Introducing StoryPress: A Modern, Accessible News Theme for WordPress

StoryPress is a news and magazine theme built for editors who want real
layout flexibility without touching a page builder. Built on the trusted
Underscores (_s) starter, it ships with eight distinct
homepage layouts, category-based story sections, full branding control,
built-in SEO markup, and block-editor support — all switchable from
the WordPress Customizer, all keyboard accessible, and all without a
single custom post type, shortcode, or plugin dependency required to make
it work.

Here’s everything StoryPress does, in plain terms.

Eight homepage layouts, one click apart

Every newsroom presents stories a little differently. Instead of
locking you into one homepage design, StoryPress gives you eight, all
switchable from Appearance → Customize → Homepage
Layout:

• Grid — equal-weight story cards, ideal for a
  general news front page.
• List — compact rows with a thumbnail and
  summary, good for a busy, high-frequency feed.
• Magazine — one large lead story followed by a
  grid of secondary stories, suited to a features-driven front page.
• Hero Grid — a full-bleed hero photo with an
  overlaid headline, followed by a four-column grid of secondary
  stories.
• Traditional Wire — a dense, text-forward
  headline feed with no thumbnails, styled after classic wire-service
  listings.
• Top Stories — an asymmetric mixed-size grid:
  one large lead story, two medium stories, then a row of smaller ones.
• Latest News (Horizontal) — a horizontally
  scrolling strip of headline cards, good for a “latest” ticker
  section.
• Latest News (Vertical) — a dense, timestamped
  single-column feed, good for a live-blog-style front page.

Switching layouts is instant — no rebuilding pages, no shortcodes,
no page-builder templates to maintain.

Category-based homepage sections

Beyond the main layout, you can add up to three extra story rows to the
homepage, each pulling from a category you choose — a “World” strip,
a “Sport” strip, a “Culture” strip, however your newsroom is organized.
Each section lets you set:

• Which category it pulls from
• An optional custom title (defaults to the category name)
• How many stories to show (2–8)

Turn the feature on or off entirely, and leave any section blank to skip
it.

Full branding control, no code required

Everything a newsroom needs to make the theme its own lives in the
Customizer:

• Custom logo, sized and cropped from Appearance →
  Customize → Site Identity, same as any WordPress theme.
• Optional masthead header image above the site
  title.
• Custom background color or image.
• Accent color — recolors links, category
  labels, pagination, and buttons theme-wide from a single color
  picker.
• Sidebar position — left, right, or none.
• Custom footer text, with a sensible default if left
  blank.
• Social media links — Facebook, X/Twitter,
  Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, shown as icon links next to the
  logo. Only platforms with a URL filled in appear; the rest stay
  hidden.

Built to be found: SEO and social sharing, out of the box

Every page on a StoryPress site outputs:

• Open Graph and Twitter Card meta tags, so links
  shared on social media show a proper title, description, and image
  preview instead of a bare URL.
• NewsArticle structured data (JSON-LD) on every
  post — headline, author, publish and update dates, and featured
  image — the same kind of markup search engines and news
  aggregators look for.
• WebSite structured data sitewide.

All of it is generated automatically from content you’re already
publishing — no separate SEO plugin required, though StoryPress
plays fine alongside one if you use it.

Ready for the block editor

StoryPress isn’t a full block theme, but it meets the block editor
where modern WordPress is heading:

• Editor styles so what you see while writing closely
  matches what visitors see on the published page.
• Wide and full-width block alignment support.
• Four custom block styles: a Pull Quote style for
  the Quote block, a Dotted style for the Separator block, an Outline
  style for the Button block, and a Caption Card style for the Image
  block.
• Two starter block patterns under their own
  “StoryPress” category — a Story Byline pattern and a Pull Quote
  Section — ready to drop into any article.

Accessible by design, not as an afterthought

StoryPress is built to be fully usable by keyboard and screen reader,
not just mouse and eye:

• A skip-to-content link that’s clearly visible the moment it
  receives keyboard focus.
• Dropdown submenus built on the WAI-ARIA Disclosure pattern —
  operable with Tab, Shift+Tab, and Escape, with focus returned sensibly
  when a menu closes.
• Visible focus states on every interactive element: links, buttons,
  form fields.
• Every image, empty state, and layout variation has real, deliberate
  styling — nothing left to render unstyled.
• Motion respects each visitor’s prefers-reduced-motion
  setting.

Built the WordPress way

StoryPress sticks to core WordPress APIs throughout: menus, widgets,
the Customizer, and standard theme support features. It registers no
custom post types, shortcodes, or user roles, so it won’t collide with
whatever content plugins your site already runs. It’s translation-ready,
uses a single consistent text domain, and is licensed GPLv2 or later,
the same as WordPress itself.

Getting started

1. Install and activate StoryPress from Appearance → Themes.
2. Go to Appearance → Customize to choose a homepage layout, set
   your accent color, add your logo, and connect your social profiles.
3. Optionally turn on Homepage Category Sections to feature specific
   topics below your main layout.
4. Publish. Your homepage layout can be changed anytime without
   touching a single page.