Changelog

Every released version of Stoat, newest first, as recorded in the theme's readme.txt.

Current version 1.4.1, which needs WordPress 6.5 and PHP 7.4 and is tested to WordPress 7.0. Update from Dashboard → Appearance → Themes like any other WordPress.org theme — see updating.

1.4.1

  • New: a Footer Widgets area. Widget titles, link lists, and a “you are here” mark on the current item in nav, pages and category widgets.
  • New: theme.json, so the editor canvas and the front end share one set of widths and spacing — including the content and wide widths that the Wide and Full alignments follow.
  • The editor now writes posts on a serif sheet at the width the post will render at; full-width pages still edit full width.
  • Feature the first post lifts the lead story above the loop as a half-width hero.
  • Author archives put the avatar above the name and bio; search results take a body-size title; the 404 loses its dangling rule.
  • The subtitle field is now posts only — a headline device belongs to a story, not to an About page. A value left on a page stays hidden rather than showing with no way to edit it. The stoat_subtitle_post_types filter hands the field back to pages or a CPT.
  • New Customize options: logo and nav fonts, button corner radius, category position, author name and avatar, which side the listing thumbnail sits on, and how wide the single featured image runs.
  • Customize → Style now opens the Accent color picker on the colour the page is actually using, rather than on an empty swatch.
  • New stoat_entry_flag hook on listing entries, so a plugin can mark an entry without touching a template. See hooks and filters.
  • The search form is capped at 400px.

1.4

  • New modal mechanism, shared by every overlay in the theme. One small script replaces the two the theme used to ship (js/search.js and js/a11y.js are gone) and the mobile menu’s inline handlers. See dialogs and modals.
  • New in Customize → Header: Header layout — logo left, logo centred, or the navigation on its own full-width row below the logo. A header border and a switch for the search icon come with it.
  • New: a Social menu location. Put your profile links in a menu and each one takes the brand icon its URL implies.
  • The search icon now opens the search form in a dialog, at every width — phones included. The duplicate copy of the form inside the mobile menu is gone.
  • The mobile menu is now a modal drawer. Escape-to-close and focus-trapping are always on, so Customize → Misc no longer carries the “Enhanced menu keyboard support” toggle.
  • With JavaScript off, every dialog renders as ordinary content at the foot of the page instead of leaving a button that does nothing.

1.3.2 — 3 September 2026

  • Documentation moved, and the demo moved to stoat.owldraft.com.
  • The theme description points at the new demo address.

1.3.1 — 8 August 2026

  • The theme is now published by Owldraft. Theme author, author URI and theme URI updated.
  • The footer theme credit links to the new theme URL.

1.3 — 17 July 2026

  • New Layout section: set the content width and the narrow reading column in pixels, then pick Narrow or Full for archives, pages and posts independently.
  • New per-page override: the page editor’s Page options box can set a page’s content width to Narrow or Full, or leave it on the Customizer default.
  • New Header section: Header skin (Light or Dark), Header background color and Header text color (leave either empty to follow the skin), and Header padding.
  • New header button: give it text and a link to add a call-to-action to the bar, in Primary, Black, White or Outline style, optionally opening in a new tab. On mobile it moves into the drawer, full width.
  • New in Single Post: Show featured image (top), which puts the featured image above the post content along with its caption. Off by default.
  • New in Footer: Footer padding.
  • The footer now follows the content width set above it instead of always using the reading column.
  • Button blocks in the editor match the front end, and the Details block is styled.

1.2.2 — 16 July 2026

  • New in Typography: Navigation font (defaults to whatever the headings use), Heading font weight, and Heading letter case.
  • New in Style: Meta text color, for the date, categories and comment count.
  • New in Archive: Thumbnail ratio (square, landscape, portrait, or the image’s original ratio) and Thumbnail width (a pixel size, or a percentage that tracks the post row).
  • Styled the core Query Loop blocks — post title, featured image, date, terms, author, excerpt and pagination now match the theme’s own archive.
  • Fixed: a 404 URL rendered the full post archive underneath the “Nothing found” heading instead of just the message and a search form.
  • Fixed: two roles sharing one font family emitted that family’s @font-face rules twice.
  • Heading spacing and list indentation now apply everywhere, not only inside post content.

1.2.1 — 23 June 2026

  • Updated screenshot.jpg, and documented the CC0 licence and credits for the images used in it.

1.2 — 19 June 2026

  • Minor style refinements.

1.1.1 — 9 June 2026

  • Mobile menu open and close became pure CSS plus inline handlers; Escape and focus-trapping moved to an optional js/a11y.js. (Both superseded by the modal mechanism in 1.4.)
  • Removed the classic-editor toggle — use the official Classic Editor plugin instead.
  • “Disable pages in search results” now defaults off.

1.1 — 8 June 2026

1.0

  • Initial release.

Last updated September 13, 2026

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