Twenty Twenty-Four vs Next.js: When the Default Theme Stops Fitting

Half a million sites kept the theme they started with

Twenty Twenty-Four went out with WordPress 6.4, the release called Shirley, on November 7, 2023. For a year it was what every fresh install wore. wordpress.org still counts more than 500,000 active installs, and a good share of them belong to owners who picked the Business layout, swapped in a logo and went back to running the company. That is not a criticism. It is precisely what a default theme is for.

Nor is it abandoned. The WordPress team shipped version 1.4 in December 2025, 1.5 in May 2026 and 1.6 on August 19, 2026, tested up to WordPress 7.1. Reviews on wordpress.org are lukewarm, 76 out of 100 from just 39 ratings, which fits a theme most people never chose so much as inherited. The real question is not whether it still works. It does. The question is whether the site your business needs in 2026 is still a Twenty Twenty-Four site.

A default theme is a starting line, and a great many businesses are still standing on it.

Three starting points, seven palettes, almost no CSS

Give the theme its due. It was designed around use cases rather than demos: Business is the default, and Writer and Portfolio arrive by opening a template and choosing Replace Template. Custom templates cover the common odd pages (Page no Title, Page with Sidebar, Page with Wide Image) and a single-post layout with a sidebar. Small block styles add polish: headings with an asterisk, checkmark lists, arrow details and pill-shaped tags.

• Seven alternate palettes in the package: Ember, Fossil, Ice, Maelstrom, Mint, Onyx and Rust, alongside the default. (The wordpress.org documentation says nine; the theme files contain seven.)
• Typography with a point of view: Cardo for headings and Inter for body text, both bundled locally so no request goes to Google.
• A reading column built for long posts: 620 pixels for content, 1280 for wide sections.
• No front-end theme stylesheet at all. Styling comes from theme.json, and the one extra file, for outline buttons, loads only on pages where that button appears. The theme's own code comment says this improves performance by sending visitors less data.
• More patterns than promised: the 6.4 announcement mentioned over 35 templates and patterns; the 1.6 package holds 57 pattern files and 11 templates.

For a consultant, an author or a studio that wants to publish and be found, that is still a tidy toolkit. The Twenty Twenty-Four speed guide covers keeping it quick as the content grows.

The 2023 default against a 2026 build, row by row

The left column assumes a Twenty Twenty-Four site two or three years into its life: the theme, plus the plugins that accumulated as the business asked for more. The middle column is a custom Next.js build. The right column is that build with Athena CMS behind it, which is how we deliver every site.

The rows that bite hardest for a grown Twenty Twenty-Four site are custom development and CMS usability, which the next section unpacks. For the mechanics behind the speed rows, see WordPress vs Next.js on speed and what each costs over time.

The year-two problems that push owners off it

Owners outgrow Twenty Twenty-Four in predictable ways, and each one traces back to how block themes store design decisions.

The child theme that forgot everything

A careful owner, or a cautious freelancer, creates a child theme to protect customizations. Then the surprise: templates and template parts edited in the Site Editor were saved in the database against the parent theme, and they do not carry over. Months of header and footer tweaks have to be redone or copied by hand. It is a reasonable design choice by WordPress and a miserable afternoon for whoever discovers it.

The menu that speaks one language

Sites that add a second language with Polylang report that the Navigation block inside templates stays in the default language, a forum thread still unresolved when we checked. For a business serving English and Spanish speakers, a menu that refuses to translate is not a cosmetic issue.

The header you cannot hide on one page

Want a landing page without the main menu? In this theme that means building a separate template, then remembering to assign it. Headers that vanish where they should not are their own problem, covered in the header not showing guide, alongside fixes for a broken layout and a mobile menu that will not open.

The store it was never dressed for

The theme has no WooCommerce templates and relies on the block templates WooCommerce supplies. That works, but the shop pages look like WooCommerce rather than like your brand until someone rebuilds them in the Site Editor. Even the documentation lags a little: it still lists PHP 5.6 while the theme now requires 7.0.

