=== Stoat ===
Contributors: owldraft
Requires at least: 6.5
Tested up to: 7.1
Requires PHP: 7.4
Stable tag: 1.7
License: GPLv2 or later
License URI: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html
Tags: blog, food-and-drink, photography, one-column, two-columns, left-sidebar, right-sidebar, block-styles, wide-blocks, custom-colors, custom-logo, custom-menu, editor-style, featured-images, footer-widgets, full-width-template, sticky-post, theme-options, threaded-comments, rtl-language-support, translation-ready

Stoat is a clean, minimal and lightweight WordPress blog theme for personal blogs, writers and newsletters, with free demos for a food blog, travel blog, lifestyle blog, fashion blog, parenting blog and more, imported in a few clicks.

== Description ==

Stoat is a clean, minimal and lightweight WordPress blog theme for a personal blog, a writer or author website, and a newsletter. Start from a free demo, imported in a few clicks: a food blog, recipe blog, travel blog, lifestyle blog, fashion blog, beauty blog, parenting blog, fitness blog, photography blog, book blog, gardening blog, DIY blog, home decor blog, personal finance blog, pet blog, developer blog and more. What makes it different? (1) Fast: no page builder, self-hosted fonts only (no Google Fonts) and one small script. (2) Accessibility and SEO friendly. (3) Modern native Gutenberg editor. (4) Many options in the native WP Customizer: three header layouts, a left or right sidebar, list or stacked posts, colors, fonts and a dark header skin. Live preview: https://stoat.owldraft.com

RTL-ready: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu sites mirror the whole layout, and it works with WPML and Polylang for multilingual sites. It also suits portfolios and simple marketing pages. No page builder, no external fonts or scripts, and a single compact stylesheet.

Start from a demo: after activating Stoat, the welcome notice offers to set your site up like one of the Stoat demos, with posts, pages, menus, widgets and settings in place. It uses Owldraft Starter Sites, a free plugin from WordPress.org, and installs nothing until you click.

Nothing is requested from a third-party server: type comes from your system fonts or the WordPress Font Library, and the theme ships one small front-end script.

Features:

* RTL language support (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Urdu): the layout, menus, sidebar, search dialog and mobile menu mirror automatically, in the editor too.
* Multilingual ready: WPML compatible (wpml-config.xml registers the copyright line and the header button for translation), and Polylang compatible.
* Tested with WordPress 7.1; runs on PHP 7.4 and newer, including PHP 8.
* No page builder, no external requests. Compact CSS in a single stylesheet and one small front-end script (js/modal.js) that drives the search dialog and the mobile menu.
* Self-hosted fonts via WordPress's Font Library (WordPress 7.0+); system-font fallback on older versions.
* Separate font choices for body, headings, navigation, and logo.
* Color options for text, accent, background, meta text, and text selection.
* Three header layouts (logo left, logo center, nav below), a light or dark header skin, and adjustable header padding and border.
* Header call-to-action button, with its own style.
* Search icon that opens the search form in a dialog, at every width.
* Three menu locations: primary, social, and footer.
* Social links in the header and footer, with the right brand icon picked automatically from each link's URL.
* Ready-made demos, imported with the free Owldraft Starter Sites plugin from WordPress.org.
* Two post styles for the blog and archives: a list with a thumbnail beside each post, or stacked, with the title over an image the width of the column.
* Optional sidebar, left or right, set separately for the blog and archives, single posts, and pages, with an adjustable width.
* Archive options: feature the newest post as a hero, thumbnail side, ratio and width, excerpt length, and toggles for date, author, avatar, categories, and comment count.
* Single-post options: featured image with a width cap, subtitle, category position, tags, and comments.
* Sidebar widget area, a Footer widget area above the copyright line, and an After Featured Post widget area under the featured first post.
* Content width control, with separate defaults for posts and pages.
* Sticky post styling, wide and full-width blocks, and editor styles so the block editor matches the published page.
* Text or image logo, with adjustable size and corner radius.
* Responsive layout, from phones to wide screens.
* Translation-ready.
* Compatible with the Owldraft Newsletter plugin.

