Damn! How time flies! It’s hard to believe but the new Twenty Twenty-Four WordPress theme is already in development. It’s not just for the sake of having a new default theme, it’s also planned for the next release of WordPress 6.24. It’s always interesting to explore each WP theme released: Twenty Twenty, Twenty Twenty-One, Twenty-Twenty-Two…etc. Let’s have a quick peek…
Twenty Twenty-Four
Twenty Twenty-Four is going to be built as a block theme. The goal for this new default theme is to include as little CSS as possible. The theme development team will work closely with Gutenberg contributors to build design tools in the block editor that enable this goal.
Theme Development
As WordPress has noted in its introduction, Twenty Twenty-Four will be part of the upcoming 6.4 release. Maggie Cabrera and Jessica Lyschik are leading development for this newer addition to the WordPress realm.
Twenty Twenty-Four Concept
According to the WordPress blog introduction, the idea behind Twenty Twenty-Four is to make a default theme that can be used on any type of site.
Based on what they are stating:
- One more tailored for entrepreneurs and small businesses;
- One tailored for photographers and artists;
- and one specifically tailored for writers and bloggers.
I’m not sure how this will easily be accomplished because there are so many types of websites out there. This will be interesting to try out with the final version.
As usual, we are seeing each release of WordPress default themes with a glimpse and taste of the future of WordPress themes.
My Preliminary Exploratory Moment
WordPress 6.4 isn’t readily available at the time of writing this article, but I did install a localized 6.3. I put Twenty Twenty-Four in and instantly noticed a lot of change when it came to the new interface for page editing.
I refrained from loading in additional plugins, with the exception of a Lorem Ipsum plugin–just so I could create some fast posts.
I respect WordPress wanting to go this route, but I have to say that the typical end-user who uses Classic WordPress is going to wonder if this is even WordPress. I don’t believe it will be a shock to “new” users who embark on trying WordPress for the first time; they won’t know what the Classic version was like.
It’s a whole new platform; the old classic version is no longer.
Opinion – Direction of WordPress?
I’m curious what your opinion is on the direction WordPress is going…comment below. The complete change in how content is created, the block editor, full site editing (FSE), and possibly the end of WordPress themes (in the coming future).