Changelog

Every released version of Rural Blog, newest first, as recorded in the theme’s readme.txt. Current version: 1.5.1, which needs WordPress 6.0 and PHP 7.0. Update from Dashboard → Appearance → Themes like any other WordPress.org theme — see Update the theme.

A change to a default never reaches a site that already exists: the theme writes your old value into the control on update, so a published blog keeps the look it had.

1.5.1

• New: Appearance > Rural Blog, a page of its own gathering the documentation, the live demo, the support forum and the changelog in one place. Nothing on it changes the site - every card is a link out to a page to read, so it is somewhere to start rather than another set of options to get through.
• New: A welcome notice on the Dashboard and the Themes screen, pointing at that page. It is the ordinary dismissible admin notice, not a popup and not a redirect after you activate the theme, and the X means gone for good rather than gone until the next page load. Reading the page dismisses it too, and the dismissal is remembered per user, so on a blog with several editors the second one to log in still gets told where things are.
• Change: The demo has moved to rural-blog.themepreview.site and the documentation to themedocs.github.io/rural-blog. The old addresses are the ones printed in earlier releases, so the theme description, the installation notes and the changelog link all now point at the new ones.

1.5

• New: Footer border option in Design > Footer - none, a light line, a strong line, or a shadow above the footer. None is what the theme has always drawn, so nothing moves until you pick another. It is the footer twin of the header border added in 1.4.1, and matches it line for line; a dark footer skin flips the line to the light side so it stays visible.
• Change: Footer padding gives the same space above the footer content as below it. Compact, Spacious and Extra spacious used to leave roughly twice as much room at the top as at the bottom, which was inherited from an older default that no longer applies, and read as mis-set rather than as a style. Compact and Spacious are also a little tighter than before.
• New: Archives page template. Add a page, pick “Archives” under Template in the page settings, and the page lists every post you have published, newest first. The year heads each group, the month sits in the left margin under it, and the titles run down the right in one column, so the whole blog reads as a timeline on a single screen. On a phone the months step back above their lists too. Whatever you write in the page itself appears above the index, and the page takes a sidebar like any other.
• New: Archives page year, in Customize > Blog. The year reads as a heading above the months it heads, with the months flush left, or it takes a margin of its own beside them — the heading is the default, since it hands that margin’s width back to the titles on a narrow page. The months keep their two columns either way, so the index is still a timeline, and phones stack it whichever you pick.
• New: The text logo has weight, letter spacing and case of its own in Customize > Site Identity, so a masthead can be set differently from the headings under it. Left alone it keeps following the heading font at the bold uppercase the theme has always drawn.
• New: Content link style, in Design > General. Links inside a post take the color of the text around them and carry an underline out of the box; there are now seven styles to pick from. Give them your link color, drop the underline, keep the text black and colour only the rule beneath it, fill the link with your accent color as the pointer crosses it, or run a highlighter stripe along the baseline that grows to cover the word. Every one of them changes on hover, so a link is never colour alone.
• New: Sidebar gap, in Design > General. The space between the content and the sidebar, on any template set to Sidebar left or Sidebar right. On narrow screens the two still stack, so the setting only applies where they sit side by side.
• New: Sidebar divider, in Design > General. An optional vertical rule down the middle of that gap, as a light or a strong line. It runs the full depth of the content area, from the header rule down to the footer, and turning it on does not narrow either column.
• New: Border color, in Design > General. The hairline the theme draws for horizontal rules, separator blocks, table cells, the search panel and the scroll to top button, all on one setting so a 1px line is the same color everywhere it appears. A featured image border still falls back to it when Design > Blog leaves that color empty.
• New: Text logo color, in Customize > Site Identity, beside the typography controls. Only applies when no logo image is set. Left empty the site name keeps following the header text color, so a dark header still gets a light masthead without picking anything.
• New: Tagline color, in Customize > Site Identity, under the text logo color. Its own picker rather than a share of the logo’s, since the usual move is to mute the tagline against a full-strength site name and one color cannot do that. Empty follows the header text color, so an untouched tagline reads exactly as it did.