Demos: https://stoat.owldraft.com and https://stoat.owldraft.com/nordic/

== Installation ==

1. In your admin panel, go to Appearance -> Themes and click the 'Add New Theme' button.
2. Type in Stoat in the search form and press the 'Enter' key on your keyboard.
3. Click on the 'Install' button, then the 'Activate' button to use your new theme right away.
4. To start from a demo, click "Set up like the demo" in the welcome notice, then pick a demo on the Starter Sites page.
5. Navigate to Appearance -> Customize in your admin panel to customize the theme to your taste.
6. Appearance -> Stoat has links to the setup guide, the documentation and the support forum.

Full documentation: https://owldraft.com/docs/stoat/

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= How do I make my site look like the demo? =

Click "Set up like the demo" in the notice you see after activating Stoat. It installs Owldraft Starter Sites, a free plugin from WordPress.org, and opens it; pick a demo and import it. Once the demo is in, you can delete the plugin and everything it imported stays. If you closed the notice, install Owldraft Starter Sites from Plugins -> Add New and open Appearance -> Starter Sites.

= How do I add a sidebar? =

Add widgets under Appearance -> Widgets -> Sidebar, then pick Left or Right in Customize -> Layout -> Sidebar. The blog and archives, single posts and pages each have their own setting.

= Does this theme use Google Fonts? =

No. Stoat serves self-hosted fonts only, through the WordPress Font Library (WordPress 7.0+). On older versions it falls back to the native system font stack.

= Does this theme load any JavaScript? =

Almost none. The theme ships one front-end script, js/modal.js, which opens the overlays: the search dialog and the mobile menu. Core's comment-reply script loads only on singular views when threaded comments are enabled.

= How do I remove the theme credit in the footer? =

Customize -> Footer -> turn off "Keep theme credit". GPL does not require keeping it.

= Where is the changelog? =

https://owldraft.com/docs/stoat/changelog/

== Changelog ==

= 1.7 =
* Released: October 14, 2026
* New: RTL language support (tag rtl-language-support). The stylesheet uses logical properties, so Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Urdu sites mirror the header, menus, sidebar, post list, comments, search dialog and mobile menu without a separate rtl.css. The block editor mirrors too.
* New: WPML compatible. wpml-config.xml registers the copyright line, the header button text and its link, and the footer, sidebar and after-featured widget areas for translation.
* Change: the comment pagination arrows point the right way in RTL; letter-spacing is switched off in RTL, because it breaks joined Arabic letters.
* Change: the theme description now mentions RTL and multilingual sites.

= 1.6.2 =
* Released: October 13, 2026
* Change: The theme description names the kinds of blog the free demos cover: food, recipe, travel, lifestyle, fashion, beauty, parenting, fitness, photography, books, gardening, DIY, home decor, personal finance, pets and developer blogs.
* Change: New subject tags: food-and-drink, photography.

= 1.6.1 =
* Released: October 13, 2026
* New: a sidebar on any single page. Page options (in the page editor) has a Sidebar choice: Default follows Customize > Layout > Sidebar > Pages, or pick No sidebar, Right or Left for that page alone.
* Beside a sidebar the content is never the narrow column any more: it takes all the room the sidebar leaves, on pages, posts and archives. Below a laptop width nothing changes.
* Appearance > Stoat links the Owldraft Newsletter plugin (formerly LetterWP) on WordPress.org: "Add a newsletter" and Owldraft plugins.
* New theme description: a clean, minimal blog theme for personal blogs, writers and newsletters, with food, travel and lifestyle blog demos.

