What Are Classic Themes?
Our first-generation themes were designed to leverage the WordPress Classic Editor. We’ve affectionately nicknamed them Classic Themes and were comprised of three different brands: Mai Theme, Pretty Darn Cute, and SEO Themes.
Features of Classic Themes
- Built before the block editor was in WP core.
- Homepages built with our Sections Template that uses the Classic Editor in WP.
- Uses widget areas for global content areas (v2 themes use template parts for block-based widget areas).
- Relies on jQuery, like most Genesis child themes, so it’s page speed is slightly affected (v2 themes don’t rely on jQuery and are considerably faster).
- You can use blocks, but the theme is not as tightly integrated with the block editor as our v2 themes are.
- Relies on
[grid],[columns]/[col], and[section]shortcodes (v2 themes use standard/core or custom Mai blocks).
Why We Are Moving Away from Classic Themes
We’ve been moving toward all block-based themes since Lee of SEO Themes and Lindsey of Pretty Darn Cute joined the BizBudding team. This transition seemed like the natural next step in ensuring our customers would have a great selection of user-friendly, future-proof themes to choose from.
Our goal is to make it easier than ever to create websites with Mai Theme, to load demo content when starting a new blog, and to migrate an existing website to Mai Theme. Our v2 themes are fast, lightweight, and easy to use for any experience level.
All that being said, we are in the process of updating all of our Classic Themes to Mai Theme 2.0. Many have already been rebuilt and relaunched and are available now. Support for Classic themes is ending in 2021 so that we can devote all support to Mai Theme 2.0.
Updated themes and new themes are developed under the brand Mai Theme.