Through HealthPress.io, his Automattic partner agency, he has been building the digital infrastructure for a growing European lifestyle medicine community, bringing together experts such as Professor Godfrey Grech and Dr. Ioan Hanes.

Building a lifestyle medicine platform that runs while you care

What that community has built is striking. 

• Godfrey’s clinic-based wellness programs started in Malta and now run across three private hospitals, with partners in Barcelona, Madrid, the UK, and Dubai.

• Ioan’s European Lifestyle Medicine certificate, the only one of its kind in Europe, has completed 17 sessions with 600+ students from 60 countries. This September, the whole community comes together in Brussels for its yearly event.

All of it runs on WordPress.com.

Without the automation and the platforms we use today, we couldn’t do this.

Prof. Godfrey Grech

Building for people who are not developers

Godfrey is an academic professor, and Ioan is a physician, vice-president of the European Lifestyle Medicine Organisation. Their time goes into patients, research, and education. 

HealthPress built platforms that they could actually hand off to non-technical users.

Godfrey’s patient management system at InvestInYour.Health runs on WordPress with Groundhogg.io, handling automated follow-ups, program pipelines, and compliance tracking across multiple clinics. 

Ioan’s course platform at eulmcertificate.com runs on WordPress with LifterLMS, delivering 10 weeks of curriculum across devices, in a format students from 60 countries can access easily.

It really delivered a modern experience for us educationally, technologically.

Dr. Ioan Hanes

Joining Automattic for Agencies

Bela attended his first WordCamp Europe in 2024 and decided to join Automattic for Agencies.

For him, the decision was straightforward. 

He had been running client sites across different hosting providers for years. Consolidating everything on WordPress.com, under the program built by the people who own the technology, made sense for the long term.

It’s best to stick with the founders of WordPress. In the long run, that gives you confidence.

Bela Grundmann, HealthPress

He is now an official Automattic partner. Every client site HealthPress manages runs on WordPress.com.

What comes next

Godfrey is launching a course in June to teach other clinicians how to set up their own lifestyle medicine programs.

Ioan’s Brussels event, 10-12 September 2026, will run on the platform for the first time, combining the in-person experience with digital access for those who can’t attend.

For Bela, the vision is 500 lifestyle medicine professionals on the platform. 

One million people reached through them. A solo agency, growing without limits, because the infrastructure scales with it.

It started with a one-eyed cat named One-Eye at the barn where Murphy took horseback riding lessons. One-Eye was two years old, missing an eye, and on her third litter of kittens. 

Murphy and her riding trainer Logan trapped the kittens, got them veterinary care, and found them all homes.

That was the spark. They kept going.

Today, Hidden Gem Animal Rescue is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit operating across Connecticut and the Northeast, rescuing dogs and cats, running on a network of foster families, and taking cases from as far as Texas and North Carolina. 

Since Murphy started working with WordPress.com around three years ago, the rescue has helped over 100 animals, roughly doubling their previous pace.

What the website changed

Before the website, Hidden Gem had a presence on Instagram and Facebook, but no central place to send people. Her website, developed by the Automattic Special Projects team and hosted on WordPress.com changed that.

I honestly don’t know what my website would look like without you guys. It just looks so incredible.

Anyone who sees a post and wants to learn more can follow the link, understand how the rescue works, and take action right there. Whether that means applying to foster, filling out an adoption application, or making a donation.

It really just became easier for people. And it’s always better when it’s easier for people because they’re more likely to actually take their time to look at it.

Donations in particular became more seamless. The website added a proper donation platform alongside Venmo, giving supporters more ways to give and making the rescue look more like the legitimate organization it had become.

The website makes it look more professional. And people can look at all the cute animals and think, oh, this is something I want to donate to.

It’s been really seamless. I’ve really been able to figure it out and make the updates I want to make.

Murphy also used Blaze Ads to run advertisements for their available animals, bringing in a new wave of traffic and visibility for the rescue.

What’s next for Hidden Gem Animal Rescue 

Murphy is already thinking about what comes next for the rescue. 

The goal is to find a physical location, keep building the rescue’s profile and systems, and make the whole experience easier for everyone involved — volunteers, fosters, and adopters.

The website will be central to all of it.

It gains traction and lets people interact with us. It really helps us build our image.

Your story deserves a home, too

Murphy runs a nonprofit, manages social media, and updates a website while finishing high school. 

