ObDC Simplex News

Lightweight, modular WordPress theme designed for small newsrooms. It mirrors the ObDC visual prototype with a focus on performance, accessibility, SEO, and an editorial workflow built around featured stories, a continuous feed, and audience ranking.

Requirements

• WordPress 6.5 or newer (REST API enabled and pretty permalinks).
• PHP 8.0 or newer.
• Standard WordPress PHP extensions (curl, dom, gd).
• Permission to manage menus, widgets, and Customizer options.

Overview

The front page is organised in five blocks: persistent LIVE bar, hero (sticky post), secondary highlights, continuous feed with “load more”, and the “Mais lidas” column. Components live in template-parts/, making it easy to reuse them elsewhere. The theme is based on the Underscores (_s) boilerplate with newsroom-focused tweaks.

Key Features

• Responsive-first layout with hero + cards using Inter/Merriweather via Google Fonts (wp_resource_hints + font-display: swap).
• LIVE ticker configurable in the Customizer (status, text, CNPJ, city).
• Persistent navigation: desktop main menu (main) with optional one-level dropdown submenus, and mobile drawer menu (drawer) fully driven by WordPress menu locations (drawer falls back to main if not set).
• Editorial panel powered by sticky posts with automatic fallback to recent posts.
• Infinite feed driven by REST (js/front-page.js) with IntersectionObserver and manual fallback.
• Author archive with progressive loading (js/author-feed.js) via the dedicated REST endpoint.
• Search result pages reuse the same infinite-scroll behaviour as the home feed.
• “Mais lidas” sidebar based on the post_views meta key; fallback helpers exist in inc/helpers.php.
• Ad slots ready in template-parts/ads (top/home feed) and via widgets.
• SEO: OG/Twitter cards (inc/seo-meta.php), canonical links, and Schema.org structured data (inc/structured-data.php).
• Accessibility enhancements (inc/template-functions.php) and translation-ready strings (load_theme_textdomain).
• Basic Jetpack integration stub (inc/jetpack.php).
• Restricted author archives: subscribers (and any roles filtered via obdc_simplex_news_restricted_author_roles) receive 404 on author pages, and only profile editing is allowed in wp-admin.

Installation

1. Zip the theme or clone it into wp-content/themes.
2. In the WordPress dashboard go to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme.
3. Activate “ObDC Simplex News”.
4. Visit Settings > Permalinks and ensure pretty permalinks are enabled (required for the REST endpoints).

Initial Setup

1. Open Appearance > Customize > Configurações do Tema to configure the LIVE bar (status, CNPJ, city, YouTube API settings, fallback text). 2. Create menus for every registered location (main, drawer, footer-news, footer-brazil, footer-site, footer-opinion, footer-sports, footer-entertainment, footer-social). The drawer location feeds the mobile site-drawer; if left empty it falls back to main.
2. Choose the sticky posts that will fill the hero and highlight slots.
3. Install a post-views plugin (e.g. Post Views Counter) or call obdc_simplex_news_increment_post_views() in single.php.
4. Replace screenshot.png with a 1200x900 preview for wp-admin.
5. Add images/logo.png and images/og-default.jpg to feed SEO/meta defaults (adjust sizes as needed).

Editorial Content

• Hero & highlights: template-parts/home/hero.php and template-parts/home/highlights.php consume obdc_simplex_news_get_front_page_featured_data() (cached sticky posts with exclusion list) and respect Yoast primary categories when the plugin is active.
• Home feed: front-page.php builds the loop excluding featured IDs and exposes pagination data for JS.
• Search: search.php mirrors the infinite-scroll structure, consuming the search REST endpoint.
• Cards: template-parts/content/card.php defines the standard feed card layout.
• Mais lidas: template-parts/sidebar/most-read.php reads post_views; change the meta key if needed.
• LIVE bar: template-parts/topbar.php renders data from the YouTube integration (or fallback text) with animation.
• Authors carousel: template-parts/front-page/authors-carousel.php displays data from obdc_simplex_news_get_featured_authors(). Title defaults to “Equipe editorial” and can be filtered via obdc_simplex_news_authors_heading.

Scripts & REST Endpoints

• js/front-page.js: manages “load more”, loading states, IntersectionObserver, and fallbacks. Reused on the home feed and search results.
• js/author-feed.js: extends the same behaviour to author archives.
• js/navigation.js, js/footer-accordion.js, js/share.js, js/authors-carousel.js, js/topbar.js: handle responsive menu/drawer, footer accordion, sharing utilities, authors carousel, and YouTube ticker overflow.
• js/main-menu.js: progressive enhancement for the main menu dropdowns (adds aria-haspopup/aria-expanded and improves focus handling on items with submenus).
• js/categories-index.js: client-side filter for the Categories Index template, hiding/revealing category cards as the user types in the search field.
• js/script.js: legacy AJAX load-more prototype (admin-ajax). Not enqueued; keep only as reference or remove during refactors.
• REST endpoints registered in functions.php (generated as relative URLs):
  • GET /wp-json/obdc-simplex-news/v1/front-page-feed?page={n}
  • GET /wp-json/obdc-simplex-news/v1/author-feed?author_id={ID}&page={n} (legacy author= still works for compatibility)
  • GET /wp-json/obdc-simplex-news/v1/search-feed?search={query}&page={n} Each endpoint returns rendered HTML ready to inject in the DOM (load more scripts expect JSON with html, maxPages, foundPosts).
• Configurable autoload limits: obdc_simplex_news_front_page_autoload_limit, obdc_simplex_news_author_autoload_limit, obdc_simplex_news_search_autoload_limit.

Development

• See LOCAL_DEV.md for Docker instructions (docker compose up -d). Defaults to http://192.168.15.8:8080; adjust WP_HOME/WP_SITEURL if needed.
• No build step: CSS/JS are enqueued from style.css and js/*.js.
• Generate new translations with wp i18n make-pot targeting the theme directory and output to languages/.

Single page newsletter CTA (optional)

The single template includes a newsletter CTA block that is disabled by default. To re‑enable it:

• File: single.php
• Look for the section starting with <section class="single-cta" ...> — it is wrapped by a PHP conditional used to disable rendering:

<?php if ( false ) : // CTA disabled intentionally; set to true or remove to enable ?>
<section class="single-cta" aria-label="<?php esc_attr_e( 'Assine nossa newsletter', 'obdc-simplex-news' ); ?>">
    ...
</section>
<?php endif; ?>

• To enable the CTA, change false to true or remove the surrounding if/endif guard.
• The button currently points to home_url( '/newsletter' ); adjust this URL if your newsletter lives elsewhere.

Folder Structure (summary)

.
|-- inc/                # Helpers, SEO, Customizer, schema
|-- js/                 # Navigation, feeds, authors, share scripts
|-- template-parts/     # Reusable components (ads, cards, sidebar, etc.)
|-- author.php          # Author archive with async feed
|-- front-page.php      # Home with sticky posts + infinite feed
|-- functions.php       # Theme supports, menus, REST endpoints
|-- search.php          # Search results with infinite feed
|-- single.php          # Full article layout
|-- style.css           # Theme metadata & global styles
`-- README.md

License

GPL-2.0-or-later.

Author

Samuel Pantoja — https://www.obrasildecima.com.br