Coywolf Starter Theme for WordPress

I get a surprising amount of requests from people wanting a copy of Coywolf’s WordPress theme. That’s because the recommendations I made in the WordPress Speed and Performance Guide were also made to Coywolf’s theme. Since the theme was never meant to be shared – it has hard-coded HTML, PHP functions, and styles specific to Coywolf – I’ve never made it available to anyone.

I decided it was finally time to create a starter theme. The first thing I did was remove all Coywolf-specific code. I then consolidated and optimized the CSS, HTML, PHP functions, and pages. I also wrote comments throughout the code to explain what certain styles and functions do. The result is the Coywolf Starter Theme for WordPress.

Table of Contents

1. Key features of the Starter Theme
2. Excluded features of the Starter Theme
3. Theme details and customizations
   1. Fallback images
   2. Navigation Menus
   3. Adding a logo
      1. Adjusting the logo and main menu sizes
   4. Changing thumbnail sizes
   5. Changing colors
      1. Change the top nav colors
      2. Change the intro colors
      3. Change link colors
   6. Adding category descriptions
4. Publishing tips
   1. Always add an excerpt
5. Recommended plugins
   1. Yoast SEO
   2. WP Rocket
6. Download the Coywolf Starter Theme