7 Features of the Twenty Twenty-Three WordPress Theme You Need to Know

The Twenty Twenty-Three theme is the new default WordPress theme and offers a wide range of features that make it an excellent choice for creating your website.

That’s why today, we’ll be discussing the various features of this theme. From its minimalist design to its fluid typography to its style variations, this new default option is one you’re not going to want to skip out on.

Twenty Twenty-Three WordPress Theme Features at a Glance

Typefaces and Fluid Typography

Templates & Template Parts

Global Styles & Style Variations

1. Minimalist Design

The Twenty Twenty-Three theme has a minimalist design that allows you to build on it and create a clean and simple website without any unnecessary elements. The lack of images or additional functionality makes it easy to create a professional-looking site with minimal effort.

2. Page Layouts

The Twenty Twenty-Three theme offers several page layouts that allow you to customize your site with ease. You can choose from one-, two-, three-, or four-column layouts depending on your needs. You can also choose to display a custom header or footer on every page of your site.

If you’re looking for a straightforward, lightweight theme to enhance your site’s usability and aesthetics, Twenty Twenty-Three is admittedly a solid choice. The most recent iteration of WordPress’ default theme has been pared down to its bare essentials to seamlessly integrate Gutenberg’s innovative features, including Template Editing, Global Styles Variations and Fluid Typography as well as Block Patterns.

With its versatility and modern feel, this no-frills framework will be sure to keep up with all of your changing needs.

As mentioned previously, it’s hard not to feature an image from this theme that isn’t fully minimal in its presentation and style. We’re talking truly bare bones, here.

3. Page Styles

The Twenty Twenty-Three theme also includes several page styles that allow you to customize how your site looks even further.

Although Twenty Twenty-Three is a simpler version of its predecessor, it does offer some distinct changes. The heading size has been made smaller and the traditional serif font swapped for an alternative sans serif typeface. These alterations create a sleek look that reflects modern trends in web design.

You can choose from different background colors and patterns as well as font sizes and colors. Additionally, you can also add custom CSS code if needed.

But the flagship feature of Twenty Twenty-Three is its range of style variations, which include ten distinct combinations made up of bright colors and various font families and sizes. We’ll talk more about that in its own dedicated section in just a bit. But first, let’s dive into the new default color scheme.

4. Color Options

The Twenty Twenty-Three theme comes with several color options that allow you to customize the look of your website even further. You can choose from a variety of preset colors or create your own custom color palette for a unique look.

Additionally, you can also adjust the opacity of each color for more control over how they appear on your site.

The new default color palette looks like this:

It’s bright, yet subdued, and perfectly suitable for many scenarios to use straight out of the box.

5. Typefaces and Fluid Typography

Typography plays a crucial role in constructing an attractive minimal theme like Twenty-Three, as it can impact how readable and inviting the text appears. To further this notion, Twenty-Twenty Three integrates custom font families with WordPress 6.1’s Fluid Typography feature to guarantee visitors have a delightful experience no matter which device or screen size they use.

The Twenty Twenty-Three theme includes several typefaces included by default. They are as follows:

Enhanced support for fluid typography is provided by the typography.fluid setting, while you can set the minimum and maximum font size value with typography.

Twenty-Three offers a groundbreaking feature: fluid spacing––an innovation that was impossible to implement on WordPress prior to version 6.1, and could previously only be tailored inside of the editor itself. Thanks to Fluid Typography, this powerful tool can now be used by any user with ease. This meant that you should keep spacing settings when transferring to a different theme.

6. Templates & Template Parts

The new default theme includes several templates and template parts that make it easy to quickly build out pages on your site without having to start from scratch each time. These templates are designed with best practices in mind so they are optimized for both performance and usability. Plus, they’re fully customizable so you can make them fit whatever style or design aesthetic you have in mind for your site.

Upon launching the Site Editor within Twenty Twenty-Three on your website, you’ll quickly take note of the varied template offerings that include eleven templates and four template parts.

