PressGrid

Core Features

PressGrid v2.5.0 combines classic editorial newspaper design with engineering discipline. Every feature is purposefully built for modern news operations.

Prerequisites

Setup

Method 1 — WordPress Admin Upload

1. 1
   UploadGo to Appearance → Themes → Add New → Upload Theme. Select pressgrid-v2.5.0.zip and click Install Now.
2. 2
   ActivateClick Activate on the theme page, or go to Appearance → Themes.
3. 3
   Configure ColorsGo to Appearance → Customize → PressGrid: Colors to adjust the default red/black palette.
4. 4
   Add Weather (optional)Go to Appearance → Customize → PressGrid: Weather. Add your free OpenWeatherMap API key and set your city.
5. 5
   Build LayoutGo to Appearance → Layout Builder. If you assign a Business/Finance category to any section, the forex ticker activates automatically.
6. 6
   Set Up MenusGo to Appearance → Menus. Assign menus to Primary, Footer, and Secondary locations.

Method 2 — WP-CLI

wp theme install pressgrid-v2.5.0.zip --activate

Method 3 — FTP

# Unzip and upload to:
/wp-content/themes/pressgrid/

Architecture

Red = new or changed in v2.5.0

Appearance → Customize

All visual settings are managed through the WordPress Customizer with live preview via postMessage CSS variable transport.

Color Panel

Social Media Panel New in v2

Set social profile URLs at Appearance → Customize → PressGrid: Social Media. Configured URLs render as icon links in the black top bar.

Layout Options

Typography

PressGrid ships with a full editorial font stack loaded from Google Fonts. Three font roles are defined as CSS custom properties:

Appearance → Layout Builder

Configure the homepage at Appearance → Layout Builder. Each section can be independently enabled, assigned a layout type, source category, and post count.

Available Sections

Appearance → Theme Ads

Manage all ad placements at Appearance → Theme Ads. Each zone is independently configurable with HTML or ad network tags.

Rendering in Templates

pressgrid_render_ad( 'sidebar_top' );
pressgrid_render_ad( 'in_article' );
pressgrid_render_ad( 'footer' );

New in v2.5 · Appearance → Customize → PressGrid: Weather

Powered by OpenWeatherMap. Displays current conditions and a 5-day forecast in the sidebar, plus a compact mini widget in the top bar. Visitors can tap the geolocation button to see their local weather. All data is fetched server-side and cached — the visitor's browser never contacts OpenWeatherMap directly.

Configuration

What the Sidebar Widget Shows

• Current: City name, description, icon, temperature, feels like, hi/lo
• Details: Humidity, wind speed, cloud cover
• Forecast: 5 days with daily icon and temperature
• Geolocation: ⊕ button — asks browser permission, updates widget live, no data stored

Cache & API Usage

Endpoints Used

# Current weather
GET https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/weather
    ?q=Sofia,BG&appid=YOUR_KEY&units=metric

# 5-day forecast
GET https://api.openweathermap.org/data/2.5/forecast
    ?q=Sofia,BG&appid=YOUR_KEY&units=metric&cnt=40

New in v2.5 · Appearance → Customize → PressGrid: Currencies

Powered by Frankfurter — free, open-source, European Central Bank data. No API key required. The ticker automatically replaces the Breaking News bar when the Layout Builder has an active section targeting a Business or Finance category.

How the Auto-Detection Works

On every page load, pressgrid_has_business_section() checks all active Layout Builder sections for a category slug matching the built-in list. If found, the forex ticker is rendered in place of Breaking News. The result is cached for 5 minutes.

Auto-Detected Category Slugs

business, biznes, бизнес,
finance, finances, finansi, финанси,
economy, ikonomika, икономика,
markets, pazari, пазари,
money, pari, пари

Customizer Settings

API Details

Endpoint & Response

GET https://api.frankfurter.app/latest?from=EUR&to=USD,GBP,BGN,CHF,JPY

{
  "base": "EUR",
  "date": "2025-03-07",
  "rates": {
    "BGN": 1.9558, "CHF": 0.9305,
    "GBP": 0.8351, "USD": 1.0823
  }
}

New in v2.5 · single.php

Five reader experience enhancements added to every single post. All implemented in vanilla JS — zero external scripts, zero SDKs, zero third-party requests from the browser.

Reading Progress Bar

A 3px red line at the top of the viewport tracks reading progress as the user scrolls. Only activates on single-post pages (detected via body class). Implemented in main.js and styled in style.css. Marked aria-hidden="true" as it is decorative.

