New Theme: Wu Wei
The Taoist concept of “Wu Wei” involves knowing when to act and when not to act. It’s also the name and neat description of the design philosophy behind today’s new one-column theme. Let’s take a look at Wu Wei.
The Wu Wei theme
Wu Wei is a gorgeous theme but we’ve also made sure it’s packed with features for you. Starting from the top, beautiful, fully customizable, drop-down menus using the Menus feature in Appearance → Menus, and an optional Custom Header. You can add a header image below the text, and if you’re uploading your own logo here, choose to hide the text altogether.
Wu Wei's customizable menus
And, at the bottom, totally optional Widget areas in the footer of every Wu Wei-themed page of your site. To keep things simple, they’re turned off by default. Visit Appearance → Widgets and add your own Widgets to any of the three available areas to automatically turn the footer Widget area on.
Wu Wei's optional footer widgets
Wu Wei also comes with an alternate, dark color scheme.
The dark color scheme
Turning on the dark color scheme is simple. Just visit Appearance → Theme Options, check off the option to use the dark color scheme, and click the save button. Both the color schemes are beautiful so this might be a tough choice!
You also have complete control over the background for this theme in Appearance → Background. The choice of dark or light color schemes works really well with this.
Designed by Jeff Ngan, Wu Wei is now available for WordPress.com and, for self-hosted WordPress.org sites, from the WordPress.org Themes Directory.
June 16th, 2010 at 7:48 am
Hmmmmm……nirvana. Peace at last!
June 16th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
This is like a combination of the photo blog with more text thrown in. I like the simplistic artistry about the layout. Cool!
June 16th, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Very nice!
June 16th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Very nice. But here in the south, we are starting Winter! Any snowy ideas?
June 17th, 2010 at 12:17 am
Yes, now that you mention it. Check out Iceburgg and Vermilion Christmas for two winter-related themes.
June 16th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Well, I like the name of your theme. At the first time I read it I thought I would see something red and gold (chinese color). I expect something which is really Chinese… colorful. Why don’t you try to use peony flower as the background so it won’t be plain?
I have an idea, why don’t you try to create a theme by using Countries from all over the world. Choose some pictures (scenery, traditional clothes, music instrument… etc). It will be great. Anyway I still love your Greyzed theme. That’s the best theme ever.
June 16th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
WordPress has released several amazing themes lately. Twenty Ten and Bueno, both of which I have used. Wu Wei may be the most elegant WordPress theme I’ve ever seen. Great work!
June 16th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Is that short for the Mandarin ‘Wu Wei Dao’ (without taste)?
June 16th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Simple and elegant – thank you!
June 16th, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Very clean, simple and beautiful!
June 16th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
Aren’t there ANY designs using dark colors that aren’t single-column and ridiculously skinny? What a waste of space on the screen and I’m SO tired of all of this whitewash and pastel crap. Gah!
June 17th, 2010 at 12:25 am
prodigalpunkass, you might have missed our last theme to launch, Andrea. It is dark-colored and wide.
Also, if you have a strong opinion on wider themes please see our discussion in the Themes forum post on wider themes and feel free to add your thoughts there. One thing that came out of the discussion is that “ridiculously skinny” might be relative to your personal preference—it might feel fine to the next person.
June 16th, 2010 at 9:44 pm
I love the dark version. My current theme is white Under the Influence theme.
June 16th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
That’s so cool, and love the font.
June 16th, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Very nice… The font’s great.
June 17th, 2010 at 1:39 am
This is a nice one with easy-to-read writing… not snuffed out by the background like some themes are… very classic.
June 17th, 2010 at 1:40 am
You guys are awesome. It’s one of my favorites now! Cheers
June 17th, 2010 at 1:56 am
Very nice and simple.
June 17th, 2010 at 2:14 am
Very sleek!
June 17th, 2010 at 3:35 am
Very beautiful… thank you!
June 17th, 2010 at 5:17 am
Well I would try it if it wasn’t so difficult changing everything back again.
June 17th, 2010 at 7:35 am
I like the font.
June 17th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Colors colors colors, I need colors.
Beautiful theme though. 
June 17th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Hi, Andrei. We have some more colorful themes on the way.
June 17th, 2010 at 4:43 pm
Nice work, it’s really elegant….love the font choice too.
June 17th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
It will fit really nice on a photo blog. Well done!
June 17th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
Simple, focuses attention on the text.
June 17th, 2010 at 8:52 pm
I really like the format although I am probably sticking to the one I have (Fauna). I’d love something more… how can I say… girly? Most of the themes are so grey, black and man-style… I would like some more COLORS!
It does not nessessarly have to be pink… 
June 17th, 2010 at 9:58 pm
For everyone asking for more colorful and “girly” themes—we hear you, and we hope to launch a theme along those lines soon.
In the meantime, check out existing themes that fit that bill already: Girl in Green, Albeo, Flower Power, Sweet Blossoms, Fresh Bananas, Fauna, Rounded, and maybe Spring Loaded.
June 18th, 2010 at 2:05 am
It’s all a bit the same as every other theme you’ve been doing, except for the Notepad theme. That was a unique, good idea.
June 18th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
We’ve got some new themes lined up that I hope will be more to your liking. Stay tuned.
June 18th, 2010 at 2:09 am
Cool theme. Love the dark version.
June 18th, 2010 at 3:27 am
As a newbie I’m busy learning my way around WordPress. I really love this theme. Great work! Thank you so much.
June 18th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Awsome! Shining! Like it a lot!
