Testing the WordLand Baseline Theme
Category: Baseline
June 5, 2025 by Scott Hanson

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.

May 20, 2025 by Scott Hanson

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.

May 13, 2025 by Scott Hanson

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.

May 6, 2025 by Scott Hanson

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).
April 26, 2025 by Scott Hanson

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.

April 23, 2025 by Dave Winer

Scott, a discussion on the support repo about whether we should have H4 in the popup menu led me to consider an option I had been thinking about in the background — letting the user configure the contents of that menu. It's basically a list of names, chosen from these:

bold, italic, underline, anchor, h1, h2, h3, quote, unorderedlist, orderedlist, pre, removeFormat, justifyLeft, justifyCenter, justifyRight, justifyFull, indent, outdent

They all seem to work. Special provisions need to be made in the baseline site for h1, h2, and h3, esp h3.

h3 should be the same font-size and line-height as a paragraph, but boldface. 

It's the best way to add a headline to writing in wordland. Imho any other size starts getting into MySpace territory.

Last update: 6/6/25; 3:14:36 PM.