Mike McAlister

Part of our upcoming @WordPress block editor suite of builder tools: Menu Designer.

Create beautiful, responsive mobile & mega menus right in the native block editor. Dozens of 👌 designs included.

Blazing-fast, lightweight, intuitive, inevitable. Coming soon.

One year of Ollie Pro: leading the block theme revolution – Ollie WordPress Block Theme Just like that, it's been a year of Ollie Pro being out there in the wild. Here's a rundown of what we were able to do in the past twelve months. Spoiler alert:

Seriously, that's a lot of checkmarks for our first year!

Thanks to our incredible community for being part of this journey. Here's to another year of building beautiful, blazing-fast websites together! 🤜💥🤛

Check out the full blog post here: olliewp.com/one-year-of...

What's next?

Year two is going to bring even more patterns, enhanced UI features, better search functionality, and tools that will continue pushing WordPress site building forward.

We're just getting started.

🎓 FREE EDUCATION FOR EVERYONE

We launched the Ollie Academy with:

✅ Comprehensive video library
✅ Block Theme Academy course
✅ Block Dev Academy course

Some of the most in-depth WordPress development resources available – totally free!

🎨 EXPANDED PATTERN LIBRARY

Hundreds of professional patterns at your fingertips!

✅ Launched the bold Agency collection
✅ Smart color palette system
✅ Dynamic patterns for templates

⚡ MAJOR PERFORMANCE BOOST

We delivered some serious speed improvements:

✅ Faster pattern loading with pagination
✅ Local-first favorites system
✅ New keyboard shortcuts for power users

The pattern library is now blazing fast! And we're about to make it even more powerful soon. Stay tuned!

🚀 OLLIE PRO 2.0

This was our biggest release of the year. Highly anticipated, widely praised.

✅ Completely revamped site setup wizard (blank canvas to beautiful website in minutes)
✅ One-click starter sites feature
✅ Brand new Ollie Pro dashboard
✅ We made these powerful FREE for everyone

📈 MASSIVE GROWTH

The WordPress community has embraced Ollie in a big way!

✅ 5,000+ active users on the Ollie theme
✅ 500+ paid Ollie Pro subscriptions (next stop: 1,000!)
✅ Consistent YouTube channel growth with new tutorials

One year of Ollie Pro: leading the block theme revolution – Ollie WordPress Block Theme Just like that, it's been a year of Ollie Pro being out there in the wild. Here's a rundown of what we were able to do in the past twelve months. Spoiler alert:

I published a full article on our year in review on the blog and you can check out the thread below for the highlights.

olliewp.com/one-year-of...

Ollie Pro is one year old! @patrickposner_ and I put everything we had into @buildwithollie this past year, building something we're super proud of.

Here are the highlights and numbers from an absolutely wild year. Spoiler alert: we were cookin'! 🔥

Free WordPress Dev Courses and the Future of Ollie ft. Mike McAlister - Webmasters.FM Mike McAlister talks about his new *free* Ollie Block and Theme development courses, AI's effect on developer education, and where WordPress should go next.

Yesterday I chatted with @mikemcalister.com about his new free block and theme dev courses on Ollie, how AI is impacting dev education, his experience with Sensei LMS and FSE, and where WordPress should focus next.

Catch it in your Podcast app or on YouTube.

webmasters.fm/free-wordpre...

Mike McAlister returns to talk about his new *free* Ollie Block and Theme development courses. We discuss the evolution of the Ollie WordPress block theme, t... Free WordPress Dev Courses and the Future of Ollie ft. Mike McAlister

We're just two dudes drinkin' cold brews and talkin' shop.

Join @briancoords and myself as we talk modern dev education and where @WordPress should focus to round out the builder experience.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVA...

Whether you're:

☑️ Building your first custom block
☑️ Creating advanced interactive components
☑️ Looking to modernize your dev workflow
☑️ Vibe coding and looking for deeper WP context

This course gives you the foundation you need to master block dev.

olliewp.com/block-academy/

WordPress blocks are super powerful. Every piece of content, every design element, every interactive feature in modern WordPress comes down to blocks.

Custom block development gives you the power to create exactly what your projects need.

A few weeks ago, we launched the Ollie Theme Academy, a free video course for modern WordPress theme development.

And today, we're releasing ANOTHER free video course.

Introducing the Ollie Block Academy, a free custom block development course.

olliewp.com/block-academy/

Working on redesigning my personal site with this vibe.

I just pushed live a trusted developer page for @BuildWithOllie. We get asked often for recommendations of devs who can build with @WordPress full site editing and Ollie.

You will be in good hands with these folks: olliewp.com/ollie-devel...

Big props to @mikemcalister.com for launching this massive free video course about building with full site editing.

olliewp.com/theme-academy/

Ultimately, I was able to pull off a significant refresh very quickly, and that's largely due to how capable the WordPress site editor is.

I was able to do everything in the editor, aside from some code for the scroll effect and some edge case CSS.

🛹 olliewp.com

I'm still old school and do a lot of design work in Figma first before moving into the site editor.

I get more expressive design starting with a canvas, and then move to the editor and build quickly. I don't design every page, mostly just nail down the visual language.

Here's a fun little detail you may have missed. As you scroll past this section on the homepage, the images change to show the different typography and color pairings available in Ollie.

Many of the new section designs came from the Ollie Pro pattern library. Of course I used my own design collection to speed things up.

Most of these I was able to add to the page and just modify slightly before moving on. Progress > perfection.

I tried about 100 different new font combinations, but ultimately ended up with Satoshi Variable. www.fontshare.com/fonts/satoshi

At first, I wasn't sure if it was too playful, but the more I saw it throughout the site, I thought it worked pretty well.

Right before we announced Ollie Pro 2.0, I quietly launched a design refresh on olliewp.com. For the design nerds out there, here's a quick thread of some of my favorite details of the redesign.

Ollie Pro 2.0 is here and it brings a whole new suite of powerful tools to your WordPress site!

The Ollie Pro pattern library combined with our intuitive new setup wizard makes Ollie a game changer for builders.

Check out the full thread to learn more: x.com/mikemcalist...

What a crazy time to be alive. The minute-by-minute race towards faster, better, more efficient AI is like a modern day space race.

We are living through one of those transitionary technology periods and like it or not, things will never be the same again.

Ollie Pro 2.0 is coming THIS WEEK.

This isn't just a setup wizard. This isn't just starter sites. This is the foundation of a new way of building with WordPress.

We're raising the bar for design and user experience, and ushering in the next wave of WordPress creators.

olliewp.com/subscribe/

And now you can build even more intuitive tools, apps, and solutions into the platform with modern libraries. WordPress users are hungry for it.

Don’t fall out of your chair, but I think people are sleeping on WordPress as a distribution platform for products in 2025.

Despite the recent turbulence, WordPress is still an incredibly powerful platform that reaches nearly a billion sites.

It may not be the shiniest, but there is still no equivalent with that kind of reach. There’s hundreds of niches to serve, hundreds of verticals to explore.

Tech creatives don't really think of WordPress as a place where great design or product development happens.

And there's good reason — we haven't done a great job of attracting and keeping design/product talent. It’s part economics, part marketing, part industry, part vibes.