6:20 pm
This is AWESOME ~ great news
April 16th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
It would be great if you would try to merge several themes to the same HTML code (like e.g. sandbox) and do the rest via CSS. In this way we wouldn’t have to translate so many strings on translate.wordpress.com.
Just an idea.
April 16th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Great! I’m looking for another garden theme for my gardening club’s website.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
Oh, good. Themes like you’ve got the right idea. It’d be nice to niggle with my theme … for example, adding a date-stamp in a theme that doesn’t have one.
April 16th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
@Martin (IQ)
You make a great point. We hope to implement several new themes as Child Themes, meaning they’d share the same source code but have different CSS and images to ensure they are visually unique.
April 16th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
I would like to see a theme which incorporates or at least has an index with titles of posted entries, not just pages created. I really liked the new set-up for Inuit, but I really prefer any theme to have a custom header option.
April 16th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Awesome
I have a request: more variable-width themes!
April 16th, 2010 at 10:59 pm
Hope to see more coming!
Great work in the mean time. Thanks!
April 16th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Great! Now I hope in a theme good for webcomics, similar to ComicPress but more like Kubrick.
April 16th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
I cannot wait.
April 16th, 2010 at 11:58 pm
I’m pretty new to the whole world of blogging, but let me just say that I am amazed at this place. You guys are doing a spectacular job. I’ve changed themes a few times, and I would be totally pleased with the one I have if only the font could be bigger. Love the black, but I’m seriously considering changing because I don’t know if people are bothering to squint long enough to see what’s posted.
I’m also all for the custom header increases. Love so many of the themes in every way–except they don’t allow for a header. That will be wonderful, too. Thank you.
April 17th, 2010 at 1:03 am
Awesome! I’m glad to hear there is a dedicated team to this important aspect of WordPress.
April 17th, 2010 at 1:26 am
Really good news. Congratulations too on the recent new themes.
April 17th, 2010 at 2:01 am
@Lance
Sounds awesome. As far as I understand it this relates only to new themes. Are there any plans on merging all the existing (old) themes on wordpress.com to a bunch of basic ‘child themes’ as you say?
Would make it a lot easier for you to maintain all the themes and a lot of easier for us translators as well. Something like a two-coloumn child theme, a three column child theme, one photoblog theme, … with all the html tags to represent all excisting themes. They would only differ in the CSS code. Not needed html tags could be hidden by the CSS ‘display’ property, …
I’m thinking about something like http://csszengarden.com/
April 19th, 2010 at 9:08 pm
@Martin (IQ)
We won’t be changing old themes just yet—too many blogs rely on them to work as they do now, and changing the underlying code could cause problems for folks using our Custom CSS upgrade.
That said, we do want to move towards that type of structure, so I’m glad you brought it up. This type of code sharing not only helps translators, but also us theme developers and testers.
April 17th, 2010 at 2:30 am
FANTASTIC news!
April 17th, 2010 at 3:04 am
Awesome, always down for a new theme! Would love to see customizable header graphics with the users own images, and customizable fonts.
April 17th, 2010 at 3:53 am
Folks at WordPress are great!
April 17th, 2010 at 6:40 am
I love a little bit of transparent elements for themes. For example, like the Motion theme. I hope you can make a few more themes like that too!
Cheers!!
April 17th, 2010 at 8:31 am
I suggest more two-column, flexible-width themes (excellent for those who tend to produce long posts). “Silver is the new black” offers just about everything I ask for (two columns only, flexible width, small font, clean design etc) but alternatives would be really nice.
April 17th, 2010 at 8:46 am
This is awesome and exciting!
April 17th, 2010 at 10:22 am
Thank you soooo much for everything that you do. WordPress rocks
April 17th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Wonderful! I’m already looking forward to the new themes. Can’t wait!
April 17th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
Great idea!
I really like Ocean Mist, however I do miss the opportunity for pull down menus in the pages!
April 17th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
WordPress Rocks! Thank you all for your dedication, it just gets better ‘n better.
Way to go!
April 17th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
More two-column themes resembling a newspaper or magazine website type style would be great! And better fonts!
April 17th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
A theme that changes colour every day. Now THAT would be fun.
April 17th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Lovely. This is what we have been waiting for.
April 17th, 2010 at 4:05 pm
A thousand thanks and that is a good initiative!
April 17th, 2010 at 4:56 pm
I post the tag cloud on my blog and find that most themes crowd the tags, so I’d like to see that widget improved on coming themes.
I also have my links broken into a variety of categories. I’d like the option of moving them in the order I’d like, but my current theme auto posts them alphabetically, so I have to be creative with the titles. Not that I’m opposed to such creativity, but that’s another improved widget I’d like to see.