Get your WordPress Magazine and blog websites ready for 2022—with our fresh, fast, and super versatile Full Site Editing Block Theme.
What is special about Makoney?
Makoney is our first Premium Full Site Editing Block Theme, which comes with our brand-new Grow membership plan. After learning the ins and outs of block theme development over the last months, we rolled our sleeves up to get our first Premium block theme ready for WordPress 5.9.
It was important for us to give our existing classic theme users the opportunity to take advantage of the cool new features, Full Site Editing brings for WordPress site owners. Therefore, we decided to create a Magazine theme that can serve as an 2022-ready alternative to our classic Magazine themes like Zuki, Uku or Weta.
Patterns for Magazines and blogs
The biggest advantage of FSE (Full Site Editing) block themes is the possibility to customise any part of your website (yes, including Headers and Footers) without the need for a page builder plugin.

To get Makoney off the ground, we focused on layout section patterns and ready to go Page patterns that can be easily dragged into the editor.

As a little homage to our Zuki theme, we created a similar Archive Content filter as a pattern to the Makoney landing page design. But now with block themes, it’s so much easier to customise the content of the accordion and place the element on any page and at any position on your page. You decide.

Makoney patterns include Query patterns for one to six column post sections, which you can easily place anywhere on your website.
We also prepared a Mailchimp newsletter pattern, an About section, Tagcloud and Category list patterns, a Featured Quote pattern, two Headers and a big Footer pattern.
Edit Templates via the New Editor
With WordPress 5.9 (to be released January 25, 22) or the Gutenberg plugin active, you will have access to the Editor.

You can customise all parts of your website via the new Editor, including your Header and Footer as well as pages like your Archive page, the Single Post Pages or the blog page.

How to get started
To get started with Makoney, you can join our Grow plan. We will release more Full Site Editing themes, patterns, and blocks, and they will all be available to you. Since block themes are very new, we all need to learn how to use them in their full potential. Hence, we will offer a monthly live webinar as well as livestream member-only office hours. We will have time to answer your questions, chat as a community and learn more about the new ways of building websites in WordPress (the first schedule will be available later this week).
Once you are a Grow member, you can access the Makoney theme file and the theme demo material via the Downloads page. If you have used the Aino free theme before, you can easily switch themes right away. All Aino free patterns are available in Makoney, so you won’t lose access to them.
If you have not used a block theme previously, make sure you have the Gutenberg plugin active (this will not be necessary once WordPress 5.9 is released), install the Aino Blocks, Aino FAQ/Accordion block and Aino Notification block and upload and activate your Makoney theme. You can import the Makoney demo content if you like. This is recommended if you don’t have any published block posts on your website yet.
Once the theme is active, have a look at the patterns available and set up your pages as you need them. Once you have created your pages, you can go to Appearance→Editor and customise your Header and Footer with the Navigation links and Social Icon links you want to add. Read the tutorials on setting up Headers and Footers in block themes for more detailed instructions. You can also follow our block theme video tutorials on YouTube.

Ask us anything
If you have questions, please contact us via our email support or join our first members-only webinar. I will release the schedule here on the blog later this week.
Do you have questions about Makoney, our Grow plan or any suggestions to what kind of themes, patterns, and blocks we should build next? Let us know in the comments below!
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8 responses to “Introducing Makoney: A Full Site Editing Block Theme for Magazines and Blogs”
Amazing job!
Elma Studio is really pushing ahead FSE development!
Hi Frederico,
thank you so much for your kind feedback. It’s an exciting time for WordPress themes right now.
I know it is a bit of a learning curve to work with a block theme for the first time and Full Site Editing is just starting out, but I believe it’s really really a game changer and will be the only preferred way we will create websites in WordPress in a short time.
Macht einen sehr guten Eindruck. Gerade die große Schrift finde ich sowohl auf einem 4k-Bildschirm am Mac als auch am Handy extrem angenehm zu lesen. Das vermisse ich oft an anderen Seiten, die eine zu kleine Schrift benutzen. Zumal bei Makoney alles schön aufgeräumt ist und nichts den Lesefluss stört.
Das einzige was ich etwas vermisse, ist eine Sidebar. Aber vielleicht ist die Zeit der Sidebars vorüber? Da würde mich eure Meinung als Designer/Entwickler interessieren. ich bin da aber recht offen, die Sidebar wegzulassen und generell auch neue Wege bei Themes zu gehen.
Momentan benutze ich Uku, immer noch ein tolles Theme von euch. Aber Makoney könnte Uku ablösen. Da werde ich viel rumtesten.
Ansonsten danke für eure Arbeit und sorry für den deutschen Kommentar auf der englischen Seite. Hoffe das geht so in Ordnung.
Hallo Rene,
herzlichen Dank für dein tolles Feedback, das freut uns total. Ja, eine Sidebar ist nicht mehr wirklich empfehlenswert, ehrlich gesagt, wenn darauf verzichtet werden kann. Klassiche eCommerce websites sind da vielleicht noch eine kleine Ausnahme, aber auch da gibt es bessere Alternativen.
Ich werde in Kürze auch noch Video-Tutorials vorbereiten die zeigen, wie man von einem klassischen Theme wie Uku oder Zuki wechseln kann. Makony kann z.B. auch superleicht mit einer Sans-serifen Schrift genutzt werden. Dazu bald weitere Tutorials. Wenn du Fragen hast, sag bitte jederzeit Bescheid.
English Translation:
Hello Rene,
thank you very much for your great feedback, that makes us super happy. Yes, a sidebar is not really recommended anymore, to be honest, if it can be avoided. eCommerce websites might still be a small exception, but even there, it’s best to find an alternative solution
I will also prepare video tutorials soon showing how to switch from a classic theme like Uku or Zuki. Makony can also be used super easy with a sans-serif font, for example. More tutorials on that coming soon. If you have any questions, please let me know anytime.
Love the design so much! Sadly the amount of CSS used in this theme would instantly blow our entire performance budget many times over.
Hi Bex,
thank you so much for your feedback. Regarding the CSS size that was actually an error in our first release yesterday. I fixed it now and the file size is much smaller you can check e.g. GTmetrix.
Also once we can deactivate the Gutenberg plugin for block themes with the WordPress 5.9 release on Jan, 25th the performance should increase again. I will do another performance improvement round then to improve the theme further.
Please let me know at any time if you have questions!
Hallo Ellen,
nutze noch weta und uku ( v1.1.0; 1.3.7) bevor ich wechsele wüsste gern ob oder wann es auch eine deutsche Version gibt?
Grüsse Werner
Hallo Werner,
ja, auf jeden Fall, wir liefern eine deutschsprachige Version mit und die aller meisten Texte kann man bei einem Block-Theme direkt im Editor selbst anpassen. Ich werde in den kommenden Tagen noch mehr Videos (auch auf Deutsch) dazu veröffentlichen. So wird das ganze Konzept der neuen Full Site Editing Themes noch leichter verständlich.
Ich mache auch noch Videos in denen ich Schritt für Schritt zeige, wie man unsere klassischen Themes umziehen kann.
Wenn du Fragen hast, sag jederzeit Bescheid.
Grüsse, Ellen