= 1.6 =
* Released: October 12, 2026
* New: a Sidebar widget area and Customize > Layout > Sidebar: left, right or none, set separately for the blog and archives, single posts, and pages, with a width from 220 to 360px. Off by default, so nothing changes until you pick a side. On tablets and phones the sidebar moves below the content.
* New: Customize > Archive > Post style. Stacked prints each post as its title and meta, then the image across the column, then the excerpt, with the title centred or left and its own image ratio. List, the default, is unchanged.
* Moving from another theme: widgets in its sidebar carry over to Stoat's Sidebar.
* New tags: two-columns, left-sidebar, right-sidebar.
* New: a second demo, Nordic, a Scandinavian lifestyle blog with a left sidebar and stacked posts.
* New: the welcome notice offers to set the site up like a Stoat demo. One click installs Owldraft Starter Sites, a free plugin from WordPress.org, and opens it; nothing is installed until you click. "No thanks" or the close button hides it for good.

= 1.5.1 =
* Released: October 10, 2026
* Tested up to WordPress 7.1.
* New: an After Featured Post widget area, between the featured first post and the rest of the list. Each widget sits in its own gray box, a good place for a newsletter form or a note.
* New: Customize > Site Identity > Logo image size, from 24 to 96px.
* Customize > Archive is grouped by part (Thumbnail, Categories, Excerpt, Date, Author, Comments), each Show switch with its options right under it. Same settings, same defaults.
* Full width is now really full: a Group block on a Full-width page no longer caps its content at the reading width.
* Blocks inside a Group or Columns get the same gap as top-level blocks, on the front end and in the editor.
* The featured first post on the blog home has space above it instead of sitting against the header.
* Comment count icon: a square speech bubble.
* Customizer layout tiles have square corners.
* Appearance > Stoat is now one page of links: get started, help (documentation, changelog, support forum), more Owldraft themes and plugins, and the author. The documentation and changelog live online at owldraft.com.
* New: a dismissible notice that links to the setup guide and to Appearance > Stoat.
* New theme screenshot and description. New tag: full-width-template.

= 1.5 =
* Released: October 2, 2026
* Tested up to WordPress 7.1.2.
* New: Customize > Misc > Post editor style. Simple, the default, edits posts on the same plain sheet as pages. Manuscript is the serif writing sheet that 1.4 turned on for every post; it is now opt-in. Pages always use Simple.
* New: Customize > Site Identity > Logo border radius, from square to a circle.
* New: Customize > Style > Image border radius, for the archive thumbnails and the Editorial Blocks thumbnails.
* New: Customize > Archive > Date style: the date format from Settings > General, or human time ("3 days ago").
* New: Customize > Footer > Widgets layout: equal columns, first widget wider, or last widget wider.
* The footer bottom is one centered column: the copyright, then the footer menu. In the credit only "Stoat" is a link, in the link color, underlined on hover.
* Archive headers lose the hairline under them and have equal space above and below.
* A page with its title hidden starts its content one gutter below the header.
* Form fields no longer draw a focus outline; the caret marks the field.
* Editor: every top-level block gets the same gap as on the front end, so blocks such as Media & Text or the LetterWP subscribe form no longer sit flush against the block above.
* Appearance > Stoat shows the new Owldraft owl mark.

= 1.4.1 =
* Released: October 1, 2026
* Tested up to WordPress 7.1. New tag: wide-blocks.
* Stoat is now described as a general-purpose theme for marketing sites, landing pages, personal blogs and newsletters. The "news" tag is removed.
* Compatible with the LetterWP newsletter plugin.
* The theme screenshot is back to the 1.3 one.
* The footer credit reads "Built with Stoat" again and links to the theme page.
* Appearance > Stoat: the General tab is a grid of widgets — Start here, Newsletter (LetterWP), Follow us, and System info.
* Removed Owldraft Publisher support: inc/publisher/, the Publisher card on Appearance > Stoat, and its support section. Also gone, since they existed to serve it: Customize > Header > "When the reader is signed in" and its two signed-in button fields, and the stoat_header_buttons, stoat_header_button_visible, stoat_header_button_signed_in_actions and stoat_entry_flag hooks.