• New: Menu hover background, in Design > Header, under the menu hover color. Puts a block of color behind a top-level menu item as the pointer crosses it, and behind the item for the page you are on. It is empty out of the box, which is no block at all, and the padding the block needs is taken back out of the space between the items - so the menu sits exactly where it did whether you pick a color or not.
• New: The social links can be turned off in Customize > Header. One option covers the bar and the mobile menu together, because the panel is where those icons live once the bar collapses on a phone. The same links in the footer keep the switch they got in 1.4.1, and the menu itself stays assigned either way.
• New: Post title color, Meta color and Excerpt color, in Design > Blog. The three parts of a listing entry can each take a color of their own, in the blog listing and in a Query Loop alike. The post title color is the listing title only - a single post keeps the heading color. The meta color reaches the same lines the meta font does: the meta row, the tag list, comment metadata and the date, author and terms blocks. All three are empty out of the box and empty means “follow the text color”, so nothing moves until you pick one.
• New: Meta position, in Customize > Blog. The date, categories and comment count can read as a kicker above each post title, which is where they have always been, or as a byline below it. It applies to all three listing displays - stacked, list and grid - and a single post keeps its own order.
• New: Stacked alignment, in Customize > Blog - Left, Center or Right. Which edge each entry in the Stacked display lines up on: the meta line, the post title, the subtitle and the featured image all follow it. Center is what the theme has always drawn, so nothing moves until you pick another, and the post text stays left-aligned whichever you choose. The setting only appears while the display is set to Stacked - the list and grid displays are left-aligned by design.
• New: Post text, in Customize > Blog. A listing can print the whole post under each title instead of the excerpt. Excerpt is still what you get out of the box, and a post that sets a “more” tag stops there either way. Search results keep the excerpt whatever this is set to.
• New: Title alignment for pages, in Customize > Page - Left, Center or Right. The same setting sits in the Page options box beside the editor, set to “Site default” out of the box, so any one page can read differently from the rest without changing the others. Center is what the theme has always drawn, and it only applies from tablet up; narrow screens always read left.
• Change: The meta line - the date, categories and comment count, and with them the tag list, comment metadata and the date, author and terms blocks - is no longer small caps. It reads a notch under the body text at its own size, at a regular weight instead of the heading’s, in the case you typed, and without the letter spacing. This is the new default for a new site only: a site updating from an earlier version keeps the small-caps line it has, and can set the new one by hand in Design > Blog > Meta font.
• Change: The grid display goes up to six columns, where it stopped at four. A tablet takes up to four of them, a phone still up to two, and the range in between thins a wide grid on its own so the cards never get too narrow to read. Nothing moves on a site that already picked a count.
• Change: “Text logo font size” in Customize > Site Identity is now “Text logo typography” - the same three size boxes, with the weight, letter spacing and case controls beside them. Nothing you had set moves.
• Change: The menu sits on a tighter line, and a top-level item carries almost no padding above and below its text. The old padding was room for a highlight the theme never drew; now that the menu hover background can draw one, the block is sized from the text instead. The items are centred in the bar whatever its height, so nothing moves along the row - a menu item that wraps to a second line closes up, and the dropdown and the mobile panel read tighter with it.
• Change: A menu link changes color the moment the pointer reaches it, rather than fading over a tenth of a second. The fade read as lag next to the hover background, which appears at once, and the two now land together.
• Fix: On the Nav below header layout, setting Design > Header > Header border to None cleared the line under the bar but left the one between the logo row and the menu row.
• Fix: Turning off the date, the categories and the comment count together left the meta row itself behind as an empty line, so the space under the title stayed as if something were still in it. The row is now only drawn when it has something to show - on a listing and on a single post alike, and equally on a post that simply has no categories to name.
• Change: Design > Blog leads with the post title, meta and excerpt controls and puts the featured image ones under the “Thumbnail” heading below them. The “Typography” heading is gone - each role now carries its font and its color together instead of being split across two groups.
• Change: The seven block patterns added in 1.4, and the “Rural Blog” group they sat in, are gone from the inserter. A page that already has one of them keeps it - a pattern is copied into the post when you insert it, so nothing you built comes apart. The post block styling they relied on stays, so a Query Loop you assemble yourself still looks like the rest of the theme.

