About this documentation

Verba is a WordPress theme for sites where the writing is the product: a blog, a news site, an online magazine, an editorial publication, a personal column. Every decision in the theme follows from that, from the typography scale to the way post lists behave.

This page covers the edges of the product and the words used across the rest of the documentation. Knowing both before you start saves you finding them out halfway through a project.

#What Verba is not built for

A theme that claims to fit every kind of site usually fits none of them well. Verba picks a side.

#It is not a do-anything theme

Verba is made for one class of site: publications. A portfolio or a real estate agency is the wrong fit.

A blog about real estate, on the other hand, is a great fit. The question is not what the subject is, it is whether articles are the center of the site or a section bolted onto it.

#It does not ship a pile of add-on plugins

You have probably met themes that arrive with a bundle of plugins, each one adding hundreds of widgets, an admin page, an upgrade banner, and a new way to break on release day.

Verba does not do that, and it does not claim compatibility with those bundles. The patterns are already in the theme, built on the official APIs of Elementor and the block editor.

#It is not a pure Elementor theme

Elementor can redefine and edit a large part of what appears on the front end, and page building is where the builder is used most.

Some things are rendered directly by the theme instead: the advanced search modal, AI features, the more complex single post layouts, and the morphing navigation menu. Those are configured in Theme Options, not assembled on a canvas. Global site and theme settings live in Theme Options and the Customizer for the same reason.

#It does not target legacy environments

The theme assumes a current PHP version and a current browser. The exact floors are listed in Server requirements.

#How these docs are organized

Sections run roughly in the order you will need them: preparing your environment, installing, importing a demo, then the settings, the single post, listings, and the header and footer. Tutorials at the end put several of those together into one result.

Pages marked Pro describe features that come from the Verba Pro plugin. If you are running the free theme, you can skip them.

#Glossary

The terms below are the ones that appear in this documentation and in the admin screens. General WordPress terms, like post, page, or category, are explained by WordPress itself.

Activation

Binding your license to one specific domain. A license can be active on several domains depending on what you bought; each domain is activated separately.

Block pattern

A ready-made piece of layout you drop into the WordPress editor and then edit like normal content.

Card

One post inside a post listing. Everything a card shows, from the thumbnail ratio to the meta line, comes from the listing settings.

Child theme

A small theme that sits on top of Verba and holds your own code changes, so a theme update cannot overwrite them.

Content zones

Named places where you can insert your own content: before and after the article, inside it, or above the footer.

Customer Hub

Your account area: purchases, licenses, versions, downloads, support, and this documentation.

Customizer

The standard WordPress customizer. This is where the free theme settings live, and it is not the same thing as Theme Options.

Demo import

Copying a prepared set of content and settings onto your site, so you start from something finished instead of an empty install.

Integration

A small separate plugin that connects the theme to one external service or plugin. You install only the ones you use.

jkd Theme Companion

A free plugin on wordpress.org that adds a font library, a demo importer, and a few admin screens to the free theme. You do not need it alongside the Pro plugin, which already includes everything it does.

License

The right to use Pro on a number of domains. It belongs to your account, not to a string of characters.

Object fields

Extra settings attached to one specific post, page, category, or user, rather than to the whole site.

Page header

The band at the top of pages and archives that carries the title and description.

Post listing

Any place that shows a selection of posts: the front page, an archive, a block under an article. All of them share one settings schema.

Pro plugin

The paid extension for the theme. Theme Options, post listings, widgets, blocks, object fields, and the integrations all come from it.

Purchase code

The label your license is recognized by. It identifies a license; it is not the license itself.

Template override

Replacing one of the theme display files with your own copy, from a child theme.

Theme Options

The large settings panel added by the Pro plugin, at VerbaTheme Options.

Version control

The admin screen where the theme and the Pro plugin are updated and, if needed, rolled back to an earlier version.

#Questions people ask first

Do I need the Pro plugin to run Verba?

No. The free theme is a complete blog on its own: front page, archives, single posts, pages, search, and comments. The Pro plugin adds the settings panel, the listings, the widgets, and everything you see on the demo sites.

What happens to my content if I switch themes later?

Your posts, pages, and media are WordPress data and stay where they are. Anything built with Pro-only tools stops rendering, because the tool that drew it is gone. This is why WordPress asks themes to handle presentation and plugins to handle content, and why Verba follows that split.

Which settings screen am I supposed to be in?

If you are running the free theme, the Customizer. If you have Pro, most of what these docs describe is in Theme Options, and the Customizer still holds the basics. The two are separate stores, so a setting in one does not read from the other.

Last updated 9 Sep 2026