Theme Updates for Custom Menus and More
Last year we—the Theme Team—were quite busy, not only offering you 29 great new themes, but also improving the themes you already love and use on your WordPress.com sites. In case you haven’t looked closely at your theme in a while we’d like to point out several recent improvements.
Custom Menus
61 of our themes now support Custom Menus—we’ve enabled it for all themes that previously supported top-level navigation with pages.
For themes without top-level navigation support you can still create Custom Menus and add them as widgets to your sidebar. Read the Custom Menus support page to learn how to get the most out of this feature.
And More…
In addition to Custom Menus we also enabled Custom Background support for 72 themes, added Post Formats support to a few themes, and updated all themes to use the standard WordPress comment form. The comment form changes—though invisible to you—pave the way for cool new social features involving comments on WordPress.com sites.
Many themes also received small updates. For example, two options were added to one of the most popular themes on WordPress.com, MistyLook: single post navigation links and hide the search bar from the header (both are available via Appearance → Theme Options if you use MistyLook).
Help Us Improve
Several of you recently said that your theme is almost perfect and we are curious about the last missing piece. Help us improve themes on WordPress.com by answering our question over on the Themes forum: If you could change one thing about your theme, what would it be?
This year we will continue making improvements and launching more new themes—all to ensure you have a theme that fits you perfectly and that you are excited to show off.
Jan 6th at 2:07 pm
To freshen up my blog, I am trying to decide which theme to change to. Good to here that some of the older themes have the options I have become used to with my current theme.
Jan 6th at 2:16 pm
The theme team is most definitely a dream theme team! Great work!
Jan 6th at 2:20 pm
I have just changed the theme for my blog a while ago, and this a great way to give my blog a new twist. Thanks Theme Team!
Jan 6th at 2:25 pm
Thanks for the updates. I always look at the updates and see what will be best – I am constantly updating the look of my blog to give it the look and feel I want – mostly I rely on new styles of graphics etc but these changes I will look for within the template I use.
Jan 6th at 2:45 pm
I will have to experiment with this custom menu, didn’t realize it was there, thank you for that.
Jan 6th at 2:53 pm
“Theme Team” is quite a tongue twister
Anyway, thanks for this, WP!
Jan 6th at 2:55 pm
This is great. You’re doing a great job. Thanks!
Jan 6th at 2:59 pm
Thanks for updating us. Debating on keeping my theme, or freshening it up with something brighter!
Jan 6th at 3:03 pm
Thanks for the information.
Jan 6th at 3:06 pm
There is little one can say except you guys are doing a fantastic job!
Just keep going. And oh, one more thing: more snazzy looking mag themes would be awesome!
Jan 6th at 3:25 pm
WordPress Theme team has DEFINITELY done a great JOB in 2010. Thanks for making my blog look better with LOVELY THEME.
This is fantastic! Thanks theme team. Cheers.
Jan 6th at 3:27 pm
Thanks for updating continuously.
Jan 6th at 3:29 pm
Thank you for this – very helpful – keep on trucking!
Jan 6th at 3:35 pm
Thanks for the great tools!
Jan 6th at 3:45 pm
Thanks for the new features and updates!
Jan 6th at 3:47 pm
Thank you for all your hard work! Things are looking better all the time.
Jan 6th at 3:57 pm
I love how you keep giving us new and improved options for our blogs. Thanks WordPress.com! X
Jan 6th at 4:00 pm
Excellent. Thanks for that.
Jan 6th at 4:05 pm
Can’t wait for more great stuff from WordPress Theme team.
Jan 6th at 4:28 pm
As I browse more WordPress blogs, I notice many bloggers feel WordPress has the most coolest themes compared to other providers.
Jan 6th at 5:06 pm
Cool! Thanks WordPress.
Jan 6th at 5:08 pm
For the moment I do not intend to change the theme of my blog, but it’s nice to know that everything is in motion.
Thanks!
Jan 6th at 5:39 pm
It is true! My theme is almost perfect!
