Cortics

Modern Thematic Blog WordPress Theme

• Created: 14/06/2026
• Latest Update: 14/06/2026
• By: KWST
• Demo: https://cortics.kwst.net/
• Email: support@kwst.net

Requirements

You need at least WordPress version 6.5+ installed for this theme to work properly. It is strongly recommended to always use the latest stable version of WordPress to ensure optimal performance and security. Server requirements:

PHP - Version 8.1 or greater is required. For ultimate loading speeds and better memory management, we strictly recommend using PHP 8.2+.
MySQL - MySQL version 5.7 or greater (or MariaDB 10.3 or greater).

Getting Started

WordPress Information

Since WordPress is constantly evolving, official deployment guidelines are updated regularly. You can always review the official WordPress installation guide here.
Below are essential resources for managing your WordPress site:

• WordPress Documentation: Official support, handbook, and installation steps.
• First Steps With WordPress: General information covering essential dashboard topics.
• WordPress FAQ: Frequently asked questions for newcomers.

Cortics Theme Installation

A WordPress theme is a collection of files that work together to determine the visual styling and core frontend functionality of your website. Installing Cortics is a straightforward process, and you can choose between two standard methods:

Method 1: Via WordPress Dashboard (Recommended)
Log into your WP Admin panel, navigate to Appearance > Themes > Add New > Upload Theme, choose the localized cortics.zip file from your computer, and click Install Now. Once the upload finishes, click Activate to launch the theme.

Method 2: Via FTP Client
If your server hosting has strict file upload limits, unzip the theme archive on your computer. Using your preferred FTP client, upload the extracted cortics folder directly into the /wp-content/themes/ directory on your server. After the transfer is complete, go to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Themes, and click Activate.

Required & Recommended Plugins

Once the theme is activated, a notification message will appear at the top of your WordPress dashboard prompting you to install the required and recommended plugins. To ensure your website functions exactly like the live demo, please install and activate these components.

One-Click Demo Import

Importing demo data is the quickest and easiest way to set up your new theme. It allows you to automatically load pre-configured pages, stunning posts, dynamic layouts, and core theme customizer settings so your site matches the live preview instantly.

Follow these simple steps:

1. Navigate to Appearance in your WordPress main left menu (Step 1).
2. Click on the Import Demo Data submenu link (Step 2).
3. Locate the Cortics theme preview box and click the blue Import Demo Data button at the bottom (Step 3).

Theme Options & Customizer

Cortics is fully integrated with the native WordPress Customizer, providing a seamless, real-time live preview editing experience for all global website elements. To configure your template settings, navigate to:
Appearance > Customize.

Detailed Options Directory

Colors & Theme Mode Options

Cortics includes an advanced, native styling engine that supports complex global dark and light mode rendering. To modify your color choices, navigate to your WordPress dashboard and open Appearance > Customize > Cortics Colors & Theme Mode.

Flexible Theme Mode Logic

Using the Theme Mode Logic configuration dropdown menu, you can alter the frontend layout behavior to follow one of four unique delivery setups:

• Light (Switcher Visible): Loads the light theme mode profile by default, but displays an interactive toggle in the header menu allowing visitors to dynamically switch to the dark theme layout.
• Dark (Switcher Visible): Loads the dark theme mode profile by default, providing an active header toggle for users to immediately switch over to the light presentation mode.
• Light Only: Locks the complete template framework strictly into the light color aesthetic and completely removes any dark mode toggle assets from the frontend template header.
• Dark Only: Locks the complete template framework strictly into a premium dark mode layout scheme, stripping out the mode toggles completely.

Granular Color Customization

Beneath the core layout mode selection logic, you have complete independent color customizer pickers to assign branding colors across color schemes. You can explicitly map custom backgrounds, primary accent variables, title typography values, side elements, container card block sheets, and thin border separations separately for both the Light Profile and the Dark Profile modes.

Page Management & Core Templates

Cortics includes a highly optimized, built-in layout engine that allows you to configure complex homepages and dedicated archives directly from the native WordPress page editor—completely avoiding heavy, speed-reducing page builders. To start, navigate to Pages > Add New, enter a title, and assign your target template via the Page Layout dropdown on the right side.

