SocietyPress ships with five GPL-licensed child themes. They differ in layout as well as color — one column or two, a sidebar on the left or the right, a magazine front page or a dashboard of cards — so pick the one whose shape suits your society, then tune the colors and fonts from there.
What you can do
- Activate a child theme to take on its layout, palette and fonts in one click.
- Change any of its colors and fonts afterwards under Website → Appearance → Colors & Fonts — child themes don't lock you in.
- Switch themes any time — your content, members, events, photos and page-builder pages all stay where they are.
- Build your own child theme if none of these fit.
The five shipped themes
Heritage — browns, cream and antique gold
A warm, traditional theme inspired by old library stacks and leather-bound journals. Single column, generous white space, a full-width banner and a three-column footer. Merriweather throughout.
Good fit for: societies that want to feel established and scholarly.
Coastline — navy, white and soft blue
A magazine-style layout with a sidebar on the right on a computer, which drops below the content on a phone. Inter throughout. Professional and approachable.
Good fit for: active societies with a lot happening at once.
Prairie — warm greens and natural tones
An "explorer" layout with permanent navigation down the left side, so visitors always see where they are. Lora throughout.
Good fit for: content-heavy societies with deep page structures — big libraries, lots of records, research guides.
Parlor — deep plum, warm ivory and rose gold
The traditional layout people know from older society websites: a centered banner, a menu across the top, an optional right sidebar, and a front page with a "Next Meeting" callout, upcoming events and recent news. EB Garamond throughout.
Good fit for: societies moving from EasyNetSites who want their members to feel at home straight away.
Ledger — charcoal, ivory and deep burgundy
A modern, dashboard-style theme with card-based layouts, clean navigation and professional spacing. Source Sans throughout. Evokes courthouses, ledger books and official records.
Good fit for: societies that want to project authority — genealogical libraries, records-focused groups.
How to switch themes
Website → Appearance → Theme. Pick a theme and click Activate. The site takes on the new theme's layout, palette and fonts straight away.
Activating a theme writes its colors and fonts into your settings, so it replaces any colors you'd chosen before. Save your current look first under Website → Appearance → Saved Looks if you might want it back.
How themes and saved looks interact
The most recent action wins. Activate Heritage and the colors are Heritage's. Apply a saved look and its colors and fonts replace those, while the layout stays Heritage's. Activate Parlor and Parlor's colors replace everything again.
So a child theme decides the layout and gives you starting colors; a saved look changes the colors, fonts and spacing on top. See Theme Presets.
How to customize a child theme
Most societies never need to touch a file — Website → Appearance → Colors & Fonts has the colors, fonts, sizes, widths and header settings, and a Custom CSS box for small styling changes that survive switching themes.
For more than that — a custom layout, a unique footer — build your own child theme (below). WordPress allows one level of child theme, so you can't make a "child of Heritage"; copy Heritage instead and change your copy.
How to build a brand-new child theme
Copy one of the five theme folders — whichever is closest — rename it, and change its name in style.css (keep Template: societypress). Its starting colors and fonts are set in the theme's functions.php when it's activated; change those to yours.
To share it with other societies, submit it to the Theme Exchange. Child themes are read line by line before they're listed with a "Reviewed by SocietyPress" badge.
If something looks wrong
The colors didn't update after activation. If a caching plugin is installed (W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, LiteSpeed Cache), clear its cache. That's almost always the cause.
My logo disappeared. Themes don't touch the logo. Check the Logo section of Website → Appearance → Colors & Fonts. The image itself lives in the Media Library, not in the theme.
Custom CSS I added isn't applying. CSS in the Custom CSS box on Colors & Fonts carries over to whichever theme is active. CSS added by editing a theme's own style.css is lost when you switch away from that theme — move it into the Custom CSS box, or into your own copy of the theme.
The page-builder pages look different. Builder pages keep their widgets when you switch themes, but take on the new theme's colors, fonts and layout — a sidebar theme, for instance, gives them less width. That's expected; check them after switching.
Related guides
- Theme Presets — saved looks: colors, fonts and spacing you can reuse and share
- Page Builder — layouts compose with whichever theme is active