WordPress.com gave her a professional platform she could grow into, with the tools to manage it as the project evolved.

Whether you’re just getting started or ready to take things to the next level, WordPress.com gives you everything you need to build a site that works as hard as you do.

Before we get into the highlights, a massive thank you to the organizers, volunteers, and speakers who made this happen. Attendees came from right here in Mumbai, across India, and around the globe.

Contributor Day kicked things off

If you’ve never heard of Contributor Day, it’s exactly what it sounds like — people sit down together and contribute to the open-source WordPress project. Code, documentation, translations, community planning, and more.

The magic isn’t just the work that gets done. It’s the connections. New contributors sat alongside people who’ve worked on WordPress core for over a decade. Ideas got shared. Friendships started and renewed. This is where WordPress’s “extended family” energy comes from. Find the full official recap post here.

Sessions worth your time

After contributor day, we held two full days of talks that covered everything from enterprise scaling to cross-border payments. You can watch every session on YouTube. Here are a few we attended and want to spotlight.

Education initiatives in the WordPress ecosystem

A dedicated panel covered WordPress Education — the growing effort to bring WordPress directly to students through campus events, student clubs, and a credits program that partners with universities to integrate WordPress into their curriculum. Real-world, hands-on open source experience for the next generation of web creators.

The Speed Build Challenge

Moderated by our own Jamie Marsland, this one packed the room. Ajay Maurya and Craig Gomes went head-to-head — one using AI, one going fully old-school — with 30 minutes to rebuild a complete site using only the Full Site Editor. No page builders, no custom code. There was no clear winner, which made it even more fun.

Danny Sullivan at the Google booth

Danny Sullivan is a Google Search Director and one of the most well-known voices in SEO. He was right there live at the Google booth, giving 1:1 advice to WordPress folks in person. While this wasn’t an official session on the schedule, it is the kind of thing that only happens at a WordCamp.

We heard him share that the same long-standing principles of quality content for good SEO still apply in today’s AI world. But it’s even more important now to have a strong point of view, a distinct voice, or a unique position. Without that, you’re just creating commodity content, which is less likely to be cited or used by LLMs. Content remains king. 

Mary Hubbard’s magic wand 

Mary Hubbard, Executive Director of WordPress, was asked what one surprising thing she’d change about WordPress if she had a magic wand. Her answer was to improve the WordPress.org plugin directory by treating it as a product and less like infrastructure. A lot of heads nodded at that one, and we look forward to helping make that vision a reality. 

AI was everywhere 

No surprise, but AI came up often throughout the conference. Including a talk from Nirav Mehta, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur. His Lost & Found in AI Wonderland session was a walkthrough of what actually worked (and what didn’t) when his team tried to apply AI across development, marketing, and operations.

Nirav reminded us that like a hammer, AI is only a tool. When you hold a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. AI may not always be the right tool for the job. In a time full of AI excitement, that kind of honesty was refreshing.

What WordPress.com brought to Mumbai

The WordPress.com team showed up strong with a few things to share, and the conversations at our booth didn’t stop all week.

Plugins and themes on every paid plan. We made sure everyone knew: you can now install plugins and themes on all WordPress.com paid plans. Developers and agencies who build on WordPress every day loved hearing about the flexibility this means for pricing and features on our hosting platform.

A new WordPress agent on Telegram. We showed off a brand new Open-Claw-inspired WordPress agent you can chat with directly from Telegram — with WhatsApp and more platforms coming soon. The idea of managing every aspect of your WordPress site through a conversation on your phone sparked a lot of “wait, what if…” moments at the booth. More on this soon!

Your feedback is heard. Beyond the demos, we spent a lot of time talking to users, agencies, and developers who gave us direct, honest feedback about what’s working and what isn’t on WordPress.com. We’re already bringing all that learning into our roadmap and future plans. A huge thank you to everyone we chatted with. 

The WordPress community is as strong as ever

It is clear after a week in Mumbai that this community is growing, and the momentum is real.

The hallway conversations, the contributor sprints, the after-parties, the people who traveled halfway around the world to be in the same room — that energy isn’t slowing down.

If you’ve never been to a WordCamp, make this your year. And if a full conference feels like a big step, start with a local meetup. Find one near you at events.wordpress.org.

