Foxhound, a JS-powered, accessibility-ready theme now available


Earlier this week, Foxhound was approved and pushed live to WordPress.org. I’ve written about it before (sort of), but this is now officially the first REST-API-powered theme on wp.org 🎉

When it comes to the REST-API, there’s a lot of focus on how it’s used by top agencies for custom apps, but that’s very niche. I wanted to make something for a wider audience: your average WordPress blogger (ok, probably someone slightly more technical than that — I do admit it’s an experimental theme 🙂). But I really wanted Foxhound to be a theme that anyone could download and install.

After about a year of working on it — and more than a few restarts, as I learned more about react, webpack, redux, accessibility… I had Foxhound. I wasn’t sure what to do next, if it would even be allowed on wp.org — but I wanted to try.

A few months ago, I contacted the Theme Review Team to ask about submitting a JS-based theme for review. It is a special case, so I talked with some of the reviewers privately to check the theme, and they discussed it themselves as well. We volleyed a few changes back and forth, and I was given permission to upload it.

Technically, the discussion and changes I made from those chats was the review, but I also wanted to make sure that Foxhound passed the extra accessibility guidelines. I’ve been on a bit of a crusade to get people to think about accessibility in our JS apps, so it was important to me that this new theme meet those standards. And after a few more updates, it did 😁

So, if you like the theme you’re currently reading this on​*​, you can download it yourself. You can even customize it with CSS (WP’s new CSS in the customizer is great for this) — but proper child themes are a bit out of reach at the moment. Let me know if you end up using it for anything, or if you want me to write more about any particular part of the development.


(You might notice I didn’t bring up The Controversy: Foxhound requires javascript to run. I have another post in the works about that decision)


  1. ​*​
    Note: My theme has since changed.

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Comments

  1. Murshid Avatar

    Awesome.

    Thank you so much.

  2. Michael Mizner Avatar

    Hey Kelly! I’ve been following your work since late 2015 (sometime around WCUS). At the time you had pretty much the only strong examples of using React with the WP REST API. Just wanted to say you’ve done an awesome job and reviewing your work has definitely helped and inspired me in my projects.

    Keep up the awesome work!

  3. nadz Avatar
    nadz

    hi i was just wondering why you need react or a whole front end framework to build this, couldn’t you just use javascript and a js router? ps, this design is sparkling!