June 18th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Very cool theme! I love it!
June 18th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
White color scheme looks better, nice!
June 18th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
It’s fantastic!
June 18th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
So nice ! I love this theme.
June 19th, 2010 at 1:38 am
Great theme! Very classy.
I like that you can choose between light and dark.
June 19th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Can’t you make a rock theme? I would love to try it!
June 19th, 2010 at 8:37 am
Looks simple and nice!
June 19th, 2010 at 10:48 am
Wow.. so simple but look gorgeous.. ^^ like this..
June 19th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
So many new themes. THX
June 19th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
I’ll be honest. This looks like a minor variation on 10 other templates currently available. If I were in a position to make decisions at WordPress, I would be creating some strong incentives for the programming community at large to come up with something truly innovative.
June 21st, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Keep watching the news blog. You’ll be seeing more and more varied themes.
June 19th, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Absolutely love it! Finding it much more pleasing to the eye than my old theme. Thumbs up!
June 20th, 2010 at 12:17 am
So vivid, you can almost touch it!
June 20th, 2010 at 5:34 am
Its looking simple and nice.
June 20th, 2010 at 11:31 am
This is SO good.
Me loves !
June 20th, 2010 at 11:49 am
Cool theme. The huge titles is the point I don’t like about it, but the rest is perfect!
June 20th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
I love it. It might even encourage me to learn how to use all the buttons and knobs for getting a good menu bar to replace the side bars.
June 20th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
I tried it but there’s a little too much white space on the left and nowhere to put widgets except the bottom.
If it got together with Cutline and made a baby, I’d definitely be wanting one of those puppies.
June 21st, 2010 at 1:15 pm
LOVE the dark scheme!
excellent work guys – you make it so hard for me to stick with a theme!
June 21st, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Lovely! But I would like to make a general comment about light type reversed out of dark backgrounds. Many, many people have vision difficulties that prevent them from reading type rendered this way. It’s especially difficult for those with astigmatism. I hope you all will consider not using light type on dark backgrounds for your blogs for this reason. Thanks from the visually impaired.
June 21st, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Beautiful matching colours. But these took me a little more further than the physical beauty. The words – to me, very philosophical.
June 22nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Good one, keep rocking.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:18 pm
I like this one! Very simple but slick!
June 22nd, 2010 at 4:16 pm
This theme seems interesting… I think I am going to try it. Nice job, guys!
June 22nd, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Great! Is it available for wordpress.org?
June 22nd, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Yes. As mentioned in the post, it’s available from the WordPress.org themes directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/wu-wei.
June 22nd, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Man! I ALSO love it! It’s just what I need. The quantity of themes you can add and set up on your blog is very, very, very few. So, thanks!
June 22nd, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Beautiful theme. I really like this. Contemplating a changeover from my current theme…. decisions decisions!
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Beautiful.
Just what I needed!
June 22nd, 2010 at 11:50 pm
It is simple and beautiful.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:35 am
Meshing text and photo oriented blogs is a tricky business. I guess if I had more photos for my posts this format might be more appealing. I like the big fonts, however.
June 23rd, 2010 at 6:23 am
So great, I love it too.
June 23rd, 2010 at 8:45 am
I changed my theme to Wu Wei and it’s been a couple of days, been very happy!
Although I wish the dark theme had a brighter blue more turquoise for the links and such.
June 23rd, 2010 at 10:02 am
Very nice theme. Maybe will use it someday.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:03 pm
I am using it currently! Love it.
June 23rd, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Really nice design.
June 23rd, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Very innovative and simple, I resurrected my old blog with your theme! Thanks.
June 23rd, 2010 at 5:51 pm
I am using this new theme, but yes, the post titles are fixed at a large size. As a result, it is breaking up my longish titles in unappealing places.
June 24th, 2010 at 3:08 am
I am glad you chose that flower! I love the beauty of nature this world contains.
June 24th, 2010 at 6:07 am
This looks great, my fav one of new themes.
By the way, do you have any plan to increase the width of posts(since lots of people use wide monitors nowadays)?
For these awesome new themes, or even for those old, classic themes?
June 24th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Wu Wei, a one-column theme, is a little bit exceptional—most of our newer themes are a lot wider than our older themes. And more fluid themes are definitely on the horizon. Making the older themes wider probably won’t happen unless we introduce a new version.
June 24th, 2010 at 6:50 am
Would be great if you place blogroll, meta and older posts on the right or left column rather than at the bottom.
The reason is, if anyone visiting the blog, gets bored by the post, they just move away from the blog without scrolling down to see older posts.
June 24th, 2010 at 11:09 am
It is really beautiful.
Now, how about an equally classy, sleek, professional, three column theme — sidebars on right and left — with a fully customizable header (ready to accept my organization’s graphic without interruption by RSS or other widget), with reasonably open CSS for tailoring to our color scheme and style?
June 24th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
In a word, yes.
We’ll keep that suggestion in mind for a future theme.
June 25th, 2010 at 12:34 am
Simple and streamlined. Me likey.
June 25th, 2010 at 5:54 am
Clean and very nice theme. The font’s great and simple.
June 25th, 2010 at 9:25 am
Exquisite! I love it
June 25th, 2010 at 10:45 am
Thanks a lot.. gotta love this one… I really needed a theme that could accommodate large images.
June 25th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
Very nice. I love it. Keep on working.
June 26th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Gorgeous, nice and simple.
June 28th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Definitely a theme I’d go for. Looks cool. Keep up the good work guys!