DocsPress is a highly customizable native block theme. Open Appearance → Editor to change the complete documentation site with WordPress blocks and Global Styles. There is no separate Customizer panel or hidden theme-settings layer.
Understand the editing layers
| What you want to change | Open in the Site Editor | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Complete visual system | Styles → Browse styles | Typography, component recipes, corners, and the default palette |
| Color variation | Styles → Colors → Palette | The complete light and dark semantic color system |
| Site-wide design | Styles → Colors, Typography, Layout, or Blocks | Every compatible shell, core, and DocsPress block |
| Page structure | Design → Templates | Page, Front Page, Single, Blog Home, Archive, Search, 404, and alternate layouts |
| Shared header, footer, or comments | Design → Patterns → Template parts | Every template that includes that part |
| One component | Select the block and open Settings or Styles | Only that block instance |
Use the broadest layer that matches the intended result. A Global Styles change is appropriate for the site’s normal heading font; a block-level override is appropriate for one promotional heading.
Preview the complete documentation shell
The root Design canvas and Styles canvas preview the complete Page template. The header, documentation sidebar, article surface, table of contents, actions, and footer stay visible while you evaluate site-wide changes.
The homepage remains normal Page content inside the independently editable Front Page template. Open that template or its assigned static Page when you want to change the homepage rather than the documentation shell.
Choose a visual system
Open Design → Styles → Browse styles. The default DocsPress style includes three parent visual systems modeled on WordPress.org, WordPress.com, and Jetpack.
After selecting a family, open Styles → Colors → Palette to choose its color variation:
| Style family | Color variations |
|---|---|
| WordPress.org | Blueberry, Lemon, Purple |
| WordPress.com | Blue, Ink, Warm |
| Jetpack | Green, Electric, Forest |
The parent style controls the family’s typography, corners, and component recipes. The Page heading is one example: DocsPress uses the outlined label with an offset shadow, WordPress.org uses an editorial rule, WordPress.com uses an underlined publishing label, and Jetpack uses a green signal bar with bold sans-serif type. Each palette variation replaces the full light and dark semantic color system without replacing that family recipe, updating the documentation shell and DocsPress content blocks together. Because these are native WordPress color-only style variations, editors can also mix a palette with another family when desired.
To tune the result, open Styles → Colors, Typography, Layout, or Blocks. WordPress exposes the configured palettes, gradients, duotones, font families, fluid sizes, spacing scale, shadows, borders, minimum height, and layout widths without a theme build.
Each parent style is a complete preset for Text, Links, Headings H1–H6, Captions, Buttons, Code, Quotes, and the theme’s relevant blocks. Switching styles reapplies every exposed font, size, weight, line height, letter spacing, case, alignment, color, and component recipe, so a partial edit from the previous style does not leak into the next one. You can still customize the newly selected style afterward.
Choose between global and local changes
Changes under Styles are site-wide. They apply to the article body, documentation sidebar, homepage, blog and archive templates, comments, core blocks, and DocsPress blocks wherever that feature supports the selected setting.
Use Styles → Blocks to set the default for one block type, such as all Buttons or all DocsPress Callouts. Select an individual block when only one instance should differ. If a component does not appear to follow a global change, inspect that block for a local color, typography, or spacing override and use Reset to return it to the active style.
Replace the site logo
Open the Header template part and select the Site Logo block. A new site starts with the bundled DocsPress icon as the single logo. Use Replace to upload or choose another image from the Media Library; WordPress updates that Site Logo everywhere. The block’s Use as Site Icon setting is enabled in the default header, so replacing it can also update the browser and app icon.
Edit templates and template parts
Open Design → Templates to edit Page, Front Page, Single, Blog Home, Archive, Search, 404, Index, wide-content, and no-sidebar layouts.
The normal Page template is a composition of independently editable blocks:
- Header template part
- Documentation navigation
- Breadcrumbs
- Post Title
- Page Summary
- Edit links
- Post Content
- Comments template part
- Was This Helpful
- Adjacent navigation
- Table of contents
- Footer template part
Select a component to move, duplicate, replace, style, or delete it. Edit Patterns → Manage all my patterns → Template parts to change the Header, Footer, or Comments everywhere.