Available Core Page Templates

• Home Layout Default: Features an immersive, extra-wide Hero Section rendered completely outside the main content/sidebar grid lines.
• Home Layout Fullwidth Posts: Renders a multi-column post display grid stretching across the full width of the canvas, completely discarding the sidebar area.
• Home Layout Classic Blog: A traditional magazine layout profile that contains both the Hero section and the primary loops cleanly inside the focused layout columns.
• Category Page / Contact Page / Standard Layouts: Built-in structural templates to handle generic page content, maps, feedback grids, or standard canvas structures with or without active sidebars.

The Advanced Live Template Configurator

When choosing one of the flagship **Home Layout** profiles, an interactive button labeled Configure Template will activate on your dashboard screen. Clicking this button triggers a comprehensive overlay panel packed with styling parameters:

Configurator Parameter Breakdown

By combining and experimenting with these modular parameters across the three template architectures, you can construct an infinite number of highly unique layouts without writing a single line of code.

Single Post Management

Cortics offers an incredibly flexible interface for individual articles. To create content, navigate to Posts > Add New. You can compose articles manually, leverage the integrated AI Assistant, choose distinct media types, and map dedicated layout styles.

1. Post Layout Profiles

Using the Post Layout meta box on the right side of your editor panel, you can instantly change the structural presentation of your article:

• Classic Layout: A timeless, clean publishing look with a standard top header stack.
• Split Screen Layout: Dynamically divides the screen header, balancing textual titles with prominent feature media layouts side-by-side.
• Overlay Layout: Immersive layout option that stretches your title directly over an eye-catching background image.
• Big Media Layout: Centers an extra-large feature layout media frame directly beneath a prominent title block.
• Big Title Layout: Highlights heavy typography styling at the header zone while scaling down post-embedded content dimensions.

2. Post Media Formats

The Post Media manager panel at the bottom of the canvas controls what displays at the top of your post view:

• Image: Displays your featured graphic or custom asset wrapper cleanly.
• Gallery (Slider): Transforms the hero section into an interactive touch-swipe carousel.
• Gallery (Grid Masonry): Renders an elegant, modern tile block configuration for image sets.
• Video: Embeds video content directly into the core layout zone.
• Iframe: Accepts advanced custom frame elements for complex integrations.
• Audio: Embeds sound streaming clips and music podcast players.

Meta Fields & Extended Content Options

Scroll down below your main editor workspace to adjust specialized metadata settings configured exclusively for this template:

1. Sponsored Content Settings (1): Mark any post as an advertisement or paid promotion. You can input custom hover tooltips and choose specific Font Awesome classes to style the icon indicator dynamically.
2. Post Thumbnail / Featured Graphic (2): Highly recommended for every item. This image shapes the clean display grid for frontpage content loops, search pages, and archives. If omitted, the theme will automatically load a professional placeholder card to keep your layout unbroken.
3. Related Posts Panel (3): Engage readers by rendering a contextual recommendations section below your article. You can toggle this completely, change titles, or specify whether the block dynamically fetches related content by category loops or popular view counters.
4. Sidebar Customizer Overrides (4): Choose structural alignment settings or select any registered custom layout sidebar as detailed in the Sidebar System guide.

Advanced Interactive Post Reviews

Cortics features a native, light review score engine. This lets you write professional critique metrics without installing heavy third-party plugins:

• Dynamic Multi-Criteria Ratings: Toggle review layouts on and append an unlimited number of rating bars with custom title properties and score metrics.
• E-Commerce Promo Codes: Display stylized coupon sections complete with copy-to-clipboard actions and direct outbound link paths.
• Video Reviews in Lightbox Popups: Include video summaries that open cleanly inside a fast modal layout window. The tool supports standard self-hosted MP4 file uploads, direct links, and traditional streaming embeds from YouTube, Vimeo, and custom iframes.

Category Management & Custom Taxonomy

Cortics extends the native WordPress category taxonomy system by adding premium custom meta fields. To manage your taxonomies, navigate to your admin dashboard and open Posts > Categories.

