On October 6, 2021, WordPress gave users a sneak peek into the Twenty Twenty-two theme, which will be included in the WordPress 5.9 release in December 2021. The new theme, which wholly embraces Full Site Editing, is WordPress’s most flexible default theme.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
A First Look at Twenty Twenty-Two
Final Thoughts – A First Look at the WordPress Twenty Twenty-Two Theme
A First Look at Twenty Twenty-Two
On September 20, 2021, WordPress Executive Director Josepha Haden Chomphosy confirmed that the WordPress 5.9 release would include a new default theme – Twenty Twenty-Two.
WordPress 5.9 is the last major scheduled release for WordPress in 2021 and will continue to focus on WordPress’ goal of moving toward Full Site Editing.
The design and development team, led by Kjell Reigstad and Jeff Ong, respectively, are developing the theme on GitHub until they can ship it out with WordPress 5.9. Reigstad says the birds outside his window served as inspiration for Twenty Twenty-Two. He envisions the theme as light, reliable, resilient and a little playful like the birds.
So what’s new with Twenty Twenty-Two?
Built for Customization
Twenty Twenty-Two will offer a selection of six pre-designed color palettes, along with a range of alternate color schemes, fonts and image treatments – offering more combinations users can use to change the appearance of their website.
The theme is also expected to deliver a wide variety of patterns, adding to all the possibilities the theme enables. Reigstad says in the announcement,
“Twenty Twenty-Two will take advantage of a wide network of page templates, headers, footers and other patterns so that users can easily make the theme their own.”
Built on a Strong Foundation
In addition to the goal of making Twenty Twenty-Two the most flexible default WordPress theme, Reigstad also envisions making it a theme that evokes the reliability of the birds outside his window.
Reigstad shares, “While the birds’ exact behavior is unpredictable; they are remarkably reliable overall. The exact lineup changes somewhat, but every single morning there’s a group of birds eating breakfast with us.”
Twenty Twenty-two will be built on a solid foundation, using the lightweight Source Serif Pro font for its headlines, paired with sans-serif for support. Its selection of six pre-designed color palettes is inspired by nature.
Reigstad adds that the theme’s design choices are “intentionally subtle” and hopes that the theme will support your website “through many seasons.”
Built for Full Site Editing
Twenty Twenty-Two is WordPress’ fourth block-based theme since releasing Twenty Nineteen with WordPress 5.0.
The theme will be built for Full Site Editing first and will use as little CSS as possible. Instead, the development team aims to configure theme styles using theme.json and Global Styles, working with Gutenberg contributors to build design tools in the block editor.
A couple of paragraphs at the end of the Twenty Twenty-Two announcement implied that there might be more frequent theme releases following WordPress 5.9, which Reigstad confirmed in an interview with WPTavern.
“I hope these new tools allow us to create and release more frequently than we’ve been able to in the past,” said Reigstad.
Trying Out Twenty Twenty-Two
Initial feedback from the WordPress community has been generally positive overall. Users are excited about a theme that they can customize according to their needs.
Although Twenty Twenty-Two won’t be available until the WordPress 5.9 release on December 14, 2021, the team made the code available publicly on Github for developers that want to try it out. They are also releasing the theme’s first beta version on November 16.
Final Thoughts – A First Look at the WordPress Twenty Twenty-Two Theme
WordPress builds and releases its default themes so users can try the best features that come out during its latest releases.
Twenty Twenty-two incorporates Full Site Editing features and focuses on being a flexible theme that WordPress users can count on. It will be released alongside WordPress 5.9, the last major WordPress release of 2021, concluding the second phase of the Gutenberg project.
Which Twenty Twenty-two features are you most excited about? Let us know in the comments below or by tweeting @Bluehost.
