Squaretype

Nine demos, and a switch the vendor says leaves posts alone

Squaretype ships nine demo designs, and Code Supply Co. calls the Demo Switcher its signature feature. The claim is specific: you can apply a different demo at any point without affecting your content and without ending up with duplicate copies of dummy posts and pages. Importing demo posts is offered as a separate option, framed for a brand-new blog.

That is a different proposition from picking a look once and living with it. A publication can start on one homepage treatment and change it later, and the settings you adjust from the Customizer survive because the design layer is separable from the content. How cleanly a switch behaves on a heavily populated site with plugins writing their own meta is not something the description can settle; a copy of a real site is the place to try it.

The hero section is a query, not a decoration

The featured area on the homepage takes several settings in combination. You pick a layout variation, a sidebar treatment, a background and a heading size. The sidebar options are a numbered or simple post list, custom HTML for an ad or shortcode, any widget, or nothing at all. Backgrounds are a solid colour, a gradient, or the featured post's preview image — the last of which turns your lead story into the visual anchor of the front page. Heading size runs small, medium or large.

Where the posts come from matters more than how they look. The vendor says the section can be filtered by tag or category, ordered by date or post views, and restricted to a publication timeframe. Ordering by views makes the front page reflect what has already been read rather than only what is newest, which is a useful option for a site with a deep archive. Post views come through the theme's Post Views Counter integration.

Archive layouts, sub-category filters and where pagination lands

Homepage and archive pages can each take a grid, list, full, timeline or masonry treatment, so the front page and a category archive do not have to match. Page layouts add a second decision — left sidebar, right sidebar or full width — applied per context.

Two settings do structural work on content-heavy sites. Category filters add a sub-category filter to category pages, so a reader can narrow a broad section without leaving it. Featured posts can be excluded from the main archive with a single click, which the vendor frames as avoiding a repeated post directly beneath the hero. For archives themselves, you choose numbered pagination, a Load More button or infinite load; the vendor says the dynamic options fetch posts through the REST API.

Sticky sidebar, mega-menu and header behaviour on small screens

The sticky sidebar offers two targets: stick to the bottom edge of the sidebar, or to the top edge of the last widget. The second exists for advertising — put the ad widget last and it holds position while the reader scrolls. The vendor attributes the mobile behaviour to native browser sticky positioning rather than a script, which is the detail to verify on a phone.

In the menu, recent posts with thumbnails appear in dropdowns, and the vendor says those queries fire on hover rather than on every page load. Menus take unlimited levels and flip a dropdown to the opposite side when the viewport runs out of room. On mobile the menu slides out as a panel that can hold widgets, so social links, a subscription form or a page box sit there as they would in a sidebar. Sticky navigation has three modes: show on scroll-up, pinned always, or off.

Guest bylines, reading time and ad slots placed from the Customizer

Co-Authors Plus support lets a post carry several bylines, and guest contributors can be added without separate user accounts. A Contributors page lists authors with avatar, name, bio and recent articles. Reading time is calculated automatically from average reading speed, and posts can show view counts where other post meta appears.

Ad and banner placements sit in predefined template locations inside the Customizer, and a separate option inserts arbitrary content into template parts — an intro line above the featured posts, an ad under the header, a subscription form below a post. For a site whose revenue runs through those positions, changing a placement stays inside the admin instead of a template file or a child theme.

The smaller listed items belong to the same editorial set: breadcrumb styling for Yoast SEO, live search results with keyboard navigation, related posts, gallery styles, AMP styles that follow the theme, RTL support, a translation file, and WPML plus Polylang compatibility.

Package facts and the declared compatibility ranges

The marketplace file list names PHP, CSS and JS files. No page builder is bundled or required, and the description places configuration in the native WordPress Customizer with live preview rather than on a builder canvas.

The listing marks the theme as Gutenberg optimized and includes the Block Editor among compatible editors. It also declares Contact Form 7, WPML, and WooCommerce 9.x.x and 10.x.x. Those WooCommerce entries are worth reading as a declared range only — the theme is built for blogs and magazines, and nothing in the description says a shop inherits its editorial styling. The captured WordPress range runs from 6.6.x to 7.0.x. All of these were recorded as vendor and marketplace statements on 4 November 2026, not as tests against a particular install.

The vendor's performance notes — no Bootstrap dependency, checking the theme with Query Monitor, limiting generated thumbnail sizes — describe how the theme was built. They say nothing certain about how it performs beside your own plugins, which is a question for a staging copy.

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