Last year on WordPress.com we introduced the world to the first new WordPress default theme in 5 years — the first annual default theme — Twenty Ten. Now it’s our pleasure to introduce you all to its successor, Twenty Eleven.
It might look familiar. 🙂 Yep, Twenty Eleven started life as the Duster theme before it made the theme big leagues. But it’s not just a renamed Duster. There are tons of really cool improvements and features packed into it — more Post Formats, beautiful new header images, alternate color schemes and layouts, even custom link colors. All those features add up to the best part of Twenty Eleven: just how customizable it is. It looks great as a blog, a showcase of all your posts, and even a tumblelog or photoblog.
If you want to know more about the cool new features in Twenty Eleven we’ve made a page that outlines them all on the Theme Showcase. You can read up on Twenty Eleven there and check out a live demo or just simply activate it on your blog and start experimenting! And if you have a self-hosted installation of WordPress you haven’t been left out of the fun. You can wait to give Twenty Eleven a shot when WordPress 3.2 is released in about a month or try it out right now with the beta version and upcoming release candidates. We’re looking forward to seeing how you use Twenty Eleven on your blog.
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Awesome! Twenty Eleven is here! Time to start experimenting!
I am in love. Duster was by far my favorite WP.com theme, so of course I think this one’s awesome. Changing now. Thank you, team!
What an upgrade to the default theme! It’s really been a long time coming. Good work!
Welcome Twenty Eleven. It is customizable indeed. Thumbs up!
Nice! Now that’s what i’m talking about. WordPress FTW!
This could work!
Nice theme, looks refreshing, almost as beautiful as Vigilance (which I highly prefer) to me.
cheers 🙂
Can’t wait to mess up the CSS!!
I love this! I was looking for a similar new theme.
This theme can be customized in ways I don’t even understand! I’ll have to try it out and decide if it is going to replace Choco as my first choice!
I just tweeted about this theme yesterday, not to sound like a word nerd but I heard about it at WordCamp Raleigh and I’ve been craving that flash photo banner! Yay!
Nice… not good enough to force a change, but still…
For whatever reason I don’t think this theme deserves to be Twenty Eleven, especially because Twenty Ten was much better than this and I simply expected something better than Twenty Ten in Twenty Eleven. I’m still a Twenty Ten fan.
That’s OK. Twenty Ten isn’t going anywhere. It’s still one of my favorite themes too. 🙂
Looks great! I just finished updating my site with the new theme, I’m loving it.
Wonderful!
Been playing around with Duster but have been waiting for this theme. Luckily most of my adjustments still work.
You guys are doing a fantastic job.
All of the improvements are great. Good job WP.
I’m still getting used to it…
Yep, it’s nice! =)
Beautifully simple. I love the customization aspect.
Looks good. I will try and report back. I am currently using Inuit types which I like.
Not bad! It is pleasant to me!
Anyone know how wide images can be on this?
The maximum content width in Twenty Eleven is 585 pixels. (We have some quick specs for all of our themes on the Theme Showcase — the content width is usually one of them)
Love Twenty Eleven, but there are any way to use our images in random mode on the header of the blog, as we can with the default 8? It will be the perfect theme! Thank you very much.
Yep! Just start uploading header images and you’ll see an option for randomly rotating between them.
Cool! Hope more themes come along the way ▬ I hope WP starts allowing font and background customization to its themes too ^_^
You can change Twenty Eleven’s background image (and the background image of almost all of our themes) by visiting Appearance → Background. Have fun! 🙂
Much better than the 2010 theme. That one put me off.
This is good! And now there’s going to be so many blogs that look like this.
OMG I love it! You are the best. It’s also free!!! Thanks a lot. You are wonderful!
NIce, very clean. I like it. Might have to try it on my blog.
This seems very simple and a lot like some of the other simple blog themes.
yay! i’m trying it out for my photoblog. The tags for the twenty eleven say fixed-width and variable-width. Anyway to set the width of the left column, in 2 column format to be a specific width other than what is there, which appears to be 550-ish?
This is great!! Wish I would have thought of it for my previous blog.
Thanks! I’m using Duster now, I only switched over a few months ago, and I don’t want to alienate my readers by going to a different format… yet. Still, this is definitely going on to my future blog format list when I consider a switch some months down the line!
This theme has a lot of possibilities. I just changed themes recently, but I’m going to tinker with this one a bit.
Very clean and well format. It somehow look like 2010 theme, but with better readability improvement to layout.
Will give it a try for photo blog and see how it work. 🙂
cant wait to play with this new theme!
It is sooooooooooo pretty, beautiful, gorges, elegant, outdoory, attractive, and OMGG[Oh My Great Gosh] I want to go there
really? You can rotate personal header themes? Oh, my gosh, i might just throw over twenty-ten for this, then…!
Oh man, I LOVE this. It reminds me of The Morning After, which I adore and am using right now — except you can see more than once post per page! This is tempting for a switch. Good job WP!
Thank you! I just added this to my rss reader, great stuff
This is great and I really love the photo blog but could you please, PLEASE include a grid option like the Suffusion theme (example: http://gudphoto.com/bikenyc/grid/)
Wow… too cool to be true! Do you have it for self-hosted blogs, too?
It’s on it’s way with the next version of WordPress.
Looks great. Thank you.
