If you want a simple and clean blog theme that you can customize to suit your needs I think you’ll like the one we’re introducing today. It’s called Pilcrow.

The Pilcrow Themes default look

Pilcrow is an upgrade to the older PressRow theme we’ll begin phasing out next week. But Pilcrow isn’t just a simple replacement. We’ve pulled out all the stops to make sure it’s a better theme all around.

Pilcrow keeps the familiar, simple and clean PressRow look but we’ve expanded its basic design over six possible layouts and up to four sidebars and widget areas. The choice of theme layout is all yours.

Pilcrows six possible layouts

In addition to multiple layouts you also have your choice of four different color schemes, light, dark, red, and brown. If you visit Appearance → Background you can customize the background of any of the color schemes and upload your own custom background image.

Pilcrow with the three-column layout, brown color scheme, hidden header image, and a custom background

Pilcrow also has a fully customizable header. From Appearance → Header you can upload your own header image, change the header text color, or even choose to hide the header text altogether. If you want a special header image for a particular post or page, you can upload a Featured Image from the post and page edit screens!

The Pilcrow theme is available today in Appearance → Themes and will soon be available in the WordPress Themes Directory, for self-hosted WordPress.org users.

Quick Specs (all measurements in pixels):

  1. The main column width is 500 except in the full-width layout where it’s 990.
  2. The custom header dimensions are 770 by 200 for two-column and 990 by 257 for wide layouts.
  3. The sidebar width is 230.
  4. The secondary sidebar width in 3-column layouts is 180 and both sidebars are 205 where there is a sidebar on either side of the content.