What the plugin pile looks like by the second birthday

Twenty Twenty-Four itself asks for no plugins. The business running on it is another matter. Two years in, a typical install has picked up a form plugin for quotes, an SEO plugin for descriptions, Polylang or a rival for the Spanish pages, WooCommerce for gift cards, a booking plugin, a backup tool and something for cookie consent. Some owners, worn down by the Site Editor, install a full page builder on top of a block theme, which is like hiring a contractor to rearrange a house that already has movable walls.

Each addition was reasonable on the day. Together they make the cleanest theme in WordPress the quiet host for seven or eight vendors, each updating on its own schedule and each adding code to pages that never use it. If the site has slowed or broken after one of those updates, the theme repair team can steady it, and the plugin dependency comparison explains why it keeps happening.

The third option

Athena CMS, with AI agents on staff.

Not a theme and not a blank Next.js repo. The content system we put behind every custom site: plain fields, a real preview, every version kept, and AI agents that handle the chores a plugin only nags you about.

• PPicassoImages
• AApolloSite analysis
• AAresCompetitor watch
• PPrometheusContent holes
• AAtlasPage depth and structure
• DDelphiAI search visibility

ZDAOAand 12 more agents. Two come with Athena; the rest are monthly add-ons.

Meet the agentsTake the Athena tour

PPicassoWeekly · ImagesAApolloWeekly · Site analysis

Stay, switch themes, or rebuild: sorting your case

There are three honest options here, not two. You can stay and tidy up. You can move sideways to Twenty Twenty-Five, which keeps the same editing model and adds nine style variations and a much larger pattern library at no cost. Or you can rebuild on Next.js. The split below covers the first and third; if your main complaint is that the site looks dated, try the sideways move before anything else, and read Twenty Twenty-Five vs Next.js first.

Not sure which column you belong in? A free site audit reads the site, lists every plugin's job and tells you whether tuning, a theme switch or a rebuild is the cheapest path.

What it takes to move a Twenty Twenty-Four site

Content from this theme migrates well, because posts and pages are stored as block markup rather than builder shortcodes. The parts that need care are the ones the Site Editor kept in the database.

1. 1

   Pull the database-stored design out first

   Edited templates, template parts and global styles are records, not files. They are exported and read before anything else, so nothing the owner built is lost.

2. 2

   List which use case each page uses

   Business, Writer and Portfolio templates, plus the sidebar and wide-image variants, each become a component in the new build.

3. 3

   Map content and languages

   Posts, pages and any translated copies are mapped to structured fields, with each language given a proper path.

4. 4

   Plan every URL

   Addresses are kept where possible and given a permanent redirect where they change.

5. 5

   Build, compare and switch

   The new site is checked page by page against the old one on a private address, then DNS moves and Search Console is watched.

The full plan is in moving Twenty Twenty-Four to Next.js, with the factors that drive migration timelines. If you want us to do it, the WordPress to Next.js rebuild service starts with a fixed quote.

Athena for the owner who only wanted to change the words

Most Twenty Twenty-Four owners never wanted to design templates. They wanted to update a price, add a team member and post the occasional article. Athena CMS gives them exactly that: plain fields, a real preview and every version kept, so the lost-customization problem simply cannot happen. Layout lives in code; words, images and listings live in fields.

The agents pick up where this theme's owners usually struggle. Harmonia prepares Spanish versions and checks accessibility, which addresses the menu that would not translate. Apollo reads every page and says what to fix first. Prometheus finds customer questions the site never answers and drafts the page. Argus keeps an eye on forms and slow pages. For the step-by-step of leaving WordPress for Athena, see switching from WordPress.

Who should stay, who should switch, who should rebuild

Whichever row you sit on, the free website health check gives a quick read before you spend anything, and the WordPress vs Next.js comparison center lists every other theme we have measured the same way.