I'm trying out a new logic for the home page. Instead of using infinite scroll to eventually show all posts, we're showing only the posts for the current and previous month, just like Scripting News. We don't link to anything older, since old news is no longer news, and good older posts will have links from elsewhere. 

There will be an option to show the traditional  WordPress pagination links to older posts for those who prefer that behavior.

I got a mail from WordPress today announcing their AI website building. Having just built a (very basic) theme for WordPress, I decided to take it for a spin.

The first blurb on the entry page is "This is way better than Wix." So we see who their target audience is. 

I told the prompt that I wanted a blog to feature my own writing, ranging from tweet-like short posts to a few paragraphs, on daily life and current events from an American living in Europe. It crashed once, but it sent me a mail with a link to resume working on the site.

After it was done with my prompts, it put me in the WordPress Site Editor and asked me to choose fonts, colors, and a basic layout. It won't let me out of the Site Editor until I upgrade to a paid site.  

The text is soulless AI, really hung up on Europe. But it looks like a working theme that I could start out with if I were looking to make a site like this. I would give it the Midwestern compliment "it's not too bad".

We've just packaged v0.1.2 of the Baseline theme, which adds support for featured images (here's an example). The installation instructions are here.

Our next goal is to get the theme accepted into the WordPress.org theme directory. That will make it a lot easier to install on self-hosted sites, and and is a prerequisite to getting the theme approved for WordPress.com. 

While not strictly necessary for acceptance, in that process we'll be converting Baseline to a block theme. We want to be certain Baseline is compatible with future versions of WordPress, and a block theme will help ensure that.

This is a post with a featured image. We've just added support for featured images, and we're putting it at the top of the post constrained to the width of the post body.

A test post never comes alone. They generally come in twos or threes or even as a crowd!

For WordPress.com sites

You must have a business plan at WordPress.com in order to install Baseline.

1. Download this file.
2. In the dashboard of your site go to Appearance > Themes.
3. If there is a button that says "Install new theme" click it. (The button is only there for business users.)
4. Choose the zip file you just downloaded, and Install Now.
5. The page "Installing theme from uploaded file" should appear. Clicking "Activate" will activate the theme.

For self-hosted sites

1. Download this file.
2. In the dashboard of your site go to Appearance > Themes.
3. Click the "Add Theme" button, then the "Upload Theme" button.
4. Choose the zip file you just downloaded, and Install Now.
5. The page "Installing theme from uploaded file" should appear. Clicking "Activate" will activate the theme.

The source code for the theme is available at GitHub.

We're trying out smaller post titles on the home page. These are now 25px, as opposed to 32px on the single post page. 

Block quotes are supported by WordLand, but didn't yet have a style.

This is now a block quote with a style.

And here is some text after the block quote.

My answers to the questions from May 4, 2025:

1. As I understand it, with a Business plan on wordpress.com you can install any third-party theme. 
2. Looking at the WordLand timeline, every post has a headline of author name and date, whether there is a title or not. That looks more balanced that simply having no headline for titleless posts.
3. I think that whether WordLand can add CSS to a site or a post depends on the WordPress.com REST API. At first glance I don't see anything about styles. On a self-hosted site it would be possible to extend the API to accept CSS (ChatGPT), but would WordLand to access that over wordpress.com?
4. OK
5. OK, we can try that
6. OK

Other problems I've noticed

1. Block quotes are not styled properly (they are indented, but no line to the left).
2. On the home page for untitled posts, there is no link to the story page for the post.
3. Bold italics were not working, but do now (fonts issue).
4. Inline code markup like this  isn't very distinguishable from normal text (issue on GitHub).

Here is a test post with an image 1600 pixels wide.

I've applied the single column layout proposed by Christy Nyiri. I personally think it looks fantastic. 

Here are some WordLand styles.

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

This is a block quote. (This doesn't seem to be styled yet.)

Bold, italics, underlined (hmm, it's not underlined). 

An ordered shopping list:

1. Bread
2. Milk
3. Eggs

Notes as an unordered list:

•  The next/previous links have returned to the WordPress default instead of large arrows only. Update: That was my bug, now fixed.
• As Christy noted, the child elements of the Post Template block are a little weird at inheriting global padding, as evidenced on mobile.
• Are H1 and H2 way too big? Update I've bumped down the font-sizes of H1 to H3 to large, medium, and normal. H1 now matches the size of the post title, and H3 matches the size of normal paragraph text.

Here's a paragraph that appears under the unordered list.