If you’ve visited the home page lately, you may have noticed something new: a Flagship Theme section, right at the top. The theme sitting there is Prismatic, and I want to share why I picked it.

What is Prismatic?

Prismatic is a clean, minimal, and modern theme for ClassicPress, perfect for blogs or personal sites. It features a two-column layout with a customizable sidebar and a focus on readability and content presentation. Like all of my themes, it’s free.

Why it’s the flagship

Out of every theme in the portfolio, Prismatic is the one that best shows what I want a theme to be: simple to set up, easy to read, and flexible enough to make your own.

• Made for ClassicPress. It requires ClassicPress 2.0 or later and PHP 7.4 or later, and it’s listed in the ClassicPress theme directory.
• Built on Backdrop. It’s built on the Backdrop framework, which gives it a solid foundation for templates, the Customizer, and more.
• Accessibility and translation ready. It’s built so everyone can use your site, and every string can be translated into your language.

What you can customize

Prismatic gives you a lot of control without writing any code:

• Layouts. Put the sidebar on the left or right, and use page templates like Showcase and Custom Sidebar for individual pages.
• Backgrounds. Pick a solid color, upload an image, or choose from dozens of built-in background patterns, and see the change instantly in the Customizer.
• Header. Add a custom header image and set your own header colors.
• Featured images, menus, and threaded comments, all styled to match the theme.

Kept up to date

Prismatic has had a big round of updates recently. It now builds its styles and scripts with Vite instead of Laravel Mix, runs on the latest Backdrop framework, includes a full translation template, and fixes a number of Customizer and settings page issues along the way. You can read every change in the changelog on GitHub.

Get Prismatic

• View the theme for features and screenshots.
• Read the documentation to install, customize, and extend it.
• Download it from the ClassicPress directory.
• Browse the code on GitHub, where issues and pull requests are always welcome.

If you build something with Prismatic, I’d love to see it!

People sometimes ask me why every Luthemes theme is made for ClassicPress. The short answer is that I believe in it, enough that I serve as one of its Directors. Here’s the longer answer.

Where I started

My journey into web development began in 2000. Like a lot of people, I found WordPress because it made building and customizing a website easy, and over the years I learned PHP, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript by building themes for it.

As WordPress moved toward blocks and the block editor, I realized that the kind of website I enjoy building, and the kind of themes I enjoy making, fit a different path. That path was ClassicPress.

What ClassicPress is

ClassicPress is a free, open-source content management system, forked from WordPress without the block editor. Its current major version, ClassicPress 2, was forked from WordPress 6.2, so it feels instantly familiar if you’ve used WordPress before. You write with the classic editor, your dashboard looks the way you remember, and most plugins and themes made for WordPress 6.2 or earlier generally work.

Why I build on it

Stability. I want the sites I build, and the themes I share, to keep working year after year. ClassicPress focuses on being stable and lightweight rather than chasing constant change. That means a theme I make today won’t need to be rebuilt next year.

Themes the way I like to build them. Without blocks, a theme is what it always was: PHP templates, styles, and the Customizer. That’s where I do my best work. It’s why my themes are built on the Backdrop framework, and why each one ships with options you can change without writing code.

Lightweight by design. Less going on under the hood means faster pages and fewer things to break. I carry that into my themes too. Several of them include settings to turn off things many sites don’t need, like emoji scripts and embeds.

A community with a voice. ClassicPress is community-led and run by the ClassicPress Initiative, a nonprofit. It’s built by volunteers who care about the same things its users do. You don’t have to be a big company to be heard, and that’s a big part of why I chose to get involved.

Why I serve as a Director

Using ClassicPress wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to help it grow. As a Director, I help shape where ClassicPress is going and keep it reliable for the people who depend on it, whether that’s a small business, a blogger, or a developer building sites for clients.

Building themes is part of that. Every theme I release is one more option for someone choosing ClassicPress, and one more sign that the platform is alive and well.

Try it for yourself

If you’re curious, give ClassicPress a try at classicpress.net. Then pick a theme from the portfolio. Prismatic is a great place to start. And if you have questions, the ClassicPress forums are a friendly place to ask.

Thanks for reading, and welcome to ClassicPress!