Colophon: the free WordPress FSE starter core behind this collection

A colophon is the printer’s mark at the back of a book: the note naming who set the type, which typefaces were used, and how the thing was actually made. Colophon the project is that idea applied to a theme collection. The shared, accessible starting point every other theme in this line is built and re-skinned from, made visible rather than hidden inside each one.

Colophon is deliberately plain and technically exacting rather than good-looking out of the box: a six-layer CSS cascade contract, WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility scaffolding, self-hostable OFL fonts, and a single re-prefixing point that lets a new theme take on its own function prefix and identity constants without touching the shared infrastructure. It is the bones; every theme built from it brings its own skin.

The CORE/SKIN split is the whole architecture: every file in inc/ is labelled [CORE] or [SKIN]. [CORE] files, theme supports, accessibility scaffolding, the block-bindings copyright footer, the WP.org-compliant onboarding flow, are identical across every theme in the collection and can be synced forward without touching a re-skinned theme’s own design. [SKIN] is the one file, inc/skin.php, the sync process never overwrites: image sizes, fonts, block styles, and pattern categories. A theme’s actual personality.

If you’re evaluating this collection rather than looking to build your own theme on it, Colophon isn’t the one to install. Start with whichever themed sibling actually matches your site. Colophon is here for the developer who wants to see how the foundation works, or build a new theme on top of it.

What it does well

• A six-layer CSS cascade contract and a single re-prefixing point for building a new theme on top of it
• The CORE/SKIN split: portable infrastructure separated cleanly from a theme’s own design, file by file
• WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility scaffolding, self-hostable OFL fonts, zero plugin dependencies
• The same onboarding flow, block-bindings footer, and WooCommerce compatibility every collection theme inherits
• A CLI (colophon new, colophon sync, colophon doctor) for scaffolding and auditing a new theme built on the core
• The actual foundation nine other themes in this collection are built and re-skinned from

Preview

Download

Colophon is free and open source under the GPLv2 license. Download the zip from GitHub and install it manually, or install from the WordPress theme directory once the review is complete.

License: GPL v2 or later · Requires WordPress 6.7+