Switching WordPress Theme from 2019 to 2021

I love WordPress.org made themes. They’re simple. They don’t cost a thing, and they’re easy has heck to update.

Background on the theme update:

I started out this site on BlogSpot, as oakfive.com. After realizing the limitations of BlogSpot, especially no SSL on custom domains, I moved on to WordPress.com. WordPress.com, is the sister, for-profit version of WordPress.org. I started with a fancy, premium theme, which was included in the package I sign-upped for.

After a year on WordPress.com, and realizing the $12/month hosting was much more expensive than self-hosting, I decided to switch to a self-hosted version of WordPress. (Read more about my switch from WordPress.com to WordPress.org in this article). With the switch, I was losing my premium theme, or at least I’d have to pay for it if I wanted to keep it. It was something like $60/year.

Not wanting to spend this money. I decided to give native, wordpress.org build themes a try. I started on the twenty sixteen theme, later switched to the 2019 theme, and am just now updating to the the twenty twenty-one theme, bypassing the twenty twenty theme.

This site is now officially on the twenty twenty-one theme.

What I love about this WordPress theme

• Switching a piece of cake (This may not be the case for you, so be sure to backup your site before making any major changes. Personally I use the free version of the updraft plus plugin for automatic site backups) The only thing needed was to install the new theme, go through the settings, tidy it up a bit, and boom, new theme! I think it looks great.
• The them looks great! 🤩 Simplicity is the name of the game with wordpress.org themes. This simplicity, especially the use of empty space makes these themes push my content forward and helps eliminate distractions.
• It’s Free! Free is a major plus for me.
• Piece of mind – The people at wordpress.org bring passion and thoughtfulness to what they do. See the bullets above. I’m confident in their work, and I also know that when I go to update to the WordPress.org Twenty Twenty-Two or Twenty Twenty-Three theme, that the transition will likely be as easy as this one.

The downsides of the Twenty Twenty-One WordPress Theme

Several of my WordPress site plugins have not been updated for this theme yet, since it’s so new. This has led to some odd formatting issues in places, primarily on desktop. My beloved “Posts Modified Date” plugin hasn’t been updated for the 2021 theme yet, and it aligns left on desktop, outside of my content column. You may even see this on this article. The same thing appears to be happening to embedded YouTube videos.

Some of the white spacing, in areas I can’t seem to access without going into the CSS, is a bit big for my liking.

All this said, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this theme, and the wordpress.org team’s willingness to provide great themes like this for free. It’s truly made managing my own, self-hosted WordPress blog easier, delightful even. I’m not stressing about updates, design, or functionality. I feel like they have my back, which allows me to focus on my writing.

I hope you found this review of the WordPress.org 2021 theme helpful. If you did, please share this article 🙏, comment, and visit the ‘support this site‘ page for painfully easy win-win ways to support this site.

Thank you.

-Nate

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