Now with four flagship WordCamps a year:

• WordCamp Europe — Kraków, Poland, June 4–6, 2026.
• WordCamp US — Phoenix, Arizona, August 16–19, 2026.
• WordCamp Asia 2027 — Penang, Malaysia, April 9–11, 2027.
• WordCamp India (TBD) — A brand new flagship event joining the lineup in 2027.

We can’t wait to see you there.

And with that, namaste, Mumbai!

Most projects need managed WordPress hosting for the backend and dedicated frontend hosting that matches how your app renders.

It’s important to understand the tradeoffs of choosing headless WordPress  as it can add more complexity to the equation.

Here’s how to make both decisions without overcomplicating it:

Step 1: Confirm you need headless WordPress

Headless makes sense when you need frontend flexibility, performance, or multisystem integration that goes beyond what a traditional WordPress setup supports. 

In a traditional setup, the frontend and backend live on the same platform. In a headless setup, they’re separate — connected only through an API.

Headless is a more complex system, so it’s worth being certain your project actually needs it.

Go headless when:

• You’re building with a JavaScript framework rather than WordPress themes.
• WordPress is powering multiple surfaces: a website and a mobile app, for example.
• You need to connect WordPress to other platforms or external SaaS tools.

If none of that applies, a well-optimized traditional WordPress setup is usually faster to ship, less expensive to run, and easier to maintain.

Step 2: Decide how your frontend will render

Your rendering strategy determines which frontend host you need, so define it before you start comparing plans. Rendering is simply how your frontend turns WordPress content into the pages visitors see.

Here are the key options to choose from:

• Static (SSG) works best for sites where content doesn’t change frequently. When you publish your site, pages are built once at deploy time and served as static HTML from a CDN. It’s the fastest and cheapest option and works well for marketing sites, blogs, landing pages, and documentation where a short delay after publishing is acceptable.

• Server-side rendering (SSR) is for when you need to personalize pages per user or reflect real-time data. Pages render on each request, which requires Node.js infrastructure and is more expensive to run.

• Hybrid (ISR) sits in between. Pages are static, but you can update them on a schedule or when content changes, without a full rebuild. It works well for sites that publish frequently but don’t need true real-time rendering.

The simplest way to choose: If every visitor sees the same page, SSG or ISR is almost always a good choice. If the page needs to vary per user, you need SSR.

Step 3: Pick a host for the WordPress backend

Choose a backend host that can manage API traffic, editor activity, and traffic spikes reliably. You also want a host that scales when needed and ensures your WordPress environment is secure and up to date.

Since your frontend depends on WordPress to deliver content, backend performance directly affects what visitors experience. 

In server-rendered and hybrid setups, that means handling continuous API requests. Even for static builds, the backend needs to perform well at build time and whenever content updates trigger a rebuild.

Here’s what matters most:

• Performance: Fast API response without relying on third-party caching plug-ins.
• Scalability: Traffic spikes shouldn’t require emergency upgrades or come with surprise charges.
• Security: The host should provide SSL, firewall protection, and backups.
• Developer tools: These include SSH/SFTP, WP-CLI, and staging environments.

Selecting the right provider

WordPress.com is the right backend host for most headless projects. The Business and Commerce plans come with everything a headless build needs from the beginning: built-in object and edge caching, automatic updates and security patches, and a CDN for media and static assets. 

On the developer side, you get SSH access, WP-CLI, and staging environments, plus predictable pricing with unmetered bandwidth so traffic spikes don’t come with unexpected costs.

If you need the WordPress backend and a Node-based frontend managed on a single platform, WordPress VIP is worth exploring. It’s built for enterprise-scale sites with millions of monthly visitors and comes with dedicated support and SLAs. The prices for this platform match that level of scale, so if budget is a consideration, WordPress.com with a separate frontend host will effectively cover most projects.

Step 4: Find a host for the frontend

From here, match your frontend host to your rendering strategy. Here’s how:

• Static sites work best with CDN-based hosting that serves prebuilt HTML.

• Server-rendered apps rely on Node-compatible hosting to render pages on request. Verify that this supports your framework and Node version.

• Hybrid setups require a Node runtime with revalidation support so pages can refresh on publish without a full rebuild. Factors such as build minutes, bandwidth, or requests typically determine the cost, so check the pricing model before committing.

Beyond rendering, check that the host supports git-based deploys compatible with your branching workflow and preview URLs for pull requests and draft reviews. 

You should also confirm there is a clear publishing flow so you know how a WordPress content update reaches the live frontend, whether that’s a full rebuild, a webhook, or revalidation.

