A couple of weeks ago, I pushed out an update to my WordPress theme Halle. I hadn't updated it in a long time, so it was overdue. WordPress had added a banner on the listing, warning that it had been more than 2 years since an update. It was still running just fine, but you know, tech industry and all.

I know that I'm "supposed" to test the theme with each major WordPress release and update the "Tested up to:" value on the theme, but I really don't have the time or energy to do that. Plus, nothing has broken so far? What's the point?

The main purpose of the update was to offer a new layout option for single posts. The original design had used a fixed sidebar, and so it really wasn't possible to use wide or full width blocks. I added the full width layout as an option that needs to be toggled on. It applies to all posts, so someone would need to commit to that layout on all existing and new posts.

Pushing out these updates, I questioned a lot, so I wanted to work through those a little.

Does anyone use the theme?

There isn't a way to know how many sites are actually making use of a theme from the official theme directory. It gives a public status of how many "active installations" there are. I don't have any additional information as the theme author, even if I log in.

Currently, Halle has "100+ active installations." I'm not really sure what to do with that information. What makes an installation "active?" Are any of those installations actually using the theme on a real site? As far as I can tell, no one is actually using the theme.

If there was a way to know exactly which sites were using the theme, it would be sort of overwhelming because I would want to look at them and see if there was anything that could be improved. In a way, it's nice to not know. Still, it feels a bit like a shot in the dark to push out an update.

Theme screenshots

As part of the update, I wanted to add some additional screenshots to the theme. With the new post layout option, I thought that it would be nice to show the two layouts, to give a visual comparison. This doesn't appear to be available to themes anymore? I'm questioning if it was ever an option. I tried to find information about how to do it, but everything was older. I tried to find where this option was removed, but couldn't find anything. It's possible that I confused this with plugin screenshots, which are still an option.

It seems like additional screenshots would be really useful for a theme. The "live preview" that the theme directory offers is really disappointing, so there's hardly a way to know what a theme will look like without installing it first.

Converting to a block theme

Halle is technically a "classic" theme now (still annoyed at this). It makes me wonder if there's a way to convert it to a block theme. There doesn't appear to be a way to do this at the moment. The theme relies on some settings in the Customizer, which wouldn't transfer. So, if someone installed the "block theme" update, they'd need to set everything up again.

Additionally, if I were to convert it to a block theme, I'm not sure what the advantage would be to the end user. They would have slightly more flexibility in the header of the theme. Doing this would be much more complex than what is there, and I'm not sure there'd be any payoff. The footer is already very flexible. It makes use of a sidebar area, so it's using blocks already.

So, does this mean that classic themes should just be left for dead? Should I abandon the project at this point? Do I just have to start over, and submit a new block theme? Has this whole thing been for nothing?

I learned a lot from making a theme for the official repository, but it's really disappointing and I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone else.