Rebuilding My Site with the Frost Theme: Simplicity, Speed, and Blocks That Work

During my sabbatical, I finally carved out time to do something I’d been meaning to do for months: rebuild jonimms.com.

I didn’t want to overthink it. I didn’t want to get stuck in endless design tweaks. I just wanted a clean, fast, modern site I could actually enjoy working on again.

So I turned to the Frost theme—and it delivered.

🔍 Why Frost?

Lightweight and fast
Built for the modern WordPress block editor
Minimalist, clean, and full-site editing ready
Easy to override with a child theme

It’s also built by people who know WordPress inside out—so it uses best practices without feeling bloated or opinionated.

⚙️ Creating a Child Theme (It’s Dead Simple)

One of the best parts? I didn’t have to build from scratch.

style.css (with the usual Theme header)
functions.php to enqueue styles
theme.json to set up my own fonts, colors, spacing, etc.

From there, I was able to fully control my design system with zero CSS hacks. Frost’s block-first design made customizing everything a breeze.

My custom theme.json defining fonts, spacing, and layout.

🔧 Customizing with Blocks & Patterns

Frost comes with a bunch of pre-made block patterns—but I also created my own:

📍 A custom timeline block for my work history
🔗 Social logo block for external links
✍️ A testimonial slider
🧩 Several custom blocks inside my jonimms-blocks plugin

And because Frost is block-first, it played nicely with everything I added. I didn’t need to touch a single template file—just patterns, blocks, and global styles.

🧠 What I Learned

You don’t need a complex theme to build a personal site
Full Site Editing (FSE) is no longer “experimental”—it’s actually awesome
A well-structured theme.json beats 500 lines of CSS
You can rebuild your site in a few days without burning out

🚀 What’s Next

Continue expanding jonimms-blocks with new block ideas
Build custom block patterns to speed up client site launches
Use Frost as a base for client child themes
Share reusable patterns and templates publicly

✍️ Final Thoughts

If you’re a developer who hasn’t tried Frost yet, it’s absolutely worth a look. Whether you’re building your own site or spinning up client projects, it gives you just enough to start—without getting in your way.

And if you’ve been putting off a personal site refresh, take it from me: sometimes a sabbatical and a clean theme is all you need to get back in the game.

📁 Category: WordPress Development