Sarah Gooding
Hey is a block theme designed by Automattic for users on WordPress.com and also released for free in the WordPress.org Themes Directory. It’s the kind of simple theme that enables you to quickly get started writing online, without having to configure a bunch of design elements. The homepage features a profile image (Site Logo), site title, and recent posts with dates.
Single posts display with the feature image at the top of the post, although this template can easily be edited if this is an undesirable feature. Previous and Next post navigation appears under the post. Users can add menu items to display at the top, but clicking the site logo brings the visitor back home in the absence of a navigation menu.
The Hey theme comes in two different styles – the default and a serif variation. Colors can be adjusted to create a more vibrant palette for the site design.
One major drawback to this theme, which may not be immediately evident by looking at the demo, is that if users want to display more than the three most recent posts, they will need to add the pagination block inside the query loop block. It will also need to be styled to match the theme better. The query loop can be edited to show more posts on the homepage.
Although Hey is a simple personal blog theme, it also comes packaged with templates for WooCommerce compatibility. This is likely for the benefit of WordPress.com users who may want to quickly fire up a store. Self-hosted users who want to sell products with WooCommerce will be able to easily display things like the mini-cart, customer account block, product archive, product search results, and more.
Overall, Hey is an elegantly simple block theme with a clean design and plentiful white space. It’s suitable for the person who wants an almost blank slate to get started, or just a theme that enables writing without any distraction for the reader. Check out the live demo on WordPress.com and download Hey from WordPress.org.
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I like this theme. So simple and elegant. It’s very similar to current design that I’m using for my personal blog.
I hope in the future there will be more themes focusing on blogging like this.
is it optimized for page speed? And seo?
I recently moved my personal
block to WordPress.com, and this is the theme I chose! If you all want to try Full Site Editing, Hey theme is one of the best themes with FSE support.
I must say, this elegantly simple WordPress block theme you’ve introduced, truly caught my attention. As a blogger, I value themes that prioritize clean aesthetics and a seamless user experience, and this WordPress block theme seems to embody both of these qualities flawlessly.
I know this theme was designed for people who want a “simple” site, but I think sometimes simple is too simple. When I land on someone’s blog, I want to see a blog. I don’t want to see what I call a “splash page” like in this particular template with a few posts on a query loop with no Categories listed which is the usual case these days since block templates are being distributed. Template design has definitely changed since Gutenberg and blocks came along, and I feel like people don’t care to learn how to edit them to make them useful to browse. Some block templates are ok for what they are, but as a WordPress dot com customer, I’m bored with all the samey block templates they have been choosing to add to their inventory, and I normally don’t stay on someone’s blog for long if they don’t put any effort more than just loading up a template as is and calling it a blog.
While testing this theme out. It is a pain to create a header with logo and a nav menu. I like the simple approach,but sometimes to simple is not good.
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