WordPress 4.4 will see a brand new default theme; that’s right, today is time to meet Twenty Sixteen! The process of selecting the Twenty Sixteen theme was a long one, taking several months. Lots of themes were considered, eventually settling on the one you see below. It’s a perfect fit!

Twenty Sixteen features a new, never-released design that has some really unique touches on a traditional blogblog (versus network, site) layout. It adapts well to different devices and is a joy to use.

Twenty Sixteen is a modernised approach of an ever-popular layout — a horizontal masthead and an optional right sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. that works well with both blogs and websites. It has custom color options that allow you to make your own Twenty Sixteen. The theme was designed on a harmonious fluid grid with a mobile first approach. This means it looks great on any device.

– @iamtakashi

Let’s take a look at more!

We have the pleasure of welcoming back Takashi Irie as the designer of Twenty Sixteen. This year, the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team developing our new default theme will be myself and @iamtakashi — and you! We hope you can join us in getting Twenty Sixteen out to the world. Along with us, @iandstewart and @samuelsidler will be making sure the ship stays on course and giving us their wisdom as we charter the default theme seas.

How can you get involved?

There will be weekly meetings every Monday and Friday 16:00 UTC in #core-themes for half an hour. These weekly meetings will start once the theme has initially landed in core. If you are interested in contributing, subscribe to this blog (if you haven’t already), and leave your name in the comments. Once we’re ready, we will give everyone a pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” and we’ll let you know on this blog too.

Want to know more about default themes?

There are some great links where you can find out more about past default themes.

The road to releasing a new default theme is long, but we’re already well on our way! The next step is to commit the initial code to core. From there, we will begin testing and patching. We hope you join in the adventure of releasing Twenty Sixteen.