WordPress.com

Twenty Ten is our first update to the “default” theme (the one you see when you start a new blog) on WordPress.com. The goal with Twenty Ten was to create something stylish, customizable, simple, and most of all, readable. Since every new WordPress.com user would be seeing Twenty Ten, we wanted to design an example of what a WordPress theme can do.

Custom Headers

Twenty Ten comes with a selection of great header images. It’s easy to switch between any of the included header images or upload your own. You can even use a different custom header image for each post by including a Featured Image when you publish a new post.

Custom Backgrounds

One of the easiest ways to customize a theme to your personal style is with a custom background image or color. Twenty Ten is the first theme to use WordPress’ new custom background feature, so it’s easy to pick a new background color, upload an image, and tweak its tiling and positioning. If you’ve ever had to write CSS or muck about with code just to change your background color, we think you’ll really dig this new feature.

Drop-down menus

Twenty Ten neatly organizes your pages into a menu right in your blog’s header, and includes drop-down menus for multiple levels of nested sub-pages.

Special styles for Asides and Galleries

Twenty Ten includes special styles for the new Post Formats, Aside and Gallery. When viewed on an index page (like your home page or a list of posts from a particular month), asides get a simplified look that seamlessly fit between full-length posts, while galleries give a peek at the photos that lie within.

Editor Styles

Have you ever found yourself hitting the Preview button while composing so you can see what your post will look like with your theme’s styles. Twenty Ten aims to break that addiction by using the editor styles feature of WordPress. Now, the Visual Editor in WordPress can mimic the look of your theme, so you get a perfect visual representation of your post while you’re writing.

Choosing a Page Template

By default, Twenty Ten uses a two-column layout with lots of room for widgets. If you’d like to hide the widgets and focus on the writing for a particular page, just choose the “One column, no sidebar” template.

Widgets Galore

Twenty Ten has two sidebar widget areas (extra-useful for those of you who customize your CSS) as well as four footer widget areas. It’s easy to load Twenty Ten up with lots of widgets without sacrificing your blog’s design.

Beautiful in Print

Everyone has experienced unpleasant surprises when trying to print an article from a web site. Twenty Ten includes special styles for printing, so you’ll get printed copies that are just as easy to read as the original.

Twenty Ten design by the WordPress team. This theme is also available for self-hosted WordPress.org sites from the WordPress.org Themes Directory.