How to choose your headless WordPress hosting

The bottom line: When choosing headless WordPress hosting, the backend and frontend decisions are separate but connected. 

Here’s what the right setup looks like for most projects:

• Use WordPress.com for a managed, scalable WordPress backend that handles API traffic without requiring you to manage the infrastructure.

• Choose your frontend host based on your rendering strategy (SSG, SSR, or ISR).

• Opt for WordPress VIP when you need both environments managed together on a single enterprise platform.

WordPress.com gives you a managed, secure, and scalable WordPress environment so your team can focus on building the frontend instead of maintaining servers. 

For all of it, his platform of choice is WordPress.com.

Creating complex WordPress websites is still in high demand, and today’s WordPress.com supports us and has our back.

Built for customization, not just simplicity

Knockers Design’s projects involve CRM integrations, custom plugins, Web3 projects, API connections, and complex e-commerce setups. The kind of work where platform limitations become real problems fast.

WordPress.com handles it all.

The plugin ecosystem is robust, documentation is solid, and GitHub integration makes deployment clean and reliable. For a team that codes custom solutions daily, those details matter.

There’s nothing that we can’t really do. If you have the budget, we can do it.

The real cost of self-hosting

For a long time, hosting client sites on their own servers looked like the smarter business move — more control, better margins.

But the math changes when you account for what it actually takes to run it well.

If you look at all the time dealing with backups, security issues, all those systems — it’s not actually as beneficial as working with a managed hosting provider like WordPress.com.

With WordPress.com handling the infrastructure, Knockers Design’s team focuses on the work clients actually hire them for.

How they work day to day

Calvin’s team uses WordPress Studio for local development, GitHub for deployments, and Jetpack for site monitoring — catching issues like domain expirations before clients even notice.

We get those notifications before our clients do. That way, we’re always the first to know — and the first to act.

That kind of proactive visibility is the difference between an agency that reacts and one that leads.

Trust built through community

Knockers Design didn’t find WordPress.com through a product page. They found it through people.

Calvin and his team are deeply embedded in the WordPress community in Taiwan — organizing meetups and building relationships with developers and Automattic employees over the years.

We organize meetups, we go to WordCamps, we work with people across the ecosystem. That itself is how we thrive here in Taiwan.

That trust is also how they sell. Pricing is transparent, clients can research it themselves, and WordPress.com’s reputation does a lot of the work upfront.

We’re using the best, we’re using the industry standard — that helps make our clients feel safe.

AI is raising the bar — and Knockers is ready for it

The clients walking through Knockers Design’s door today are different from the ones from five years ago.

AI tools have changed how business owners come into projects. They’ve researched their requirements, stress-tested ideas with ChatGPT, and arrive with detailed briefs — specific features, technical standards, and design expectations. The knowledge gap between client and agency is narrowing fast.

It’s becoming more of a conversation between equals — I have this knowledge, you have this knowledge, let’s figure out what we can build together.

For an agency that thrives on complex, custom work, that’s not a threat. It’s a filter. 

The clients who show up with harder problems are exactly the ones Knockers Design is built to serve. Having WordPress.com handle the infrastructure means the whole team can stay focused on solving them.

Welcome back to the WordPress.com changelog! 

We’ve had a packed two weeks of updates, including launching an alpha version of a new Telegram bot, shipping a cleaner way to manage AI agent tool access, expanding Studio Sync access, and adding a way to offer complimentary paid newsletter subscriptions to your subscribers.

AI

Message your WordPress on Telegram

Most people don’t run their business from a desktop. They’re in meetings, on the go, in the middle of a dozen other things — and when something needs to happen on their website, opening a browser on a computer and navigating the correct dashboard or page isn’t always possible. Good ideas get lost, quick fixes get postponed, and routine tasks pile up fast.

The new WordPress agent bot for Telegram is built for exactly that. Chat with your WordPress.com site on Telegram to publish posts, check your stats, find a domain, or fix a typo — from your phone in seconds. Now in alpha, and limits may apply based on your site’s plan.

We debuted it at WordCamp Asia this week — publishing posts and images about the event, straight from our phones, no browser needed. Learn more and try it yourself today.

MCP controls: tighter layout and per-site access

Enabling and disabling MCP tools just got more streamlined. Read and write tools are displayed on their own pages, and specific controls are categorized by site area, like Posts, Pages, and Account.

