Nick Hamze has called for making WordPress themes exciting and the web weird again. “WordPress desperately needs your creativity, your weird ideas, your willingness to break the visual rules. The future of the web shouldn’t be a monochrome landscape of identical layouts.”, he said.
He believes there are plenty of good themes in the Repository but no great themes with “designs that break the mold and spark excitement.”
We need more themes that make people say “Wow!” or “That’s different!” rather than “That’s clean and professional.” The web needs more personality, more risk-taking, more fun.
According to him, great themes should:
Have a distinct point of view Embrace specific aesthetics boldly Design for specific use cases Break some rules thoughtfully
Hamze’s call comes amid growing uncertainty about the future of WordPress themes. While the repository now hosts over 13,000 free themes, recent community discussions have often cast a grim outlook.Some of the discussions/articles published on the fate of themes include:
The Theme Is Dead, Long Live the Theme WordPress Themes Are Dead The End of WordPress Themes is in Sight Will Page Builders & Full Site Editing Be the Death of WordPress Themes? Is WordPress Theme Business Dead? WordPress Themes Are Dead. Long Live WordPress Themes!
Vova Feldman of Freemius too recently highlighted the stagnation in the WordPress theme market: “The WordPress Theme Market is in big trouble! Over the past six years, the annual single-site pricing for themes has shown little to no growth. In fact, the average price has decreased by 9%, dropping from $55.78 in 2019 to $50.75 in 2024.”
Many will remember the excitement generated by the Ollie theme, but it faced pushback from the Theme Review team. Though Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden Chomphosy and Justin Tadlock supported the theme,