1.4.1

• New: Header border option in Design > Header - none, a light line, a strong line, or a shadow under the bar. The light line is what the theme has always drawn, so nothing moves until you pick another.
• New: Footer layout option in Customize > Footer - Stacked or Inline. Stacked is the centred column the theme has always had; Inline puts the copyright on the left half and the footer menu and social links together on the right. It folds back to the stacked column on small screens.
• New: The footer social links can be turned off in Customize > Footer, without touching the same links in the header or the mobile menu.
• New: Sticky header can be turned off in Customize > Header. The bar follows the page as you scroll out of the box; switch it off and it scrolls away instead, on desktop and on mobile alike.
• New: Header alignment for single posts, in Customize > Single post - Left, Center or Right. The categories, title, subtitle and meta row move together. Center is what the theme has always drawn, and it only applies from tablet up; narrow screens always read left.
• Change: The copyright line reads “(c) 2026. All rights reserved.” - a full stop after the year instead of a dash. With the copyright text emptied out the year now stands on its own, where it used to leave a dangling separator behind. Turn off the year, the text and the credit together and the line is no longer printed at all, instead of leaving an empty box the footer still spaces around.
• Change: The scroll to top button is off by default. A site that already had it keeps it - the old answer is written in on update - so this only affects new sites. Turn it on in Customize > Footer.
• Change: The scroll to top arrow is drawn in the muted grey the theme uses elsewhere rather than full body color, so the button sits back from the page it floats over.
• Change: Themers can filter the footer’s class list with the new “rural_blog_footer_classes” filter, as the header already allowed with “rural_blog_header_classes”.
• Fix: In Design > Typography > Heading sizes, the H2 box hinted at 2.25rem while the size the theme actually draws is 2rem. The hint now matches; no heading changed size.

1.4

• New: Design > Blog section, for how the listing looks - featured image border width and color, corner radius, post title font and meta font. Each of those styles the matching post block as well, so a blog listing and a Query Loop stay in step instead of drifting apart.
• New: Seven block patterns, grouped under “Rural Blog” in the inserter - a post hero with the image beside the text, a post hero with a wide image and centered text, post grids in three, four and five columns, a post list with dates, and a two-column list with excerpts.
• New: Scroll to top button, on by default. A round button appears in the bottom corner once you scroll down a screenful; turn it off in Customize > Footer. It is a plain link to the top of the page, so it still works with JavaScript off, and it skips the smooth scroll for anyone who asked for reduced motion.
• New: Featured images now tell the browser how wide they will actually be drawn, worked out from the layout, the display mode and the grid column count. A four-column grid no longer downloads a full-viewport file for a quarter-width card. Themers can adjust it with the “rural_blog_thumbnail_sizes” filter.
• Change: Post content reads at the base body size instead of a notch larger. This one reaches every site, including ones that already have the old size saved - set your own in Design > Single post > Post content font.
• Change: The default content width is 1170px and the default sidebar 260px, down from 1400px and 300px. A site that set its own widths in Design > Layout keeps them; a site that never touched them gets the narrower measure.
• Change: The default heading font is the Helvetica stack. It used to name Montserrat first, which the theme never loads and most visitors do not have installed. Pick any family you like in Design > Typography > Heading.
• Change: Listing titles, excerpts and featured images are styled through the same rules as the equivalent post blocks, so the patterns above and the built-in listing look like one theme.
• Change: A packaged release now ships minified front-end and editor stylesheets, about half the bytes over the wire, and they are cached against the theme version instead of being re-fetched on every page view.
• Change: The “Prebuilt sites” admin page and the notice pointing at it are gone. The demos are on the theme page instead, and the admin screen is left alone.
• Change: The theme ships a theme.json, so block spacing is under the theme’s control rather than the editor’s default.
• Change: In the block editor, the Full width layout now keeps a gutter at each side of the canvas instead of running blocks to the edge, the way the front end does.
• Fix: A thumbnail ratio of “Original (uncropped)” made every image below the fold tower over its card on WordPress 6.9 and later.

1.3.1

• Change: Headings are no longer uppercase out of the box - they render as you typed them. Set the case in Design > Typography > Heading.
• Change: The menu now reads at body size and weight instead of small semi-bold uppercase. Set it in Design > Header > Menu typography.
• Note: Those two changes apply to new sites only. A site that already exists keeps exactly the look it had, written into those two controls on update, so nothing shifts under a published blog.
• Change: Block quotes take their case, weight and letter spacing from the heading font instead of carrying their own uppercase, so they follow whatever Design > Typography > Heading says.
• Change: Button labels lost their wide letter spacing, which read as tracking-out on lowercase text once headings stopped being uppercase. Unlike the changes above this one reaches every site - button spacing is not a setting, so there is nothing to keep.
• Change: In Design > Header > Menu typography, only the font face still offers “Same as heading”. Weight and case are the menu’s own and read “Default”, since a menu is a row of links rather than a row of headings.
• Change: The footer menu reads at a larger size, closer to the rest of the footer.
• Change: The theme script loads in the head with defer instead of at the end of the page, so the off-canvas menu’s Escape key and focus trap are listening from the moment the menu can be opened. This needs WordPress 6.3 or later; earlier versions keep loading it at the end of the page as before.
• Fix: The current page is now highlighted in the footer menu, as it already was in the header.