Standard & Custom Extended Fields

While fields like Name, Slug, Parent Category, and Description follow standard WordPress core functionality, the theme introduces specialized attributes to enhance frontend layouts:

• Category Icon (Recommended): Paste a standard Font Awesome class string (e.g., fa-light fa-atom-simple) to give your category a unique visual brand asset. This icon will render inside post cards, category listings, and navigation highlights.
• Category Image (Recommended): Click the Upload Image button to map a custom graphical cover banner. This image dynamically acts as the hero background section for that specific category archive page. If left blank, a clean default theme placeholder illustration will automatically be active.

Advanced Visibility Logic: Hide in Cortics Blocks

At the bottom of the taxonomy management screen, you will find a custom checkbox option labeled Hide in Cortics Blocks.

Dynamic Sidebar Framework

Cortics features a highly flexible dynamic sidebar management ecosystem. Beyond standard theme zones, you can create unique custom sidebars directly from the admin interface and map them to specific pages, single posts, or entire category groups.

Step 1: Registering a Custom Sidebar

Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Cortics Sidebar Settings. Use the Add New Sidebar field to type a unique name for your custom container, then click Publish. You can also configure global visibility preferences and default layout alignments (Left Side, Right Side, or Fullwidth Layout) directly inside this panel.

Step 2: Assigning the Sidebar to Content

Open the edit screen of any post or page where you wish to override the default layout. Look at the right sidebar navigation options panel under the Sidebar Settings meta box. Here you can toggle overall sidebar visibility, adjust the structural alignment properties for this asset, or assign your newly registered option via the Select Sidebar dropdown menu.

Step 3: Populating Widgets Live

To fill your newly created template zone, view the assigned page on your frontend while logged into WordPress and open the Customizer > Widgets panel. Select the newly added target container block stack, and freely append premium tools like interactive voting polls, cryptocurrency price grids, or custom layout banners.

Cortics AI Gemini Assistant

Cortics comes equipped with a powerful, native content-generation assistant powered by the Google Gemini API framework. This integrates an advanced content meta box directly into your post and page editing screens, allowing you to streamline your content creation workflow.

Step 1: API Configuration

1. Obtain your personal API key directly from the Google AI platform: https://aistudio.google.com/api-key.
2. Navigate to your WordPress admin panel and open Appearance > Customize > Cortics AI Assistant.
3. Paste your code string into the Google Gemini API Key input field and hit publish. If needed, you can toggle the checkbox below to completely disable the AI framework across your installation.

Step 2: Working with the Block Editor Meta Box

Once configured, open any post or page editor. The dedicated Cortics AI Assistant sidebar element will be active and ready to process commands:

• Generate Fresh Content: Type a topic outline or section header directly into the generation text area and click the blue Generate & Insert button to instantly append production-ready copy into your document.
• Fix & Improve Selection: Highlight any specific text block inside your editor canvas and click Fix & Improve Selection to automatically polish phrasing, correct grammatical errors, and optimize flow.
• Automated Classification & SEO: Click Tags and Category or Gen SEO Meta to have the engine parse your article context and dynamically output target categorization metrics, post descriptions, and keywords.
• Social Media Automation: Tap the Generate SMM Snippets trigger to generate copy variants crafted specifically for promotional updates on social channels.

Theme Advertisements Management

Cortics features a highly flexible, multi-level advertisement injection engine. This native system allows site administrators to easily monetize content through comprehensive global placements, modular widget areas, or granular post-by-post overrides—completely eliminating the need for bulky third-party banner rotation plugins.

Supported Advertisement Formats & Types

Every single ad slot within the theme is natively built to process and render multiple deployment methods:

• Custom Image Banners: Upload image files directly through the media library, define alignment styles (e.g., Left Bottom), configure custom container heights/max-widths, and supply outbound target redirection links.
• Shortcodes: Seamlessly paste shortcodes generated by dedicated ad management plugins (like Ad Sanity or Advanced Ads).
• HTML & iFrames: Embed raw custom HTML tracking snippets, affiliate scripts, or secure iframe codes.
• Scripts (e.g., Google AdSense): Drop asynchronous script tags natively without breaking responsive layout grids.