You can also now enable MCP access and tooling on a per-site basis by going to Sites → Your specific site → Settings → External AI agent access.

Development

Studio Sync now available on Personal and Premium plans in WordPress Studio

Studio Sync — which lets you sync a locally developed site from the WordPress Studio desktop app to and from your live WordPress.com sites — is now available on all paid plans, including Personal and Premium.

Learn more about developing your WordPress.com sites locally with Studio in our documentation.

Newsletters

Give subscribers complimentary access to your paid newsletter

Newsletter publishers can now grant individual subscribers complimentary paid-tier access — no credit card required on their end. From your Subscribers screen, you can assign a specific subscriber complimentary access, choose which paid plan level they get, and remove it at any time.

Fixes and improvements

We also shipped additional reliability and polish updates across WordPress.com this week, including:

• Adding a breadcrumb trail to detail pages in your site stats to make it easier to navigate backward to previously visited pages.
• Fixing an issue that prevented newsletter publishers with a single billing interval from completing a subscriber import.
• Fixing a crash that could prevent images from loading in the editor on some sites.

Whether you’re an artist, maker, or creative business owner, the right theme doesn’t just display your work — it is part of your work.

Here are 10 creative WordPress themes for making a real visual impression.

How I tested these WordPress themes

Whenever I evaluate a theme, I always try it out on my WordPress staging site first.

For each theme, I customized the homepage layout (changing sections, images, and text), explored the templates and patterns libraries (pre-built page layouts and design blocks), and tested any built-in features and unique design elements. I then ran a few blog posts through each theme to see how they handled content.

My goal was to choose themes that make it easier for your website to feel uniquely yours:

1. Sankofa: Best for cultural organizations, museums, and archives
2. Memphoria: Best for fashion and design bloggers
3. Miko: Best for personal portfolios 
4. Kawaii-Chan: Best for beauty and style influencers 
5. Feelin’Good: Best for nostalgic creators and bloggers 
6. Roblog: Best for gamers and streamers 
7. Parr: Best for artists, gallerists, and visual portfolios
8. Punk: Best for musicians and bands 
9. Psychedeli: Best for groovy bloggers 
10. The Jazzers: Best for music bloggers 

Let’s look at each of them in detail:

1. Sankofa: Best for cultural organizations, museums, and archives

• Setup: Intermediate/advanced
• Who should use it: Museums, cultural organizations, archives, and institutions that publish rich editorial or historical content

Sankofa is a robust theme that draws on Afrofuturist design, with bold colors, original geometries, fractal patterns, and expressive fonts. 

The standout features are its angular image shapes, which appear across page templates, and its customizable About pattern. 

For best results, add your images at the block or archive level rather than replacing them one by one — this ensures the angular shapes display correctly across your site.

Sankofa includes seven unique page templates and two theme-specific patterns, including an organization manifest, which is especially useful if you want to include a company page.

The verdict 

With some customization, Sankofa offers all the tools you need to build a robust, visually striking website. To get the most out of this theme, you need to be comfortable with patterns, loops, and parent block functions. A word of caution: If you’re new to WordPress, this theme has a steeper learning curve than others.

2. Memphoria: Best for fashion and design bloggers

• Setup: Beginner
• Who should use it: Bloggers who want to show a lot of personality with a wild edge

Memphoria offers a quirky blog layout, with a feed that stacks posts like a layered collection of Polaroids. Together with its six candy-colored theme options, this WordPress theme has a wild, maximalist feel that’s hard to replicate. 

It comes with six-page templates and custom styling options for the feed, tags, and separators. 

I particularly liked the kooky separator options: wavy, dots, zig-zag, and wiggly, which add a playful vibe.

The verdict 

Memphoria’s Polaroid-style homepage and additional page templates make it easy to build a distinctive, personality-driven blog with minimal setup. 

However, that strong aesthetic means this theme offers limited customization for websites that require greater design flexibility.

3. Miko: Best for personal portfolios

• Setup: Intermediate
• Who should use it: Personal websites, writers, and other non-visual portfolios

Miko offers a split-page site design with a bold color palette and an unconventional approach to navigation — instead of a traditional header, the sticky panel on the right side of the screen keeps your primary photo and title visible on every page.

This layout is great for personal websites and portfolios centered on one strong image because it keeps your brand closely anchored to your content on the left.