Estimated Read Time

Displayed in post meta alongside author and date. Calculated server-side in functions.php:

str_word_count( wp_strip_all_tags( $content ) ) / 200
# Returns minimum 1 minute, rounded up

Native Share Buttons

Related Posts

3 posts from the same category shown after the article content. Uses a standard WP_Query with orderby=rand and post__not_in to exclude the current post. No plugin required. Only rendered if the current post has at least one category with other matching posts.

Back-to-Top Button

A fixed button (bottom-right) that appears after 400px of scroll and smoothly scrolls to the top. ~10 lines of JS, pure CSS styling, injected before get_footer() in single.php.

New in v2.5 · External Services

All external API calls are made server-side via PHP wp_remote_get(). The visitor's browser never contacts these services directly. Data is stored as WordPress transients.

Appearance → Font Upload

PressGrid ships with a complete editorial Google Fonts stack. For custom brand fonts, upload a .woff2 file via Appearance → Font Upload.

Secure Upload Process

1. 1
   Upload fontSelect a .woff2 file (max 1MB). MIME type is validated against WOFF2 magic bytes before saving.
2. 2
   Set family nameGo to Appearance → Customize → Typography and enter the font-family name (e.g. MyFont).
3. 3
   Apply to elementsCheck: Body, Headings, Menu, or Buttons. The fallback stack (Georgia / Arial) is always preserved.

Appearance → Menus

Navigation Locations

Widget Areas

Engineering

v2.5 Performance Additions

• Preconnect hints — <link rel="preconnect"> for Google Fonts, OpenWeatherMap, and Frankfurter added conditionally only when those features are active. Saves 100–200ms on first external connection.
• Sticky sidebar — position:sticky, no JS needed
• Card hover animations — pure CSS translateY(-3px) + box-shadow, no JS
• fetchpriority="high" on hero image for LCP optimization

Transient Cache Strategy

Query Optimization

• No query_posts() — All queries use WP_Query directly
• no_found_rows: true — Skips SQL_CALC_FOUND_ROWS on cached queries
• Post ID caching — Only IDs stored in transients, query reconstructed from cache
• Indexed columns only — No meta_query on unindexed keys

Hardening

• ✓Every $_POST goes through wp_verify_nonce() + current_user_can()
• ✓All output escaped with esc_html(), esc_url(), esc_attr(), wp_kses_post()
• ✓Ad HTML filtered through wp_kses() with strict allowed-tags whitelist
• ✓Font upload: WOFF2 magic-byte validation, 1MB cap, random filename, protected dir
• ✓Security headers: X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy
• ✓WordPress version removed from head and all feeds
• ✓Author enumeration blocked via /?author=N redirect
• ✓Login error messages genericized to prevent username enumeration
• ✓No eval(), no direct DB queries, no obfuscated code
• ✓Direct file access blocked: if(!defined('ABSPATH')) exit; in every PHP file
• ✓Optional XML-RPC disable at Appearance → Theme Security
• ✓All functions prefixed pressgrid_ — no global namespace pollution
• ✓All external API calls server-side only (wp_remote_get) — browser never contacts APIs directly
• ✓Weather geolocation: browser Geolocation API, user consent required, no location data stored

Security Headers

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
Referrer-Policy: strict-origin-when-cross-origin
Permissions-Policy: geolocation=(), microphone=(), camera=()

Search & Discovery

Structured data and social metadata output automatically on every applicable page type.

NewsArticle JSON-LD

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "NewsArticle",
  "headline": "Article title",
  "datePublished": "2025-01-01T00:00:00+00:00",
  "dateModified": "2025-01-02T00:00:00+00:00",
  "author": { "@type": "Person" },
  "publisher": { "@type": "Organization" }
}

Other SEO Features

• Open Graph: og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, og:site_name
• Twitter Cards: summary_large_image with auto-featured image
• Canonical <link> tag on every page
• Breadcrumb navigation with schema-ready markup
• Semantic HTML5: header, main, article, nav, aside, footer
• Reading time estimation shown in post meta

Developer API

Key Public Functions

# Template functions
pressgrid_breadcrumbs();
pressgrid_post_meta( $post_id );       # author, date, read time
pressgrid_render_ad( 'sidebar_top' );
pressgrid_get_category_label( $post_id );