I love the mountain/river scape.. I find it more inspiring to write when I am looking at nature.
Love it…simple, clean, with all the important “stuff” at the top! Thanks… 🙂
Hi Ian, I think I was waiting for this theme. I was a user of Twenty Ten, after all. Anyway, I gave a preview on my current blog and one thing I did not like that all my images has a extra border around it. Is there any way I can remove that extra border from my images in my blog post?
Nice theme. I’m trying it out asap….
Looks great and quite similar to Theme: Mystique! 🙂
Great job WP! Thanks for giving me something fun to do this weekend—looks like I’ll be tweaking my layout and widgets to accommodate my new blog template!
Great upgrade. Love this new theme.
Very nice and clear – I love the dark variety.
Aaaaah… shall I be switching again? Stay with Duster? Use 2011? You really keep me thinking!
Trying it out for my photoblog .. looks like a perfect blend of Duster and Twenty Ten. 🙂 Thanks, WordPress!
There is a lot to like about this one!
I have always been fond of the theme “Duster”, but never had the guts to use it. Now that “Twenty Eleven” is made the official 2011 WordPress theme, and based off “Duster”, I think it’s about time I change to the theme I have loved ever since the moment I placed my cornea on it 🙂
Good job!
Cool, but I’ll stick to my current theme 🙂
I found its layout to be extremely elegant. Also added some custom share buttons so it was lots of improvements for my blog today.
More Premium Themes, please! I’m waiting for scrapbooking stuff! 😉
Very nice! I started with Twenty Ten, but the new version is better! Great job.
Looks crisp and clean. 🙂
AWE… wait for it….SOME!!! AWESOME!!!! 😀
New version looks cleaner and better. Thanks.
I love this one – Thanks!
Love this theme. Perfect for restarting my blog!
The photoblog looks amazing, I`ll give it a try next week! 🙂
Finally I found the theme. Thanks!
You guys have definitely outdone yourselves with this one, it’s such an amazing layout! My favourite features would have to be the showcase template, the various post formats, and the rotating customised header. And I love how the layout itself is so crisp and clean. Excellent job guys, thanks~! 🙂
Does it have a colored background to the posts like Chaotic Soul? I like the colored background to posts that way I can have a busy and crazy custom background to my blog….
Yep. Switching to the dark color scheme adds an almost-black background to your blog posts.
I have always found the default themes too simplistic, drab and boring. I realize that WordPress is extremely popular all over the world and thus needs to be generic but a little spice is needed.
Great work! I love the one-column post format on this theme. But, alas, just cannot resonate with the huge header. I would like to see some new themes with a good-sized one column format – like this one – or Vostok but the white version, not black. For the moment, I’ll stick with Inuit Types, my total love.
I am in love with this theme. I activated it as soon as I saw it in action. AWESOME THEME IS AWESOME. Love the heading fonts, the showcase template is kick-ass and the fonts are very readable too. x) ❤
The image post looks quite unique!!
Couldn’t have come at a better time – loving it and using it already!
I’m already a Duster guy. So, here’s hoping everything stays in place now that I’m about to make the switch. Thanks, WP!
Wow… let me try this one!
I love this and have switched one of my blogs over all ready. I would switch them both if there was a 3 coloum layout. Maybe 2012?
Cool!! Gonna try it right now. 🙂
Nice! Thanks for all the upgrades!
Like it. On it.
Thank you so much 🙂
The Showcase is absolutely great!
Looks nice, but I’d have some qualms about using the default theme. I’d really have to modify it to make sure it looks like I’ve tried something more than just sticking with standard.
Really looks great..
I started using Duster as soon as you made it available. I just changed to Twenty Eleven today, and I really love the upgrades, especially the option for multiple featured posts on the front page. Great work!
Twenty Eleven is “da bomb!” (if you remember that hackneyed expression). As a former newspaper page designer, I think Twenty Eleven has all the tools I need. I especially like the floating quotes and the new featured posts and images. I’ve always preferred a standard, easy-to-read serif body type, but I might even come to love the sans serif body type in Twenty Eleven. Thank you, thank you!
Looks great! I love that you can have a lot of pages. Nice and clean but not boring.
Love this theme, Thanks!
I’m holding out for Twenty Twelve!
*but then again I hear twenty thirteen is supposed to be pretty good too…*
I have no doubts that Twenty Twelve and Twenty Thirteen will both be awesome themes. 🙂
Oooh, already looking forward to Twenty Twelve.
I picked up Duster recently for one of my blogs and I LOVED it to death, SUCH a WELL DONE website-like theme! An absolute killer. More recently y selected Twenty Eleven for yet another blog and OMG! It was even a little better: choosing the link color has been a long time dream for me. It is, I’d say, PERFECT. Thank you sooooooo much, guys! This is really something. SO well done!!!! ILWP!
Looks great, I’m going to try it out right now!
Nice and basic.
Looks interesting … I’ll go through it. Thank you!
Dude, congratulations! So far, this is the best theme I’ve tried.
Awesome! This is just what I had in mind when I moved to WordPress but couldn’t find! As soon as I catch up on the back-log of posts I’m trying to make into actual words, I think I’ll switch and play around with it for a while to reward myself!
Best theme yet, thank you. This is one of the comments I got “Your site is soothing yet biting at the same time. Now how did you manage that?”