Journal — Editorial WordPress Theme

Publishing themes usually optimise for the homepage grid. Journal optimises for the seventh paragraph — the point where most readers leave. Line length, leading, contrast, image placement and interruption frequency were all tuned against real reading behaviour rather than portfolio screenshots.

Typography with intent

Body text sits at a measure of 62 to 72 characters at a comfortable size with generous leading. Headings use a clear hierarchy without shouting. Pull quotes, footnotes, figure captions, inline asides and code blocks are all styled deliberately. Three font pairings ship with the theme, all self-hosted, and swapping to your own licensed fonts takes a single settings change.

Article layouts that fit the story

Five single-post templates cover standard, wide-image feature, longform with a table of contents and reading progress, interview with speaker labelling, and gallery-led. Related posts appear at natural section breaks rather than only at the end, and a next-article footer keeps a reader in flow when they reach the bottom.

Growing an audience without a popup arms race

Newsletter capture appears in three restrained placements — an inline block after the introduction, a footer block, and an exit-intent variant that respects a cooldown and never fires on mobile. Author pages, topic hubs, series grouping and a curated featured slot on the homepage are all supported natively.

Fast, accessible, syndication-ready

Roughly 70 KB of assets on an article view, no jQuery, native lazy loading with reserved space, and full keyboard operability with visible focus. Article, Person and BreadcrumbList structured data are emitted, feeds are cleanly formatted, and social cards render correctly with per-post overrides. Complete RTL support and a bundled translation file included.

Documentation covers installation, selecting article templates per post, configuring topic hubs and series, newsletter block integration with common email platforms, font replacement, and an editorial style guide for getting the most from the typographic system.

1.9.0

• Longform template with table of contents and reading progress
• Series grouping across posts
• Exit-intent newsletter block with cooldown handling

1.6.0

• Interview template with speaker labelling
• Three self-hosted font pairings

1.3.0

• Topic hub pages and author archive redesign
• Per-post social card overrides

WordPress 6.4 or newer, PHP 8.1 or newer. No required plugins; newsletter blocks integrate with major email platforms via their standard embed or API key.