The verdict 

Miko is a good option if you need a personal site with just a single strong image, such as a headshot or brand photo. It’s a great fit for resumes, project links, or writing samples. 

4. Kawaii-Chan: Best for beauty and style influencers

• Setup: Beginner
• Who should use it: Influencers, creators, and bloggers

Kawaii-Chan lives up to its name and inspiration: lively, sweet, and available in multiple pastel colors. 

The rounded headers and footers and bubble-style image frames create a cozy and playful atmosphere, and the built-in kawaii background pattern immediately sets the tone for the site’s aesthetic.

The verdict 

Kawaii-Chan is a fun theme if you want your lifestyle blog to express a cartoonish, childlike charm. 

If you feel the background pattern is a little too much, you can easily swap it out under Theme Design → Background — a handy option if you want a cleaner look while keeping the kawaii aesthetic.

5. Feelin’Good: Best for nostalgic creators and bloggers

• Setup: Beginner/intermediate
• Who should use it: Creators looking for a theme with a nostalgic, retro internet aesthetic

Feelin’Good opens to a colorful homepage image with a semitransparent blog feed. The default look is pure vaporwave, but you can easily swap the site imagery to create different moods.

The header lets you add a logo or a headshot to the right corner, while the footer includes a finger icon that fits the retro style.

The verdict 

If you want to add ’80s or ’90s stylings to your site, this theme works perfectly. You can also tailor the visual style with a different background image or color scheme. 

6. Roblog: Best for gamers and streamers 

• Setup: Beginner
• Who should use it: Gamers, streamers, and playful bloggers

Roblog is a nod to the iconic Roblox platform, featuring rounded block styling and a “Playful” logo style that tilts your icon in a mischievous reference to Roblox’s own branding.

It’s the only theme on this list with a two-column post layout. The sidebar gives you space for an About section, related categories, and a subscription block — making it easy to build your email list right alongside your content.

The verdict 

Roblog is a fun theme with useful functionality, such as sidebar subscriptions. The two-column layout is also a big advantage for blogging, but it might feel limiting if you plan to feature other types of content.

7. Parr: Best for artists, gallerists, and visual portfolios 

• Setup: Beginner
• Who should use it: Photographers, artists, or anyone needing an image-driven website

Parr is a curatorial theme that puts bold imagery front and center. The sideways text elements free up visual space, while the individual blog pages resemble spreads from an art magazine.

The “previous” and “next” buttons on each edge create the feel of turning the page.

Parr’s layout doesn’t offer any variation, but you can still modify the fonts and colors to create your own distinct look.

The verdict 

If you’ve got a visual site and want your images to shine, Parr is the perfect backdrop. It’s a great option for portfolios and photo journals.

You can play around with the theme’s style options to match your brand, but make sure that Parr’s bold, defined layout is a good fit for your vision.

8. Punk: Best for musicians and bands 

• Setup: Intermediate
• Who should use it: Alternative music bloggers, bands, and musicians

Punk leans hard into the zine aesthetic and commits to it fully. The halftone effect automatically converts your images into one of six two-tone color schemes for a raw, DIY feel. 

It’s one of the most customization-rich themes on this list. Beyond the homepage, individual posts and pages keep the aesthetic alive with doodles and other lo-fi design elements. 

The verdict: 

If you like the punk or zine aesthetic, this theme delivers a ton of character throughout your site from the start. 

However, if you have lots of content and site imagery, prepare yourself to spend some time making sure everything looks good in halftone.

9. Psychedeli: Best for groovy bloggers

• Setup: Beginner
• Who should use it: Bloggers who love a psychedelic, counterculture feel

Psychedeli channels the ’60s with neon tones, exaggerated fonts, and psychedelic patterns. 

The style variations are more than just color palette tweaks. The backgrounds and fonts also change, so each variation feels like its own distinct site.

Like Punk, Psychedeli automatically adjusts your images to match the theme’s color palette for a cohesive site-wide look. 

The verdict 

Psychedeli is a bold, vibrant theme that plays nicely with your blog content right out of the box. The color effects are part of the style. However, if you have high-quality images and want to preserve their original style, this might not be the right fit.

10. The Jazzers: Best for music bloggers

• Setup: Intermediate
• Who should use it: Music bloggers and reviewers

The Jazzers theme aims to recreate the feeling of browsing through a vinyl collection. 

The large-scale title text and background images evoke classic album sleeves — a perfect aesthetic for music lovers.