1.3

• New: Grid column counts for tablet and for phone, set separately from the desktop count.
• New: Grid spacing option - none, tiny, small, medium, large or extra large. Each step narrows on its own for tablets and phones.
• New: Thumbnail ratio for the listing - keep each image uncropped, or crop them all to one shape from wide 16/9 through portrait 2/3.
• New: Excerpt length option, one word count for the whole listing. Left empty, each display keeps its own length.
• New: Comment count in the post meta, as an icon and a number linked to the thread. Separate toggles for the listing and for single posts, both off by default.
• New: Text logo font size, with its own size for tablet and phone. Applies when no logo image is set.
• New: Heading sizes control in Design > Typography for H2, H3 and H4, each with a tablet and phone size.
• Change: The default accent and link color is now green. A site that picked its own colors is untouched.
• Change: The menu font weight and letter case now follow the heading font unless Design > Header sets them, so restyling the headings carries the menu along. Same for the single post title and subtitle against the heading and body fonts.
• Change: The container width setting is ignored below 800px on desktop, so a half-typed value can no longer collapse the site.
• Change: The single post title is slightly larger, the excerpt sits closer to its title, and grid card titles are bigger.
• Change: The rule under the archive title is gone. Spacing above and below listings, sidebars and pagination is now set in one place, so the gaps stay even on every template.
• Change: The site title is a heading only on the blog front page. A static posts page now shows its own title above the listing instead of a generic “Archives”.
• Change: The content column class is now .primary instead of .main. Custom CSS or a child theme that targeted .main needs updating.
• Fix: The Nav below header layout also showed its menu row on tablets and phones, under the mobile bar.
• Fix: On the Logo center header layout, the row holding the social icons and the search covered the logo, so clicks on the site title did nothing.
• Fix: A portrait featured image broke the row it sat in on the list and grid displays.
• Fix: A sidebar taller than the post it sat beside ran into the footer.
• Fix: The current menu item and its parent are now highlighted in the header.
• Fix: Page two and beyond of the blog home showed no page number.

1.2

• New: Layout option for the blog and archives - narrow (reading width), full width, sidebar left or sidebar right.
• New: Layout option for single posts and for pages, each with its own default.
• New: Per-entry Layout override in the “Post options” and “Page options” boxes, so one post or page can differ from the site default.
• New: Display option for the blog and archives - stacked (the original look), list (image beside the text) or grid.
• New: Grid column count - 2, 3 or 4, stepping down to fewer columns on smaller screens.
• New: Sidebar widget area, shown by the sidebar layouts. A sidebar layout falls back to a single column while the area is empty, and shows a note in its place to users who can add widgets.
• Change: The list and grid displays use a shorter excerpt, since the text sits in a narrower box than the stacked listing.
• Note: Every new option defaults to the theme’s original single-column output, so an existing site looks the same after updating.

1.1

• New: Header section in the Customizer, gathering the header options in one place.
• New: Header skin option - Light or Dark, which also adjusts the hairlines and the dropdown.
• New: Header background color, header text color and header height options.
• New: Optional header search - a reveal icon in the bar on desktop, and the search form inside the mobile menu.
• New: Optional header button (call-to-action) with text, link, open-in-new-tab and four styles. It shows at the end of the mobile menu on small screens.
• New: Menu typography control - face, size, weight, letter spacing and case in a single block.
• New: Nine built-in web-safe font stacks in every font dropdown, alongside the families installed through the WordPress Font Library.
• New: The menu font and the single post content font can be set to follow the base font or the heading font, so they keep tracking it.
• New: Single post content font is now a dropdown instead of a free-text box.
• New: Per-post Subtitle field, in a “Post options” box on the post editor, shown under the single post title.
• New: Single post toggles for the categories, the post date and the comments.
• Change: Menu and dropdown colors moved from Colors to Header > Navigation. Existing settings are kept.
• Change: The footer copyright text now accepts basic HTML, so you can add a link.
• Change: Footer credit now reads “Built with Rural Blog”.
• Change: Page featured image is no longer output above the page content, since the editor can place it.
• Fix: Font settings are validated against the list of available fonts before being saved.
• Fix: The Background Color setting is now also picked up by the header when no header background is set.

1.0.0

• Initial release.