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Customizing Varsity

Varsity integrates with the WordPress Customizer (**Appearance → Customize**) for colours, layout, header, and logo configuration. Customizer changes update live in the preview pane and apply across the site once published.

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Customizing Varsity

Varsity integrates with the WordPress Customizer (Appearance → Customize) for colours, layout, header, and logo configuration. Customizer changes update live in the preview pane and apply across the site once published.

Logo and branding

In the Site Identity section:

  • Upload a logo image. The theme's custom-header support is declared at 1000×150px (flexible).

  • Set the site title and tagline.

The logo is rendered in the header's branding section.

Colours

The Colors section exposes:

Setting

Default

Content text

#001116

Content background

#f7f7f7

Primary

#7c4d95

Link

#f32c5b

Text

#001116

Background

#f7f7f7

Heading

#001116

The Primary colour drives buttons, accents, and highlighted UI. The Link colour applies to inline anchor tags. Heading and text colours apply across all body content.

If you change the primary or link colour, the change cascades through SportsPress league tables, calendars, and player profile pages because the SportsPress template overrides inherit the theme's colour variables.

Layout

The Layout section exposes:

  • Content width — slider between 1000px and 2000px (default 1000px). Adjusts the maximum content area width across the site, including SportsPress sections.

Header configuration is split between Customizer settings and theme code:

  • The Customizer's Header section (where present) lets you choose header colour, search-icon visibility, and similar.

  • The header area sections — what appears in the header (menu, branding, banner, widgets) — are configured via the header_area_sections filter in functions.php.

For Varsity, the default header sections are: (uses Rookie framework default sections).

Widgets and sidebars

Widget areas are registered in framework.php (or functions.php) and exposed under Appearance → Widgets. Each theme registers between 3 and 12 sidebars covering the primary content sidebar, footer columns, and SportsPress-specific sidebars (e.g. for team pages).

Customizing CSS without editing the theme

The cleanest way to add custom CSS is via Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS. This stores CSS in the database and survives theme updates. For larger CSS or PHP changes, use a child theme.

Child themes

To make code-level changes safely:

  1. Create a child theme directory under wp-content/themes/varsity-child/.

  2. Add a style.css with Template: varsity in the header.

  3. Activate the child theme.

Custom templates and functions.php overrides go in the child theme. Parent theme files are loaded automatically as fallbacks.

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