Jan 6th at 6:18 pm
Thanks! Very helpful!
Jan 6th at 6:41 pm
Oh wow this is really nice. Thanks!
Jan 6th at 7:31 pm
I feel a-tinkering coming on.
Jan 6th at 8:13 pm
I really love that the teams there at WP are on a quest to continually upgrade the features and functionality. Totally appreciated!!
Jan 6th at 8:52 pm
Lance,
It really helps to have this update about general theme improvements. I see Inuit Types now has the custom menu options. Great! My theme is quite perfect because I have the CSS upgrade.
Jan 6th at 9:07 pm
Thanks for the updates keeps me wanting to mess around with my blog
Jan 6th at 9:15 pm
Thanks! This was very helpful. I created a custom menu in a few minutes after reading this!
Jan 6th at 9:28 pm
I’ll have to check my “theme” out and see how the custom menu would work—thanks!
Jan 6th at 9:29 pm
Wow this is just awesome! I’ve been trying to find a theme that suits just perfect for my health & longevity blog, thanks!
Jan 6th at 10:47 pm
Terrific, this will almost certainly help with long-time theme users.
Jan 6th at 11:46 pm
Great–always good to know that things are going upwards and onwards.
Jan 6th at 11:55 pm
I noticed the other day that my theme, Coraline, has a “aside”, “gallery” or “standard” post format. I LOVE it!!! Thanks!!
Jan 7th at 12:00 am
I change my theme often, and it’s because I simply cannot decide which I one I love the most, they’re all great!
You guys in the theme team have done a really good job. Keep the new themes flowing, will you? Many thanks
Jan 7th at 12:03 am
No question about: it Theme Team at WordPress is the BEST!
Jan 7th at 3:28 am
Perfect for consideration for 2011…
Jan 7th at 4:05 am
The move from Windows Live Spaces was filled with trepidation, but as it turns out, I couldn’t be happier with WordPress. Spaces was nice for the fonts, font size & font color, but overall I really like the clean professional look.
Jan 7th at 5:16 am
Great work WordPress!
Jan 7th at 10:28 am
Keep up the amazing job WP!
Jan 7th at 1:52 pm
Once again, thank you WordPress, a new a lot of WordPress.
Jan 7th at 3:57 pm
Thanks to the WordPress theme team. Indeed they’re doing more than what we need. In fact, I needed some information on the Theme Updates for Custom Menus. And I got it. Thanks again.
Jan 7th at 4:12 pm
I’d like to see more themes, please.
Jan 7th at 4:24 pm
This is something really good to mull over…. What a good way to organize things!…. Now I’ll have to think about what readers will find most useful and helpful…. Thank you very much!…. It’s good to know you’re always coming up with ideas to improve WordPress.
Jan 7th at 5:05 pm
Fantastic. WordPress, you are making us more comfortable. Thanks.
Jan 8th at 3:03 am
Thank you for your hard work
Jan 8th at 5:55 am
Thanks for the updates.
Jan 8th at 3:13 pm
This is nice… thanks for the update.
Jan 8th at 4:05 pm
This is going to be SO useful! Thanks, theme team!
Jan 8th at 5:31 pm
Thumbs up for WordPress!
Jan 8th at 10:06 pm
Superb! I really appreciate the theme team’s wonderful work. And I look forward to more themes, and more flexibility in positioning the blog title, in the height of the header picture, etc, in the number and width of columns, etc. Cheers! Keep the good work up!
Jan 8th at 11:39 pm
Great job. Thanks guys. You are the best theme team ever
Jan 9th at 10:13 am
Love the themes make things easier on the eye for readers…very nice, thanks.
Jan 9th at 3:05 pm
I feel at home with WordPress. Lots of new tools and theme for all.
Jan 9th at 11:06 pm
Excellent. Custom Menus is a great feature which expands the number of use-cases that WordPress can support.
Jan 10th at 2:55 am
Thanks for the useful info!