Configure documentation navigation
Select Docs navigation in the Page template and open Block Settings. You can change:
- sidebar title;
- sidebar width;
- synchronized Page root slug;
- automatic Page hierarchy or classic-menu source;
- menu name, slug, or ID;
- Page sort order;
- root Page visibility;
- maximum nesting depth;
- filter visibility and placeholder;
- version selector visibility;
- desktop collapse/expand control, initial state, and labels;
- empty-state text.
The default root slug is docs, matching the DocsPress Action’s default root-slug. sidebar_position maps to native Page order, while sidebar_collapsed controls a managed section’s initial disclosure state.
Configure command search
Select Command search in the Header. Its settings control the trigger label, input placeholder, suggested/no-results copy, Page root, result limit, window width, height, and corner radius, overlay opacity and blur, hierarchy paths, excerpts, and keyboard hints.
Search remains keyboard accessible and uses the Page tree beneath that block’s root slug. The setting belongs to the block instance, so a second template can search another documentation root.
In the Header’s content-only view, the DocsPress: Command Search row includes a disclosure chevron. Select the row to reveal its Search content and Dialog controls. Use the visible search trigger or the block toolbar’s preview control to inspect the sample command-search results without leaving the Site Editor.
Configure reading tools
Each reading component has its own Block Settings:
- Breadcrumbs: home link, home label, separator.
- Table of contents: title, column width, and heading range from H1 through H6.
- Page Summary: optional fallback text; it prefers a manually written excerpt and never auto-generates a duplicate from the first content paragraph.
- Edit links: WordPress/GitHub links, labels, repository, and Git ref.
- Was This Helpful: enabled state, question, response labels, and thank-you message.
- Adjacent navigation: root, ordering, depth, labels, and Page titles.
- Color-mode toggle: accessible label, optional visible label, and light, dark, or device-following default.
- Documentation menu toggle: accessible mobile-menu label.
Every component also receives native color, gradient, typography, spacing, border, dimensions, position, shadow, anchor, and CSS-class controls from WordPress.
The feedback block is enabled by default immediately before Adjacent Navigation. Each browser can submit one response per Page. WordPress stores the aggregate Helpful and Not helpful counts on that Page; open the Page editor and expand Page feedback in the details sidebar to review the counts, total, and helpful rate. Turn off Show feedback on this Page to hide the prompt on that Page while preserving its totals, or disable the block in the Page template to hide it site-wide. See Collect feedback with Was This Helpful for screenshots, storage behavior, REST responses, and the developer hook.
Customize documentation blocks
The DocsPress Blocks plugin inherits Global Styles in the editor and on the published site. Its ten blocks expose native design tools in addition to their semantic settings:
- Hero and Audience Paths provide content, actions, artwork, layout, and presentation controls.
- Code, Code Tabs, API Request / Response, Flow, Terminal Session, Result, File Tree, Callout, and Prompt provide the settings appropriate to their content.
- All ten can be tuned with color, typography, spacing, borders, minimum height, sticky positioning, shadow, alignment where applicable, anchors, and classes.
Use Styles → Blocks for a site-wide default or select an individual block for a local override.
Customize posts, archives, and comments
Open Design → Templates to customize Single, Blog Home, Archive, and Search independently. Their Query, Post Template, title, metadata, pagination, cards, and empty state are native blocks, so each surface can keep or depart from the site-wide design.
Open the Comments template part to change discussion headings, avatars, dates, paging, reply links, and the comment form everywhere it is included. Comments inherit the active Global Styles for colors and typography unless the template part or one of its blocks has a local override.
Build the homepage
Choose a static front Page under Settings → Reading, then edit that Page with normal blocks. The Playground example uses DocsPress Hero and Audience Paths in the Page content, followed by the Front Page template’s independently editable latest-posts Query.
To change or remove the updates grid, open Design → Templates → Front Page and select the Query block. The template and homepage Page content remain independent, so editors can change its query, card design, columns, labels, or visibility without touching the Page.
Try it without installing
Open the complete documentation in WordPress Playground. The one-link Blueprint creates an editable WordPress site, imports the converter-generated documentation hierarchy, signs in, and lands on /docs/.
Open the Site Editor demo when you want the same documentation plus representative posts, comments, blocks, templates, and style variations with the Site Editor open.