Thirteen Colors Plugin

Thirteen Colors is the easiest way to customize the colors of the Twenty Thirteen theme.

Twenty Thirteen is bold, but if you don’t like its vibrant shades of orange you’ll welcome the ability to transform the theme in a matter of minutes. Just activate Thirteen Colors, head over to the theme customizer, and adjust the default colors to the shades of your liking. Things are kept as simple as possible; colors are grouped into similar usages as in the base theme so you don’t need to worry about contrast if you maintain similar intensities for each color.

Header images are designed to be abstract art for Twenty Thirteen, so Thirteen Colors also integrates with a neat tool that can generate a custom header image in your colors. In a matter of minutes, you can transform WordPress’ default theme for 2013 into a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that’s visually as unique as your content. All of the little details are taken care of, including the editor styles.

By the way, despite the plugin’s name, there are only eight customizable color fields to streamline the process as much as possible. Twenty Thirteen’s original colors are condensed into these eight blocks, but most of the changes are visually indistinguishable.

1. Take the easy route and install through the WordPress plugin adder OR
2. Download the .zip file and upload the unzipped folder to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Go to the theme customizer (Appearance -> Customize) and adjust the eight new color pickers under the “Colors” heading to your liking
5. If you want to create a header image in your colors, save your changes in the customizer and refresh the page. Then, go to the “Header Image” section and follow the links.

1. 

   Color customization interface within the theme customizer.

2. 

   All eight customizable color blocks (with default colors).

3. 

   Custom header integration, with some generated headers.

I Tried Using Thirteen Colors with a theme other than Twenty Thirteen and …

Thirteen Colors is designed specifically for use with Twenty Thirteen (or a child theme of Twenty Thirteen). If you’re going to switch themes, be sure to disable Thirteen Colors. There is a known bug where Thirteen Colors runs in the customizer when previewing another theme; it should stop doing anything visible once the new theme is activated.

Some Colors are Changed Before They’ve Even been customized

Twenty Thirteen uses over twenty different colors, many in several different places for both background and text colors. In order to make customization more manageable, these colors are merged into eight color blocks, with visually similar color rules merged. If you aren’t customizing the colors, be sure to deactivate Thirteen Colors so that you can get all of the more specific original/default color combinations.

Child Themes

Thirteen Colors is a plugin, not a child theme, because it is primarily programmatic (ie, it would only consist of a functions.php file) and for flexibility.

You can use Thirteen Colors with both Twenty Thirteen and child themes. Be aware that the Thirteen Colors settings are stored with the active theme, so if you switch to a child theme or switch child themes, you’ll need to re-set your colors.

1.0

• First publicly available version of the plugin.
• Compatible with WordPress 3.6+ (and Twenty Thirteen requires 3.6+ anyway).