Jan 10th at 6:08 am
Awesome, thanks for the info.
Jan 10th at 9:56 am
Very well done! Thank you for all your precious help!
Jan 10th at 10:28 am
Keep on updating us! You are doing a great job WordPress.
Jan 10th at 2:16 pm
On all themes, stop forcing all-uppercase or all-lowercase for blog titles, page titles, post titles, etc. If I wanted all uppercase or all lowercase, I’d type it that way myself…
Jan 10th at 4:14 pm
Great improvement, thanks for make wordpress more better by day.
Jan 10th at 4:22 pm
That’s awesome – thank you !
Jan 10th at 4:39 pm
Thanks a lot for the beautiful work you have been doing. I guess there’s need to change my blog theme this time around for a change (winks). Cheers to all!
Jan 10th at 5:52 pm
I love my theme with one exception. I would like to be able to personally program the right hand column. Is there a way I can do this without changing themes. I’m not a geek, by the way, which is why I have so loved wordpress for my blog. Pat Bean
Jan 10th at 6:16 pm
Nice, works perfect and just what I was looking for, and didn’t even know it.
Keep up the excellent work.
Jan 10th at 8:15 pm
Upgrades are great – more flexibility using the current themes – how many more new themes are needed, anyway? Kudos.
Jan 10th at 8:21 pm
You people don´t sleep
! Thanks for looking after our blogs, it´s really appreciated. Keep it coming.
Jan 10th at 11:03 pm
Fantastic. I spent the last couple of weeks sorting out pages so I could add the new menu. My blog has Misty Look theme and the new menu is working GREAT. Thanks so much for all the hard work you guys do as I couldn’t do the tech stuff myself. Happy New Year, Billie.
Jan 10th at 11:53 pm
Thanks for all the creativity, I’m brand new at the blog game, but love the options you offer.
Jan 11th at 8:56 am
GREAT WORK. Should be good for my photography.
Jan 12th at 6:07 am
Thanks for asking, and for rapidly implementing my request (next/prev post links for Simpla).
Now a sort of meta-request for the theme team: would you post here a summary of the “one thing” requests? For example, how many of them were font related, how many header related, how many requested more than one thing… I for one would be very interested.
Thanks again.
Jan 17th at 5:28 am
Hi Andrew—We won’t be posting a summary here, but you can skim through the replies (13 pages as of today!) to get an idea of what the common requests are.
Jan 12th at 6:15 pm
Thanks for theme updates for Custom Menus and more. It’s awesome.
Jan 12th at 8:37 pm
Very nice update, I hope the WP team will continue to rock like this.
Jan 13th at 4:10 am
Very neat features! Thanks.
Jan 13th at 7:00 am
Great, WordPress.com is the best free weblogging service.
Jan 13th at 5:56 pm
The themes are super! I like a lot of them, but I’m always happy to see new ones. Three column themes have my interest at the moment. Happy New Year!
Jan 14th at 2:30 am
Thanks for the themes, it really helps speed up the process of setting up a blog.
Jan 14th at 11:20 am
I am using the Enterprise theme and I am very pleased with it.
Jan 14th at 11:21 am
Thanks for updating continuously.
Jan 14th at 4:51 pm
Thanks to the WordPress team for their regular improvements like custom menus, contact form, etc. It’s good to work on WordPress.
Jan 15th at 12:46 am
Yes! More updates!
Jan 15th at 5:13 pm
Another impressive addition by the WordPress team. You guys are fantastic!
Jan 16th at 1:18 am
I LOVE by theme and my blog now that I’ve learned basic CSS…thanks WP! I know I don’t say it often enough!
Jan 16th at 6:49 pm
Nice work, you all are doing to keep WordPress the best it can be. Keep it up, mates.
Jan 17th at 2:38 pm
Thank you so much for the update! I’ve been hoping for something like this so I can have my videos fed into a separate page on the menu. You guys are great!
Jan 18th at 3:25 pm
Thank you for keeping us up to date. More power WordPress.