# Cached queries
$q = pressgrid_get_hero_posts( 4 );
$q = pressgrid_get_trending_posts( 6 );
$q = pressgrid_get_editor_picks( 4 );
$q = pressgrid_get_category_posts( $cat_id, 4 );

# v2.5 — Weather
$weather  = pressgrid_get_weather();
$forecast = pressgrid_get_forecast();

# v2.5 — Forex
$has_biz = pressgrid_has_business_section();
$rates   = pressgrid_get_forex_rates();

# v2.5 — Read time
$mins = pressgrid_reading_time( $post_id );

Filters

i18n / l10n

Text domain: pressgrid. The .pot template (182 strings) is in /languages/. Two translations ship with the theme:

# Generate fresh POT file
wp i18n make-pot . languages/pressgrid.pot --domain=pressgrid

# Compile PO to MO
msgfmt languages/pressgrid-bg_BG.po -o languages/pressgrid-bg_BG.mo

Modular Architecture

Calling with Args

# Category grid with custom args
get_template_part(
  'template-parts/layout/category-grid',
  null,
  array( 'layout' => 'grid-3', 'category' => 5, 'post_count' => 6 )
);

# Opinion section filtered to a specific category
get_template_part(
  'template-parts/layout/opinion',
  null,
  array( 'category' => 7, 'post_count' => 4 )
);

Child Theme Override

# Copy at same relative path inside child theme:
child-theme/template-parts/content/post-card.php
child-theme/template-parts/layout/opinion.php

Infrastructure

Manual Cache Clear

delete_transient( 'pressgrid_hero_posts' );
delete_transient( 'pressgrid_trending_posts' );
delete_transient( 'pressgrid_editor_picks' );
delete_transient( 'pressgrid_cat_grid_' . $cat_id );
delete_transient( 'pressgrid_has_biz_section' );
# Weather and forex transients cleared automatically via customize_save_after

History

• New — Frankfurter forex ticker Auto-activates when Layout Builder has a Business/Finance section. No API key required. ECB data, 6-hour cache.
• New — OpenWeatherMap weather widget Sidebar widget + top bar mini widget, 5-day forecast, browser geolocation support.
• New — Reading progress bar Thin red line at top of viewport on single posts only.
• New — Estimated read time Calculated from word count, shown in post meta.
• New — Native share buttons Web Share API + copy-to-clipboard + LinkedIn. Zero external JS or SDKs.
• New — Related posts 3 posts from same category after article content. No plugin required.
• New — Back-to-top button Appears at 400px scroll, smooth scroll.
• New — Sticky sidebar position:sticky, no JS needed.
• New — Card hover animations translateY(-3px) + box-shadow, pure CSS.
• New — Open Graph + Twitter Card Full social meta tags on all page types.
• New — NewsArticle JSON-LD Schema markup on all single posts.
• New — Breadcrumb navigation Semantic, accessible, schema-ready.
• New — Preconnect hints Google Fonts, OpenWeatherMap, Frankfurter (conditional).
• New — API-GUIDE.md Step-by-step documentation for all three APIs.
• New — bg_BG + en_GB translations 182 strings, compiled .mo files included.
• Improved — pressgrid_post_meta() Now includes read time and modified date.

• New design system Classic newspaper aesthetic: black/white/red palette, replacing previous blue-accent palette
• Font stack Playfair Display (headings) + Barlow Condensed (UI) + Barlow (body) via Google Fonts
• Top bar Black strip with current date and social icon links; URLs configurable in Customizer
• Masthead Centered newspaper-style logo with split-colour name and em-dash tagline
• Hero section Rebuilt as 3:2 newspaper grid: full-bleed image left, three thumbnail sidebar items right
• Trending section Rebuilt as 3-column tab block: Trending Now, Editor's Picks, and Video
• Opinion section New Layout Builder section: 2-column grid with author byline
• Social Media Customizer panel Facebook, X/Twitter, YouTube, Instagram URLs
• Layout Builder expanded 8 → 9 sections with the addition of opinion
• CSS overhaul Full rewrite using newspaper-appropriate typography scale and CSS custom properties

• Full theme architecture: Layout Builder, Ad Zones, Customizer
• Security hardening: headers, MIME validation, nonces, escaping throughout
• Transient caching for hero, trending, category, editor picks
• Vanilla JS: nav, lazy load, dropdowns, smooth scroll
• WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance
• WordPress.org Theme Review guidelines compliance
• GPL-2.0-or-later license