What is a Block Theme in WordPress? Featured 7 Block Themes

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What is a WordPress Block Theme, its functions, folder structure and benefits. It also explains how to find a block theme and introduces seven recommended block themes.

What is a Block Theme?

A block theme is a block-based theme that supports Full Site Editing (FSE), which will be introduced in WordPress 5.9.

You can customize everything on your site, including the header and footer, without having to edit any code.

For WordPress versions prior to 5.9, both the Block Theme and the Gutenberg plugin are required to enable full site editing.

Block Theme Features

The block theme includes the following five features

When you activate the block theme, you will see the Editor (Beta) section.

Site Editor

You can set all the Styles (Typography, Colors, Layout) of your site.

Styles

You can edit or add new Templates for home, archive, etc.

Templates

You can edit or add new Template Parts such as headers and footers.

Template Parts

You can use useful Theme Blocks such as query loops and navigation.

Theme Block

Block Theme and Classic Theme

Themes that support full site editing are called Block Theme and traditional themes are called Classic Theme.

It can also be used as both a customizer and a site editor, or as a classic theme with theme.json support.

Block Theme Folder Structure

The folder structure of a block theme looks like this (for Twenty Twenty-Two).

It has the above characteristics.

twentytwentytwo/
 ├ style.css
 ├ theme.json
 ├ index.php
 ├ functions.php
 ├ templates/
 │ ├ index.html
 │ ├ single.html
  │  ├ archive.html
  │  └ ...
  │ 
 └ parts/
      ├ header.html
      ├ footer.html
      └ ...

Benefits of the Block Theme

The block theme offers the following benefits in terms of page loading speed (performance)

Using theme.json reduces the amount of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) code used by the theme.

Multiple style sheets can be registered for each block, so you can load the necessary CSS according to the blocks contained in the page.

How to find a Block Theme

Block themes are registered in the official WordPress theme directory. You can narrow down the block themes by applying a filter in the “Full Site Editing”.

Currently, there are 39 block themes registered.

WordPress theme directory

Featured 7 Block Themes

Twenty Twenty-Two

Twenty Twenty-Two is the default theme introduced in WordPress 5.9. It is the first block theme as a default theme.

Twenty Twenty-Two

Below are the block themes with the highest number of active installs in the official WordPress theme directory.

Aino

Aino

Zoologist

This is a child theme of Blockbase.

Zoologist

Tove

Tove

Blockbase

Blockbase

emulsion

emulsion

Quadrat

This is a child theme of Blockbase.

Quadrat
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