= 1.4 =
* Released: September 11, 2026
* New in Customize > Header: "Header layout" — logo left, logo centered, 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; separate switches show the row in the header, the mobile drawer, and the footer.
* 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.
* 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 now renders as ordinary content at the foot of the page instead of leaving a button that does nothing.
* New: a Footer Widgets area, above the copyright line. Widget titles, link lists, and a "you are here" mark on the current item in nav, pages, and category widgets. The row is drawn only when a widget really prints something, and switching to Stoat no longer sweeps the previous theme's widgets into it — they wait in Inactive Widgets instead.
* New: theme.json, so the editor canvas and the front end share one set of colors, sizes, 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.
* New: Appearance > Stoat — one screen carrying the theme's documentation, its changelog, and where to ask for help.
* Archive > "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.
* A pass over every screen narrower than a tablet: tighter listing rows, a headline and excerpt that step down together, two columns of footer links instead of one long stack, a centered footer strip, comment replies that keep their width, dialogs that stop above the browser's own toolbar, and form fields at 16px so tapping one no longer zooms the page in.
* 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. Filter stoat_subtitle_post_types to hand the field back to pages or a CPT.
* New Customize options: logo and nav fonts, button corner radius, category position, author name + 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 color the page is actually using, rather than on an empty swatch. Clearing it still returns the accent to the theme default, as every color there does.
* New stoat_entry_flag hook on listing entries, so a plugin can mark an entry (a members or paid chip) without touching a template.
* The search form is capped at 400px.

= 1.3.2 =
* Released: September 3, 2026
* Documentation has moved to https://docs.owldraft.com/stoat/ and the demo to https://stoat.owldraft.com.
* The theme description now points to the new demo address.

= 1.3.1 =
* Released: August 8, 2026
* The theme is now published by Owldraft. Theme author, author URI, and theme URI have been updated.
* Documentation has moved to https://themedocs.github.io/stoat.
* The footer theme credit links to the new theme URL.

= 1.3 =
* Released: July 17, 2026
* New Customize > 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 Customize > 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 in Customize > Header to add a call-to-action to the header bar, in Primary, Black, White, or Outline style, optionally opening in a new tab. On mobile it moves into the off-canvas menu, full width.
* New in Customize > Single Post: "Show featured image (top)", which puts the featured image above the post content along with its caption. Off by default.
* New in Customize > 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 now match the front end, and the Details block is styled.

= 1.2.2 =
* Released: July 16, 2026
* New in Customize > Typography: "Navigation font" (defaults to whatever the headings use), "Heading font weight", and "Heading letter case".
* New in Customize > Style: "Meta text color", for the date, categories, and comment count.
* New in Customize > Blog / 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.
* Footer credit links to the canonical theme URL.

= 1.2.1 =
* Released: June 23, 2026
* Updated screenshot.jpg and documented the CC0 license/credits for the images used in it.

= 1.2 =
* Released: June 19, 2026
* Minor style refinements.

= 1.1.1 =
* Released: June 9, 2026
* Mobile menu open/close is now pure CSS + inline handlers; Esc and focus-trap moved to an optional js/a11y.js (Customize > Misc).
* Removed the classic-editor toggle (use the official Classic Editor plugin instead).
* "Disable pages in search results" now defaults off.

= 1.1 =
* Released: June 8, 2026

= 1.0 =
* Initial release.

== Copyright ==

Stoat WordPress Theme, (C) 2026 Owldraft.
Stoat is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL v2 or later.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

This theme bundles the following third-party resources:

Normalize.css, (C) Nicolas Gallagher and Jonathan Neal.
License: MIT.
Source: https://necolas.github.io/normalize.css/

Screenshot images, all licensed CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/):

Photo by Ghost Presenter.
Source: https://stocksnap.io/photo/grayscale-puppy-LPXVEYAQCA

Photo by World Wildlife.
Source: https://stocksnap.io/photo/lion-animal-GBV4APX0N7
