Aestazia Child

Aestazia Child is a lightweight, beautifully styled child theme for the Aestazia ClassicPress theme. It introduces a vibrant new color palette, refined typography, enhanced widget areas, a dynamic category color system, a live Customizer design panel, and dedicated page templates to give your site a distinct, modern look while maintaining the robust structural foundation of its parent.

• Vibrant Color System: Replaces the parent theme’s default colors with a striking modern palette (#E34A6F primary, #279D9F secondary, dark accents, and warm highlights), built on a full CSS custom property token system for easy customisation.
• Customizer Design Panel: A dedicated Theme Design panel in the WordPress Customizer groups all visual configuration in one place, with sub-sections for Bootstrap Palette, Typography, Category Colors, and Category Color Application.
• Live Bootstrap Palette Overrides: Override Bootstrap core CSS variables (--bs-primary, --bs-secondary, --bs-body-bg, --bs-body-color, --bs-heading-color, --color-accent) directly from the Customizer without writing any CSS.
• Typography Font Picker: Choose Google/Bunny Fonts independently for body text, headings H1–H3, and headings H4–H6. Selected fonts are loaded from Bunny Fonts (a privacy-friendly alternative to Google Fonts) and applied via CSS custom properties (--font-body, --font-heading-main, --font-heading-sub).
• Category Color System: Assign individual colors to each category directly from the Customizer. Colors are output as scoped CSS variables on .post-card.primary-cat-{slug} elements and can be selectively targeted to card borders, post titles, and Read More links.
• Alternating Post Layout: Archive, search, and home loop views automatically alternate between layout-left and layout-right post card arrangements for a dynamic, magazine-style appearance on wider screens.
• Post Card Layout: Post list views use a two-column card layout — thumbnail on one side, excerpt and Read More link on the other — responsive stack on mobile, side-by-side on sm+ breakpoint.
• Sticky Post Indicator: Sticky posts are marked with a 📌 pin icon appended to the post title in loop views.
• Custom Page Templates: Includes built-in “No Title” templates for both default layout with sidebar and full-width layout, perfect for landing pages and homepages.
• Enhanced Footer Layout: A 3-column widgetized footer area (Footer Column 1, 2, and 3) spanning full width with dedicated styling.
• Refined Typography & UI: Custom styling for blockquotes, tags, badges, buttons, pagination, and code blocks for a polished user experience.
• Accessible Interactions: Clear hover, focus, and active states applied to links, buttons, and form elements.
• Fully Responsive: Inherits the responsive Bootstrap grid system from Aestazia.
• CI Quality Checks: Automated ClassicPress Coding Standards (CPCS) checks run on every commit via GitHub Actions.

• ClassicPress: Version 2.0 or higher (tested up to 2.7.0)
• PHP: Version 8.0 or higher
• Parent Theme: Aestazia must be installed.

1. Make sure the Aestazia parent theme is already installed on your ClassicPress site.
2. Download the latest aestazia-child.zip release file.
3. Log in to your ClassicPress admin dashboard.
4. Navigate to Appearance > Themes.
5. Click Add New, then Upload Theme.
6. Select the aestazia-child.zip file and click Install Now.
7. Once installed, click Activate.

wp theme install https://github.com/ElisabettaCarrara/aestazia-child/releases/latest/download/aestazia-child.zip --activate

(Note: Ensure the parent theme Aestazia is installed first).

Once activated, navigate to Appearance > Customize and open the Theme Design panel to access all visual settings.

To override the site’s core colors:

1. Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Theme Design > Bootstrap Palette.
2. Use the color pickers to set values for Primary Color, Secondary Color, Body Background, Body Text, Heading Color, and Accent Color.
3. Changes are applied immediately as CSS custom properties in :root via an inline <style id="aestazia-design-system"> block injected into wp_head.
4. Click Publish.

Leaving any picker empty preserves the default value defined in style.css.

To change the fonts used across the site:

1. Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Theme Design > Typography.
2. Select a font for Body Font, Headings H1–H3, and Headings H4–H6 from the dropdown. Available choices: Inter, Roboto, Lora, Playfair Display, Poppins, Montserrat, or Default (Theme).
3. Selected fonts are loaded automatically from Bunny Fonts and applied via --font-body, --font-heading-main, and --font-heading-sub CSS custom properties.
4. Click Publish.

To use the 3-column footer:

1. Navigate to Appearance > Widgets.
2. Drag and drop your desired widgets into Footer Column 1, Footer Column 2, and Footer Column 3.

To assign colors to categories:

1. Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Theme Design > Category Colors.
2. Pick a color for each category listed.
3. Open Theme Design > Category Color Application and check which elements the color should be applied to: Card Border, Post Title, and/or Read More Link.
4. Click Publish.

Colors are output as scoped CSS variables (e.g. --post-card-border, --bs-link-color, --bs-btn-bg) on .post-card.primary-cat-{slug} selectors. The primary-cat-{slug} class is injected automatically on each post’s <article> element by the post_class filter in functions.php, using the first assigned category as the primary one.

To hide the page title on specific pages:

1. Edit a page.
2. In the right-hand sidebar under Page Attributes, locate the Template dropdown.
3. Select either Default Page – No Title (keeps the sidebar) or Full-Width Template – No Title (removes the sidebar).
4. Update/Publish the page.

Contributions and bug reports are welcome! If you would like to contribute:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a new branch for your feature or bugfix.
3. Submit a Pull Request.

Please ensure any changes pass the ClassicPress Coding Standards (CPCS). Checks run automatically on every commit via GitHub Actions. A CPCS summary is appended to the GitHub Actions step summary for each run.

On every published release, a GitHub Actions workflow automatically packages the theme into an installable aestazia-child-{version}.zip and attaches it to the release as a downloadable asset.

Aestazia Child is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2) or later.