New Mobile Theme: Minileven
There’s a good chance that visitors to your site these days will be using a smartphone. We feel it’s important to provide them with a great reading experience while on the small screen, so today we’re announcing a new mobile theme: ‘Minileven’.
Minileven: A clean interface, gorgeous post formats and custom headers/background
Minileven is based on the popular and beautiful theme Twenty Eleven, with a lot of tweaks to optimize it for mobile screens. It will use the header image, background and widgets from your current theme for a great custom look. Post format support is included so your photos and galleries will look fantastic on a smartphone.
If you were using the old mobile theme on WordPress.com, you will automatically see Minileven when visiting your site from an iPhone, Android or Windows Phone device. You can enable or disable the mobile theme in the new Mobile settings screen:
We will continue to improve on Minileven in the future. What else would you like to have in a mobile theme?
Learn more about getting mobile with WordPress.
Nov 2nd at 11:16 pm
It’s great that there’s an option to have a mobile theme but is there any way of viewing how it looks from the dashboard without having to go to my mobile device?
Same goes for the ipad version…
Nov 3rd at 8:24 am
That’s a good idea, but a bit of a technical challenge to implement.
Nov 2nd at 11:48 pm
Look forward to seeing my sites looking prettier on mobiles now! The older mobile version was good anyway in terms of functionality, but it’s nice to have a nicer-looking one now. Thanks!
Nov 2nd at 11:58 pm
So JUST TODAY I had a subscriber send me a private email asking if I could possibly adapt my blog to make it easier to read on a smartphone Seriously.
What timing!
Nov 3rd at 12:20 am
Hi and thanks for sharing with us the Minileven theme, i’ll surely install it.
Nov 3rd at 12:29 am
Looks pretty neat!
Nov 3rd at 12:38 am
I think it is a late anouncement. I’m a regular mobile user of WordPress.com and I was seeing it for couple of last days. It is beautiful theme. Easy to navigate, readable and clean. The best thing is that it shows Widgets too. Only navigation-menu is the weak point of it , which shows Pages instead of custom menu!!
Nov 3rd at 1:17 am
Took a look and WOW. AMazing. Now visitors don’t have to click through to see the starting image I post for each article. SWEEET. The white background is nice. Somehow seems more airy than the old theme. I like it and it really makes the mobile experience an “experience” as opposed to a series of hurdles to try and enjoy something.
Thank you!
But the main PITA of the old these is still there. You have to click & wait just to see people’s comments. Why!
If people click on the article on the web, they see the comments. The comments are very short snippets of text WAY less data than the images now being fed down the pipe. (I assume the images are downsampled by WordPress before sending to mobile handsets- please confirm this)
Nov 3rd at 1:17 am
I just now looked at the four blog sites that I manage for my clients.
In general they look nice on my Droid. Two problems though.
1 – The entire screen on a smartphone scrolls, not just the text area. So, backgrounds that are fixed on a computer are no longer fixed on a smartphone. That means that when a person scrolls down for a bit on their smartphone, the background ends and there’s only a solid color which is not brand-aligned.
2 – 3 out of the 4 blogs I reviewed don’t show Pages/Tabs anywhere on the smartphone screen. They show up as Pages/Tabs on the top of the computer-version layout, just not visible anywhere on a smartphone screen.
Thanks.
Nov 3rd at 1:33 am
How did you come up with the name? Leven = Life in Dutch.
Nov 4th at 5:38 pm
The Minileven name stems from it being based on the Twenty Eleven theme. Mini Twenty Eleven.
Nov 3rd at 2:28 am
What can I say, people are already visiting my blog on their mobile. Thank you for bringing Minil11
Happy November.
Nov 3rd at 2:37 am
Can we dynamically change the use of themes for mobile device & desktop browser? It seems that this is exactly what I am looking for right now for my website.
Nov 3rd at 2:59 am
Nice. Looking forward to more mobile-optimized themes.
Nov 3rd at 3:18 am
Great looking forward to this new mobile theme…. Gracias
Nov 3rd at 5:32 am
Any chance of having it for .org sites?
Nov 3rd at 5:42 am
Great theme. Now only if we had a mobile dashboard… Just hoping. Its not always feasible to download and use the app. A mobile web dashboard would be great. Cheers.
