Refreshing GovPress

At its peak, GovPress was a popular, free, open source WordPress theme for government websites. It was designed to be accessible, responsive, fast, and easy to use.

However, over time, GovPress was dying on the vine. I didn’t renew the project domain name, and the WordPress.org theme page was pointing to a questionable site now using the URL. When submitting minor changes to the theme to address the above issue, I realized the codebase was no longer aligned with WordPress best practices. The theme’s outdated dependencies also made me uncomfortable having it in a publicly accessible repository.

I questioned whether I should just delete the project and move on.

Because of AI coding tools, I was able to refresh GovPress and again make it a free, reliable option for government websites. I was able to quickly refactor the codebase and bring it up to date with the latest WordPress standards. I also updated the theme’s dependencies and fixed any security vulnerabilities that were present. I made slight theme enhancements, mostly retaining the original design approach that leans heavily on simplicity. And GovPress now has robust documentation to support installation and customization.

The project is now back on track and ready for the next phase of development. I don’t plan on making major theme changes, but will update it occasionally to ensure it remains secure and compatible with the latest versions of WordPress. And, of course, I’m open to addressing bug reports and high-demand feature requests from the community.

A project I thought was ready to deprecate has been revitalized.

I’m excited to see what the future holds for GovPress and the government websites that use it.

Get GovPress:

• GovPress on GitHub
• GovPress on WordPress.org
• Documentation
• Release notes