12 October 2026

OpenStation Blog: What WordPress would have looked like in 1995

I’ve been wondering how far a theme can take OpenStation. Not just a wallpaper and a different color, but everything: windows, dock, menus, fonts, icons, layouts, etc. So I tried to make wp-admin look like two operating systems from a long time ago.

The same wp-admin desktop, with the same windows open, switching between a 1995 look (teal desk, grey windows, a taskbar) and a 1984 look in black and white. — Can you believe that this is still WordPress? Turns out that the web is still fun! You only need WordPress, OpenStation, and one of these two themes.

Retro 95 reimagines wp-admin as Windows 95. It even comes with a Start menu! And the classic clock sitting in the bottom-right corner is also there. You can try it live.

wp-admin with the Retro 95 theme: opening Posts from the Start menu and writing a new post titled Hello from 1995.

Retro 84 is the counterpart for Apple fans. It turns wp-admin into the first graphical OS that many people ever saw: the original Macintosh’s System 1. The beloved monochrome display, the classic pixelated font, and more! Check out the live demo.

wp-admin with the Retro 84 theme in black and white: previewing documents on the desk and writing a new post titled Hello from 1984.

And here’s a fun fact: every icon is pixel art typed into a text file, one character per pixel. The fonts were also made the same way, letter by letter.

For each theme, a text file where every character is one pixel, the icon it becomes (a 1995 computer and a 1984 floppy disk), and the rest of the theme's icons.

Underneath, it’s the same wp-admin as always, just a few decades older.

If you want to build your own theme, the docs list everything a theme can change. Maybe it’s time for a proper Windows Vista comeback.