Nov 3rd at 7:33 am
There seems to be a problem. When I look at my blog using my mobile (iPhone), the photos are all shrunk in horizontal orientation.
Do we have the option to choose the old mobile theme? I think it works pretty well. Cheers!
Nov 3rd at 8:20 am
This has been fixed, thanks for letting us know!
Nov 3rd at 8:01 am
After being at a conference yesterday and seeing the number of smart phone users (including me, still wet behind the ears), I don’t really know if the figures for feature phone users outside the US is still as high as it was even a year ago. I’m assuming that the WPTouch theme introduced in 2009 is still displayed on those phones. Mobile rocks!
Nov 3rd at 8:52 am
I don’t see Minileven option anywhere – looked in new Themes and plug-ins.
We have our own hosted blog and a (currently hidden) WordPress.com blog.
Have I missed something?
Nov 3rd at 11:45 am
On your WordPress.com blog, visit Appearance->Mobile, and select ‘Yes’ to enable the mobile theme (Minileven)
Nov 3rd at 9:02 am
any chance to have available for Blackberry??
Nov 3rd at 11:44 am
The newer BlackBerry browsers might support Minileven. We will research this and perhaps release it for those devices.
Nov 3rd at 9:08 am
Looks great. I like it. Especially because the demo has photos of Budapest (I live there).
Nov 3rd at 9:37 am
Great work! I take it that was one of the projects the Automattic team worked on last week in Budapest? I can’t wait to see the other ones!
Nov 3rd at 11:43 am
Yes, it was!
Nov 3rd at 10:34 am
sorry i havent understand it… this is a theme that exists on the theme gallery so you can pick it up OR Minileven is an option on the Mobile section at the wordpress Appearance panel?
Nov 3rd at 11:42 am
If you enable the mobile theme in the Mobile settings, Minileven will be shown for your site when someone visits from a smartphone.
Nov 3rd at 11:11 am
i am unhappy about this theme.
1. Takes a lot of time to load with images (an issue on slower GPRS networks here in Europe).
2. Also it doesn’t respect my settings: I choose to have 1 post on main page and this theme displays 5, with no way to overrule this.
3. Also I much preferred to have excerpts rather than full post, as in the former mobile theme.
4. In the former mobile theme comment counter was on top near the post title, now it’s hidden at the bottom, while with animated discussions readers are interested to see how many new comments are there.
PLEASE give option to customise new Mineleven theme or give choice of former mobile theme.
Nov 3rd at 11:48 am
hmmm….this is good? because i am checking all my blogs on mobile and at the footer says: wptouch, so now if i am going to see my blog on a mobile wptouch would be removed and minileven will show up? i mean, minileven came to replace the wptouch mobile friendly view when you see a blog on wordpress.com on a mobile?
Nov 3rd at 11:57 am
WPtouch has been replaced with Minileven, yup.
Nov 3rd at 12:03 pm
another question…. wptouch has two modes for viewing your site, mobile view and full site, mineleven has only one? because i have seen the pictures and they dont seem like wptouch on its mobile view…
Nov 3rd at 12:12 pm
There’s a link in the footer of Minileven, ‘View Full Site’ that will take you to the regular theme for the blog.
Nov 3rd at 2:43 pm
I didn’t know it was released today until I checked my site on my Android device. Neatly done and clean! That’s really a good start on welcoming more visitor using mobile devices! Keep it up!
Nov 3rd at 8:23 pm
@Dan: No worries, thanks for the response and least it answers the question! Keep up the good work!
Nov 3rd at 10:19 pm
Hmm, this sounds like a good compliment to my Twenty-Eleven theme. Keep up the good work, but I ask you – if WordPress.org provides a Twenty-Twelve Theme, will there be a minitwelve theme on WP.com?
Nov 3rd at 10:54 pm
I prefer the older version of mobile theme since I have pretty long post for each one. If you don’t want to give me the option to choose, at least give me back the share button for facebook and twitter! Please!
Nov 3rd at 11:00 pm
I just checked it on my Android and it’s fantastic. The old one was functional but this new look is bootylicious. Well done guys.
Nov 4th at 9:34 am
Nice Theme
Nov 4th at 2:13 pm
This new theme is awful. Why change something (ie WPtouch) that’s worked so well?! It’s actually what made me switch from TypePad to you guys! It’s definitely cleaner than this new disaster you implemented.