The templates are as follows:

404
Archive
Blank
Blog (Alternative)
Home
Index
Page
Search
Single
With Cover Block
With Featured Image
And the template parts are:
Comments
Header
Footer
Post Meta

Finally, there are custom templates included as well, and those are as follows:

Blank
Blog (Alternative)
404
With Featured Image
With Cover Block

And with all these templates and template parts, you can really put them to work with the multitude of style variations.

7. Global Styles & Style Variations

The Twenty Twenty Three theme also includes global styles which allow you to apply certain styling elements across all pages on your site at once instead of having to manually adjust them each time. There are also style variations which let you quickly switch between different looks for specific pages or sections on your site with just one click.

Since the release of WordPress 6.0, theme authors can now provide several styles with their themes that users can switch between without changing the overall look and feel of the website. The Twenty Twenty-Three theme introduces a game-changing feature with its ten distinct style combinations for users to pick from. This powerful capability is showcased in the default theme and provides an unprecedented level of choice.

You can get to the Style Variations included by going to the Global Style interface of your Site Editor. This interface allows you to do all of the following and more:

Create a new look for your website by switching to the global style from the Browse styles panel.
Create a unique look for certain components
Arrange the main content section to your specifications.
Bring more character to your website with custom typography settings - from text, links and headings to buttons.
Personalize the color scheme of your project or customize individual components to achieve a one-of-a-kind look.

What makes the inclusion of style variations so special this time around is just how involved the WordPress community was in their conception. There were 38 different submissions for the style variations and 10 were ultimately chosen.

Here’s a look at each of those 10 style variations in more detail:

1. Pitch

Pitch is an eye-catching dark theme that uses the sophisticated Inter font family -- one of the new ones included with Twenty Twenty-Three.

2. Canary

This variation has an aesthetically-pleasing design with its singular font size, narrow column widths and mesmerizing border radius. This combination makes the design truly unique.

3. Electric

Electric infuses a vibrant and daring palette with its typography, adding greater visual interest than what you’d expect.

4. Pilgrimage

This one stands out among the rest as an alluring dark rendition of the original version of the theme. It features a cool gradient effect across the background.

5. Marigold

Marigold is a tender and delightful take on this theme’s classic look. The color palette is highly appealing as well.

6. Block-Out

This style variation adds an amazing two-tone effect to images, transforming them immediately into something more. This variation could easily reused for those looking for a more artsy style.

7. Pumpkin Spice

And then there’s Pumpkin Spice, which proudly displays a range of custom components, from the page’s distinct border to the unique button designs and underlined links.

8. Sherbet

Sherbet is a delight for the eyes, boasting an array of vibrant and cheerful hues and definitely lives up to its name.

9. Aubergine

Here is another style variation that offers a darker color scheme, but this time instead of gray tones, it relies on plum and it accented with a lovely color shade that really gives it some personality.

10. Grapes

And last but not least is Grapes, which was carefully selected due to its subdued combination of colors and typefaces that made the overall design visually appealing and truly multi-purpose.

With 10 style variations in the Twenty Twenty-Three theme, WordPress users have tremendous flexibility to customize their websites and make them stand out even more. Each of these variations provides a unique look and feel that can be tailored to the user’s exact needs, giving them immense control over their websites with just one click.

The style variations are an amazing addition to the Twenty Twenty-Three theme, and they certainly provide WordPress users with the opportunity to create a website that is uniquely suited to their needs.

Learn More About WordPress Themes

If you’re interested in learning more about Gutenberg, blocks, themes, and all things WordPress, check out some of our previous tutorials on the subject:

Go Premium with Envato Elements

If you have more complex needs than what the default WordPress theme can provide, then you should check out Envato Elements. It’s a premium subscription service offering thousands of digital assets including WordPress themes, plugins, photos, fonts, and more.

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Will You Give the Twenty Twenty-Three WordPress Theme a Try?

Now that you’re acquainted with the new default WordPress theme, Twenty Twenty-Three, you may want to give it a try. After all, it’s very literally laying the foundation for WordPress has to offer for 2023 and beyond.