This theme makes it easy to curate an attractive blog feed and has enough character for a vibrant music blog. 

The verdict 

If you want your pages to feel like a much-loved vinyl collection, this theme is right up your alley. It does take work to manage the visual tweaks and lengthy titles, though, so make sure you’re willing to put in the effort every time you post.

Build something great with WordPress.com

I’ve given you my take on the top 10 creative WordPress themes, but you know your work better than any list does. The right theme will click the moment you see it.

The best way to find the right fit is to build a site on WordPress.com and explore the options for yourself. 

If you already have a vision, get a custom look fast with our AI website builder. Just describe the look and feel you want with a text prompt and launch your site with managed WordPress hosting.

Ready to find the right look for your website? 

Now you can. Jetpack Newsletter offers complimentary subscriptions that let you give any subscriber free access to your paid plans, right from your subscriber list.

How it works

From your site’s dashboard, navigate to Jetpack → Subscribers. Find the subscriber you want to comp, click the three dots (⋮) next to their name, and select “Comp a subscription.”

Select the newsletter plan you want to give them access to and click Confirm. 

They’ll get an email letting them know they have access to your paid content, and their subscription type changes to “Comp” on your Subscribers page.

You can also comp from the subscriber detail view: click on a subscriber’s name to open their profile, then click “Comp a subscription.”

You can comp free subscribers, email-only subscribers, and even people who aren’t currently subscribed (they’re added as a subscriber automatically). You can also remove a complimentary subscription anytime, and the subscriber reverts to free.

Reward your most important subscribers with free access

Once you have a paid newsletter, you’ll find plenty of reasons to comp people:

• Family and friends you’d never charge
• Fellow writers for cross-promotion
• Contest winners and giveaway recipients
• VIP readers you want to reward for loyalty
• Sources and collaborators who contribute to your work

If you’ve migrated from another platform, you can use complimentary subscriptions to give your VIPs paid access right away.

Running a paid newsletter on WordPress.com

Complimentary subscriptions are one piece of the Jetpack Newsletter toolkit that keeps getting better. If you haven’t explored paid subscriptions yet, here’s what you can do right now on WordPress.com:

• Create a paid newsletter on any WordPress.com plan, including free.
• Set your own monthly and yearly pricing.
• Collect payments through Stripe with creator-first pricing that doesn’t take a cut of your revenue.
• Manage subscribers, track email performance, and organize content with newsletter categories.
• Own your content and subscriber list. Export everything, anytime.

Keep more of what you earn

If you’re comparing paid newsletter platforms, pricing matters. WordPress.com takes 0-10% of your subscriber revenue based on your plan. Substack always takes 10%. That really adds up.

With 100 paid subscribers paying $10 per month, Substack’s cut is $100/month. With 1,000 subscribers, it’s $1,000/month. At 10,000, you’re handing Substack $10,000 every month.

On WordPress.com, your cost stays the same no matter how many subscribers you have.

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The upcoming WordPress 7.0 changes this by introducing a shared infrastructure that supports how AI works across sites.

AI tools can now discover what a site can do, access AI services through a consistent layer, and trigger actions across plugins without requiring custom integration code for every combination.

The Abilities API: Defining what a site can do

WordPress 6.9 introduced the Abilities API as one of the first foundational pieces of this infrastructure. It gives plugins a standard way to register their capabilities in one place.

Instead of each plugin building its own custom integration, it declares what it exposes: 

• Specific actions
• The inputs those actions need
• What they return
• Which permissions are required

Those capabilities become discoverable through REST endpoints or the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Adapter.

This means automation tools and AI assistants can interact with WordPress without needing custom code for every plugin. A tool such as Zapier or an AI assistant such as Claude reads what’s available and acts on it.

A practical example: WooCommerce can register capabilities such as updating stock status, retrieving order data, or modifying product attributes. An AI assistant connecting to that site discovers those capabilities automatically. It doesn’t need a bespoke WooCommerce integration — it works with what the plugin has declared.

The WordPress AI Client: One connection to AI models

Before the WordPress AI Client, every plugin that wanted to use AI handled its own integration. Authentication, request formatting, response parsing — all built from scratch, again and again.

The AI Client introduces a shared interface for interacting with AI models. Plugins send prompts through one consistent layer, regardless of the provider.