I’m very disappointed since the new theme looks and feels like a huge step backward. My blog is practically broken on it and the perfoamce is worse since it includes full posts on initial render.
Please give me the option to keep WPtouch. Or refund my $99 and I’ll move my blog to Tumblr.
Nov 6th at 11:12 am
We’re going to add improvements to the theme from here on and are currently looking in to adding an option to just show post excerpts on the homepage for a performance improvement if desired.
What is looking broken on your blog? It’s probably just some style fixes that need to be added on our side.
Nov 4th at 4:28 pm
Doesn’t look too bad, but from what I am reading, we pretty much aren’t getting a choice of mobile themes? What if we want to stick with WPTouch? We should have the option of choosing our mobile theme, just like how we have the option of choosing our main theme.
Nov 4th at 5:39 pm
cool! thanks for this!
Nov 4th at 7:16 pm
Any chance the Minileven code can be made public so we can use it on WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs? I have a plugin now, but Minileven is much cooler!
Nov 6th at 11:07 am
It’s used for quite specific WordPress.com stuff, and wouldn’t really work well if we released it as a plugin. You’re more than welcome to use the CSS file though, which is the main difference between Minileven and Twenty Eleven.
Nov 4th at 10:22 pm
I dont understand why you dont offer a special mobile theme instead.
Like a user said before, I would like to have my custom menu instead of the pages. And I would like to see what it looks like on my computer as well, not just on a smartphone.
I really wish you would release some more special mobile themes instead of some of the stuff you are releasing right now…
Cheers
Mihir
Nov 6th at 11:02 am
Thanks, we are looking at improving the theme continuously and will consider adding custom menu support.
Nov 5th at 12:52 pm
is there any changes for the blogger to choose what theme to use, just like we did it at Computer Version, because I Agree with beyondanomie that the Old Theme is good interms of Funcionality . . . and . .. more low resource
. .. because . . you know . .. many blog reader in developing country like mine only have a limited bandwidth 
Nov 6th at 11:05 am
We’re discussing options for low bandwidth usage, perhaps an option to only show the post excerpts on the homepage.
Nov 5th at 7:08 pm
Hmmm, seems like this new mobile theme doesn’t fit the somewhat smaller screensize of my (lower-range) android phone. Text adjusts itself okay, but images and header for instance are to wide. The size is perfect for browsing in landscape-mode though, in portrait it is too wide. On the contrary, if I view my blog as full-site everything is scaled perfectly. Header, images, … everything is displayed very nice + it adjusts very well when zooming. So the full site version works better then the mobile one on my phone.
PS: I was just testing and my wife’s blog doesn’t have this problem (bestamped.wordpress.com). If I view her blog on my phone the mobile theme scales everthing nicely. Strange.
Nov 6th at 11:00 am
Which Android device are you using?
Nov 6th at 1:52 am
Very disappointed in this new theme. Gone are the menu and share buttons. And when I clicked to view full site I now cannot find a link to go back to mobile. I’d like the option to return to the old theme please. This was a big step backward.
Nov 6th at 10:57 am
After clicking to the view the full site, there will be a ‘View Mobile Site’ link in the footer at the bottom.
Nov 6th at 5:44 am
Sharing Buttons are not showing on this theme, as those were shown on WPTouch in past.
Nov 6th at 6:01 am
Awesome! I was wondering why my blog looked different on my phone. Good job!
Nov 8th at 12:53 am
This is great! My only gripe is I have the background fixed on my blog but on the mobile version it scrolls. I would like it fixed on both because the scrolling away to no background further down looks messy. Can this be fixed?
Nov 8th at 2:36 am
I would like to have the option of using the old mobile theme (WPtouch?). It was more of a real mobile theme instead of the shrunk down version of the full site. Having the option for either the new or old theme would be nice. Thank you.
Nov 8th at 4:18 am
I love it! I check my blog from my phone often, and noticed the change a few days ago. It looks great!
Nov 10th at 12:00 am
Preferred the old version. The large amount of scrolling through each post is a PITA. If it did auto-excerpts that might work. But mass scrolling through (long) posts is a real shame and misses the point of a mobile theme IMO. A case of one step forward and two steps back it seems. Regrettable.