Gifs and

Hi there,

GIF featured images should work for the post thumbnails on the front page grid, yes. I tried it out on my test site with GIFs of various sizes, and the front page showed them all without any problem.

As an aside ive noticed it hasnt been updated since 2018 – is this likely to be a problem in the future?

Not in the immediate future, but as WordPress continues evolving, the theme will eventually become incompatible and stop working.

We launched this theme in 2016, so in web years it’s already quite old. The theme also predates the block editor. Our current focus on themes at Automattic is on creating themes that will work with the full-site editing features that are coming in WordPress 5.9, so it’s very unlikely that we’ll make further updates to this theme aside from critical security fixes, and it’s also not likely to be prioritised in terms of bug fixes.

You should be able to still use the theme for at least the next few years, though. Also keep in mind that what I said above about the theme eventually becoming incompatible is true about any theme…no matter what theme you choose, you won’t be able to use that theme forever, as any theme eventually reaches a point where it’s no longer feasible to continue maintaining it, at which point the theme developers will rather retire it.

if so can anyone recommend any very similar wordpress themes (preferably free)?

I’m not able to recommend any specific themes, but you can see all themes in the theme showcase that offer a grid layout using the filters in the showcase:

https://www.ads-software.com/themes/tags/grid-layout/

The ability to organise contents based on categories is a core feature of WordPress itself, and doesn’t depend on what theme you’re using.

Thank you very much for your help.
I notice that the ‘Automattic, Dalston’ theme might be suitable, do you know if gifs are possible on the feature images using it?
I cant see a support forum for Dalston on www.ads-software.com (only .com) does this mean there isnt help avaliable if I choose this?

Many thanks again!

The part of Dalston that’s similar to Rebalance is just blocks arranged in that pattern:
https://wordpress.com/theme/dalston/

Note those aren’t blog posts, though; just images and links.

You’ll likely be able to accomplish that look regardless of theme, so long as it handles a full width and blocks pretty well. I noticed there are a few patterns here; likely with more to come soon:
https://www.ads-software.com/patterns/categories/gallery/

If I were in your shoes, maybe I’d keep working with Rebalance for now, while experimenting with blocks on a test site til I get a look I like.

Does that help?

I too have been looking at a replacement theme for Rebalance and I’ve been considering Eksell, however the theme developer has said it is unlikely he will update it to have full site editing. My other concern is that both Rebalance and Eksell use the custom post type called Jetpack Portfolios (which is why they may be similar), however, I’ve noticed that Automattic hasn’t created a Portfolio theme with this custom post type in recent years — Dalston is a case in point. @kokkieh is it possible to find out why? Is that not the way to be creating portfolios going forward with Full Site Editing?

Thanks!

The Portfolio custom post type comes from the Jetpack plugin, not from the theme. Some of our themes, like Rebalance have special styling for the portfolio CPT, and sometimes even a special portfolio template. But as long as you have Jetpack installed and the portfolio content type active, and the theme supports custom post types in general, you should be able to create portfolio projects, and the default portfolio archive page at {siteURL}/portfolio should work.

That said, not all themes support CPTs, and it appears that this is also the case with our newer FSE-ready themes like Dalston. Currently these themes don’t provide templates for this these post types, but in the long term, the plan is to be able to build templates for any custom post types, and it’s something our team is working on.