The Ollie block theme is now available on WordPress.org!

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been working through the review to get this theme approved at WordPress.org. And as of this morning, Ollie is now available on the official directory! 🥳

Pattern, Abstract, Modern, Curves, Shapes, Solid, Composition, Minimal, Minimalistic

For the past several months, we’ve been building and testing the Ollie WordPress block theme in public. Anyone can download it or poke through the code by checking it out on Github. Although this has been a great place for initial development and gathering feedback, Ollie is now stable and ready for a wider audience!

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been working through the review to get this theme approved at WordPress.org. And as of this morning, Ollie is now available on the official directory! 🥳

How to install Ollie

ollie-beta

There are now a few ways to get Ollie on your site to start building pixel-perfect websites with modern WordPress. The easiest way is to simply install Ollie from within your WordPress site. Go to Appearance → Themes → Add New and search for “Ollie” to install the theme.

You can also still download Ollie from Github and follow along with the development there.

There’s one small hiccup…

So yeah, about the Ollie onboarding wizard. This feature was something that Patrick and I worked really hard on, and a lot of people really loved it! Unfortunately, over the course of the theme review at WordPress.org, we had to remove it from the theme. 🫠

The debate over whether it should be allowed or not set off a community-wide discussion on aging guidelines, expectations and precedents, stagnant block theme adoption, and a host of other topics! It was… interesting (and overall valuable)! There were a few articles written about it on WPTavern, and I also posted a conclusive video update on the matter a few days ago.

Click to watch the video update

In a surprising twist of events, WordPress leadership actually wanted to give it a shot as an experiment! While it was awesome to see that kind of support, by this point it had become clear that it was too controversial to try this right now.

There were valid concerns that without a system or understanding in place at the directory level, this could set a precedent with unknown outcomes and potentially burden volunteers with longer theme review queues. We don’t want that, and the idea that a feature of Ollie would burden anyone is the antithesis of our aim of helping users through this exciting era of modern WordPress.

Instead, we’re working on a way of adding the onboarding (and some of the other great features) back to the Ollie experience via a plugin. This way, we can deliver our original vision, free of constraints.

The idea that a feature of Ollie would burden anyone is the antithesis of our aim of helping users through this exciting era of modern WordPress.

Unfortunately, the review queue at WordPress.org is quite long, and it could be months before we see the plugin hosted there. In the short term, we’ll have the plugin available on Github and here on the Ollie site. Not ideal, but better than nothing!

The Ollie theme is just the start

The Ollie theme is just a small part of the Ollie experience we have planned for the coming months. Now that we’ve got this foundation, we can continue crafting our pro product suite that is going to break down so many barriers in WordPress and improve the way we build modern WordPress websites. I can’t wait to share more soon!

Until then, go ahead and check out Ollie and let us know what you think. We’d love to hear your feedback on how we can make this thing better than ever.

12 responses to “The Ollie block theme is now available on WordPress.org!”

  1. Peter Müller Avatar

    Thanx a million for the theme. It is worth checking out on its own without the legendary onboarding wizard.

    The patterns alone are worth examining to understand how to layout with the block editor.

    1. Mike McAlister Avatar

      Glad to here it, Peter! 😎

  2. Alex de Borba Avatar

    Given the challenges and disagreements you have faced, as well as the need to remove certain features from the theme, we have chosen not to submit our forthcoming theme to the Themes directory. Instead, we will release two versions: a free version and a PRO version.

    We believe an onboarding plugin is not required, so we will include the onboarding features exclusively in the PRO version. We will also handle the distribution of both versions ourselves, as we find the submission process for free themes to be less than developer-friendly.

    I suspect that numerous developers aiming to innovate within FSE themes might adopt a similar strategy to ours. Regardless, I wish Ollie all the best and am eager to see its evolution.

    1. Mike McAlister Avatar

      Thanks, Alex! We’re cautiously optimistic and trying to keep an open mind as we figure out what’s next. We have a few things in the works, which will hopefully bring back some of that extra magic that people love about Ollie.

  3. Glen Avatar

    Glad to see it listed. I think onboarding as a plugin is the right move and could prove to be a blessing in disguise. As it could become the go to plugin for onboarding for block themes across the board.

  4. John @ WPjob.dev Avatar

    Love the WordPress.org release.

    Any timeline on the PRO version?

    Anyway, love your theme.

    1. Mike McAlister Avatar

      No official timeline solidified yet, but we do have a few Ollie Pro features already complete and more in development. Be sure to hop on the newsletter to get notified when we go live! https://olliewp.com/subscribe/

  5. anisur Avatar

    Please add the plugin to Ollie download page. If possible, give a notice within the theme to download and install the plugin manually.

  6. chae Avatar
    chae

    Just downloaded ollie exclusively because of Onboarding Setup Wizard. As a newbie, I have no idea how to move forward building ready-made pages the wizard used.

    Any videos or help to build out pages of new WP site? I could really use the help.

    Better yet, the step-by-step process on using Ollie would actually be better LOL!!!

    Thanks,
    Chae

    1. Mike McAlister Avatar

      Hi there, I have some examples of how to create pages with patterns in this video: https://youtu.be/U-syrjB58j8?t=163 You can find more videos on the site editor and building with Ollie on the YouTube channel!

      Perhaps we’ll do a step by step guide next.

  7. kan Avatar
    kan

    Hi – thanks, nice theme patterns, very useful! I had the wp 2023 theme installed before and converted it over pretty quickly. One thing i noticed was the custom filters were disabled… Why! It took me a while and i found a “false” setting in the theme.json file and set it to “true”. I was wondering what else is disabled in this theme? I guess i am going to have to use a child theme in future. – cheers

    1. Mike McAlister Avatar

      Hi there, this limitation on custom duotones has been fixed in the latest update!

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