The Theme of Tomorrow, Today!

The WordPress team just dropped what they’re calling their “first draft” of Twenty Thirteen into the wild. And while I know that it’s not a finished product yet, I like it so much that I’ve decided to use it here. At least for a little bit.

Can you blame me? I mean, just look at it…

Twenty Thirteen

Sexy, right?

But how did I get my grubby little hands on a copy of the theme before it was even released? Well, if you’ve got Subversion installed on a Mac, it’s as simple as opening your favorite terminal application and running this command:

cd ~/Downloads/ && svn co https://wpcom-themes.svn.automattic.com/twentythirteen/ && zip -rv twentythirteen twentythirteen && rm -rf twentythirteen/

What does that command do? Allow me to give you the step-by-step rundown…

  1. Changes the working directory to your user’s “Downloads” folder.
  2. Performs a SVN checkout of the Twenty Thirteen theme from Automattic’s WordPress.com theme repository.
  3. Creates a zip file called “twentythirteen.zip” in your Downloads folder.
  4. Deletes the “twentythirteen” folder.

Once the command finishes running, log into your WordPress dashboard, go to “Appearance > Themes”, select the “Install Themes” tab and click “Upload”.

All you have to do then is upload the theme from your computer and activate it. Simple!

And by “simple” I mean you have to be comfortable with the command line and hope to God that you have Subversion installed.

Should you not have the SVN binary on your Mac, perhaps the exciting world of pre-release themes isn’t for you. Don’t fret though, I’m sure Twenty Thirteen will find its way to the official theme repository soon enough.

P.S. Since Twenty Thirteen isn’t exactly finished yet, I wouldn’t suggest installing this on your production site. But if you’re borderline crazy — like me — feel free to join me in saying “fuck it”.

Just don’t come crying to me if something goes wrong, okay?


Posted

in

,

One response to “The Theme of Tomorrow, Today!”

  1. The Frosty Avatar

    Sweet, going to use it on my dummy site for the time being. Though I just did a SVN checkout so I can keep up with changes before the push to the repo where auto updates will come through.