Stoat is a free WordPress theme for sites where the writing is the product: a local news site, a magazine, a personal blog, a publication with a newsletter behind it. It is built around two things — a reading column that is comfortable to read, and a page that loads before the reader has finished blinking.
What it is
A classic theme, not a block (FSE) theme. Posts and pages are written in the block editor exactly as they always were, but the site’s frame — header, footer, widths, typography, colours — is set in the Customizer at Appearance → Customize, live, with an undo that costs nothing: close the tab without publishing and the site is untouched.
| Requires | WordPress 6.5, PHP 7.4 |
| Tested to | WordPress 7.0 |
| Plugins needed | none |
| External requests | none — no Google Fonts, no CDN, no tracker |
| JavaScript | one file, js/modal.js, which opens the mobile menu and the search dialog |
| Licence | GPL v2 or later |
What you get
- Three header layouts — logo left, logo centred, or the navigation on its own row below — with a light or dark skin, a search dialog, a row of social icons and an optional call-to-action button that can change or disappear once a reader signs in.
- A listing you can take apart: every piece of a post row — thumbnail, excerpt, categories, date, author, comment count — has its own switch in Archive, and the newest post can be lifted out as a half-width hero on the front page, per site or per category.
- Two widths, applied per context. Set what narrow and full actually measure, then choose which of the two archives, pages and posts each use — and override it on any single page.
- Typography per role — body, headings, menu and site title — each with its own face, size, weight, tracking and case, and the body and title sizes settable again for tablet and phone.
- A per-post subtitle field, stored where every OwlDraft theme can read it.
- A footer widget area and three menu locations.
What it does not do
This is as much the point as the list above.
No page builder. The block editor is the page builder. The theme ships a theme.json so block widths and spacing follow the theme rather than the editor’s defaults.
No webfonts fetched from anyone else. The font dropdowns offer nine web-safe stacks that download nothing, plus any family you installed yourself through the WordPress Font Library — served from your own domain. See how the font picker works.
No sidebar. Stoat is a single-column theme; the only widget area is the footer. A reading column with a column of boxes beside it is a different theme, not a switch on this one.
No demo importer and no required companion plugin. Nothing about the theme is held back behind a second install.
No settings page in the dashboard. Every option is in the Customizer, which previews before it saves. Where every option lives maps each one to its section.
It is also the OwlDraft Publisher theme
Stoat is the theme OwlDraft Publisher is built against. Install the plugin and the header grows a Sign in / Account link of its own, locked posts get a Members or Paid chip in the listing, and the header button learns one more answer to “what happens once the reader has already subscribed”. None of that is in the way if you never install it: the theme on its own has no trace of the plugin.
Who it suits
Local news, small magazines, single-topic publications, personal blogs, newsletters with an archive. It is a poor fit for a shop front or a drag-and-drop landing-page builder — those are plugin jobs, and a theme that pretended otherwise would be slower at the thing it is actually for.
Next
Install the theme, then walk the options map.