Design a very fast-loading WordPress News Website Theme with ‘Pillar’ as the theme name using the details below.
1. Layout & Structure
Homepage Layout
Top Bar: Date, quick links (About, Contact, Advertise)
Header: Logo (left), menu (centre or right), search icon
Featured Section
Category Blocks: Grid layout for top categories (e.g. Politics, Metro, Tech, Business, Crime)
Latest News Feed: AJAX-powered pagination with LOAD MORE
Sidebar (Right): Ad space, Trending stories
Footer: About, Contact, Advertise, Privacy Policy, Social media links
2. Post Page Layout
Headline: Bold, large font
Subheadline
Meta: Date, author, category
Featured Image
Content: Clear typography, no distractions
Sidebar (Right): Related posts, ads, Recent Posts
Footer: Tags, social share buttons, ads
3. Key Features
Responsive Design (mobile-first)
Fast Loading: Minimal scripts, optimised images, lazy loading, combine CSS and JS scripts
Ad Slots: Above post content, inline (paragraphs 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20), below post content, sidebar, footer
SEO Optimisation: Schema markup, meta fields, breadcrumbs
Social Sharing: Inline bottom share buttons
Sticky Navigation/Menu
Sticky Sidebar
Related Posts Algorithm
4. Design Style (Brand Identity)
Colour Scheme: Main colours + 1 highlight (navy blue + grey + red = white)
Typography:
Headlines: Strong serif (Playfair)
Body: Clean sans-serif (Open Sans)
Whitespace: Use space generously for readability
5. Additional features
Include archive pages
AJAX-powered pagination
Cache AJAX results for speed
Video Support for Articles
Localise Script on Category Pages
Add Theme Customiser options so users can control parts of the site visually via Appearance > Customize in the WordPress admin
Adding Meta Keywords and Meta Description fields in the WordPress post/page editor to boost SEO control
Adding Meta Keywords and Meta Description fields for the Homepage to boost SEO control
Add Open Graph (Facebook/Twitter preview) support
Add Default Fallback Image (Open Graph)
Add Twitter Username in Customiser
Add structured data (schema.org for rich search results – Google’s preferred format)
Add breadcrumb schema
Add 404 with recent posts on the 404 page as well
Add a screenshot so it appears properly in WordPress Appearance → Themes
Add Header and Footer codes section in Customizer
Let it pass Google Core Web Vitals.
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Layout preferences
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Header (logo, menu, search)
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Home page layout (top stories, latest, categories)
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Single post layout (sidebar, bottom social share buttons including WhatsApp, related posts, bottom post tags)
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Footer content (menus, copyright)
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Design elements
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Font styles and sizes (Playfair and Open Sans and sizes 400 and 600)
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Colours (main, accent, background) – Navy blue, red, grey, white
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Button styles (normal with performance in mind)
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Container widths (full-width)
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Functionality
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Speed optimisations (no jQuery, minimal CSS/JS) – combine CSS and JS
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Theme options (customiser)
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Pagination type (load more)
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Content areas
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Sidebar widgets
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Ad slots (header, sidebar, within posts (paragraphs 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20)?
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Gutenberg/Classic support
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Support the block editor and classic
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Other features
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Font styles and sizes (Playfair and Open Sans and sizes 400 and 600)
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Colours (main, accent, background) – Navy blue, red, grey, white
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Button styles (normal with performance in mind)
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Container widths (full-width)
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