WordPress 7.0 introduces the Connectors API alongside it. This is a system for managing connections to external services. It also adds a Connectors screen where site owners can configure AI providers in one place. Once configured, those connections are available across plugins without needing additional setup.

This makes AI interactions composable across plugins. 

A workflow can span multiple tools, such as retrieving WooCommerce product data and passing it through an AI model to generate descriptions, without custom glue code holding it together. 

For developers, this means no more rebuilding the same integrations. For site owners, it means configuring AI once and using it everywhere.

The MCP Adapter: Connecting to external AI tools

MCP is an open standard for how AI assistants communicate with external tools. The WordPress MCP Adapter implements that protocol for WordPress, exposing registered abilities as tools that any MCP-compatible client can discover and call.

The adapter ships separately from WordPress core and was available prior to 7.0, but it becomes significantly more useful with the new AI infrastructure in place. 

Once connected, tools such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini can see what your site can do and trigger actions directly.

This opens up workflows that would have required significant manual work or custom scripting before, such as having to:

• Batch-update hundreds of posts with a single natural language command.
• Find all WooCommerce products with inconsistent attributes and standardize them at scale.
• Query order data to identify top-performing products or spot return trends.

How the pieces fit together

Each component handles a different part of the problem. The Abilities API defines what actions a site can perform. The AI Client connects plugins to AI models. The MCP Adapter exposes those actions to external AI assistants.

Here’s what it might look like in a real workflow:

1. An AI assistant retrieves posts from WordPress.
2. An AI model analyzes the content.
3. The assistant triggers an ability to update the metadata.

Each step uses shared infrastructure. This makes these workflows reusable and composable across the ecosystem rather than locked inside a single plugin.

How this works on WordPress.com

On WordPress.com, this infrastructure is already in place.

Site owners can use the AI Assistant directly in the editor and Media Library to create and rewrite content, adjust layouts, generate images, and more. You can also connect the WordPress site to Claude to analyze content, identify gaps, generate ideas, and push updates back to your site.

For development, WordPress Studio provides a local environment where you can use tools such as Claude Code to build and test plugins, themes, and custom functionality. Telex extends this further, letting you generate blocks and themes from prompts and add them to your site.

The bottom line

The AI infrastructure in WordPress 7.0 is making AI-powered plugins and workflows possible at scale.

The Abilities API and AI Client are at the core of that shift — a shared infrastructure that gives the entire ecosystem something consistent to build on. 

Together, they represent a meaningful step toward creating a world where WordPress doesn’t just support AI workflows but actively enables them.

1. Studio CLI as a standalone npm module
2. phpMyAdmin access

One is for the terminal devotee, the other is for anyone who dreads opening a separate database tool — both are for anyone who’d rather just get building.

Studio CLI on npm

Until now, using Studio meant needing to download the desktop app. That changes today.

If you work primarily in the terminal — whether you’re a Linux user or just prefer to keep your hands on the keyboard — you can now install Studio directly via npm and skip the GUI entirely.

The CLI fits naturally in automated test runs, deployment scripts, and AI coding agent workflows — anywhere you’re already working in the terminal and spinning up a WordPress site by hand would slow you down.

How to install

If you already have the Studio desktop app installed, the CLI is already available — just enable Studio CLI for terminal under Preferences. 

If you want to install the CLI as a standalone tool, simply run npm install -g wp-studio. Alternatively, if you just want to run it once without installing the command, run npx wp-studio.

From there, you can authenticate with WordPress.com, create and manage local sites, preview in the browser, and run WP-CLI commands. Sync with WordPress.com and Pressable, import, export, and more are on the way.

The CLI and the desktop app are companions, not competitors: you can switch between them freely and they stay in sync. And don’t worry: the desktop app isn’t going anywhere.

phpMyAdmin access

On the desktop side, Studio now includes phpMyAdmin access directly from the Overview tab, giving you a visual interface to manage your site’s database. 

Inspecting or editing your local database used to mean reaching for a separate tool and going through a setup you’d rather not bother with. Now you can start querying tables, checking data, and debugging schema issues in just one click.

More ways to build locally

These two updates push Studio further in the same direction: less friction between you and building on WordPress. 

The CLI removes the GUI as a requirement, and phpMyAdmin removes the need to leave the app when you need to get into your database.

If you haven’t tried WordPress Studio yet, this is a good time to start.

Questions or feedback? We’re in GitHub — open an issue to share feedback, bugs, and feature requests.