Advertisement Injection Levels

The monetization pipeline is split into three highly intuitive hierarchy levels:

1. 1. Global Customizer Controls (Top & Bottom Banners): Navigate to Appearance > Customize > Cortics Theme Advertisements to configure global ad zones. You can enable a universal Top Advertisement Banner (rendered seamlessly near the navigation header layout) and a global Bottom Banner to display across your overall template environment.
2. 2. Modular Sidebar Widgets: By utilizing the theme's built-in Cortics Dynamic Sidebar Manager, you can insert the custom Cortics Advertisement Widget into any active sidebar or off-canvas panel. Since you can assign unique custom sidebars to specific individual posts/pages, and configure a dedicated global sidebar layout specifically for all your category archives, you can easily map highly targeted, context-specific ads across different structural zones of your website.
3. 3. Granular Post & Page Level Control: Every post and page creation screen includes a dedicated Page Advertisement Settings meta box block. Administrators can independently set the Top or Bottom banner mode to Global (From Customizer), or completely disable advertisements for that specific article row. This is perfect for cleaning up layout aesthetics on conversion-heavy landing pages or sponsored content pillars.

Search System

Cortics includes a fast, native AJAX-powered search engine that opens inside a clean modal window directly on the frontend.

Search Configuration Options:

To manage or modify your search settings, navigate to Appearance > Customize > Cortics Header Settings. From there, you can choose how the search bar functions:

• AJAX Search Modal (Default): Displays instant, live search results dynamically inside an interactive popup layout.
• Standard Search: Toggles the header icon to redirect users straight to the default WordPress search.
• Disable Search: Completely removes the search utility and its icon from your template header configuration.

Subscribe & Contact Forms

1. Contact Form 7 Setup

The theme seamlessly integrates custom styling for the Contact Form 7 plugin. To replicate the beautiful multi-column forms displayed in the live demo, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to Contact > Add New (or edit an existing form).
2. Copy and paste the exact semantic grid structure below into the Form text editor tab:

						

							

								 Your name
									[text* your-name autocomplete:name] 
								
							
							
							

								 Your email
									[email* your-email autocomplete:email] 
								
							
						

						

							

								 Your message (optional)
									[textarea your-message] 
								
							
						

						

							[submit "Submit"]
						
						

Click Save. Once saved, copy the generated shortcode (e.g., [contact-form-7 id="4fb2535" title="Contact form 1"]) to embed it into your Contact Page layout or Theme Customizer options. You can also customize system notifications and alert text templates within the Messages tab.

2. Mailchimp for WP (Newsletter Subscription)

To enable the inline newsletter capture forms featured across the blog layout:

1. Go to MC4WP > Mailchimp and paste your active Mailchimp API Key to connect your list. (You can generate this key in your Mailchimp dashboard under Profile > Extras > API Keys).
2. Once connected, navigate to MC4WP > Form.
3. Paste the following sleek markup code into the Form code editor window:

Icons System

Cortics utilizes the premium Font Awesome v6 library for all vector iconography across the template. To browse the complete catalog of available symbols, visit the official index: https://fontawesome.com/v6/search.

Correct Input Example:

fa-solid fa-image

Permalinks Configuration

By default, WordPress handles system URLs using a non-SEO-friendly query structure, such as https://example.com/?p=123. For a professional blog like Cortics, it is highly critical to enable Pretty Permalinks. Clean, keyword-rich URLs significantly improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and provide a much better user experience for your readers.

How to configure SEO Permalinks:

1. Navigate to Settings in your WordPress dashboard left sidebar (Step 1).
2. Click on the Permalinks submenu item (Step 2).
3. Under the Common Settings section, look at the structure options (Step 3):
   • Plain: ?p=123 (Default fallback, not recommended).
   • Day and name: /2026/06/14/sample-post/
   • Month and name: /2026/06/sample-post/
   • Post name: /sample-post/ (Strictly Recommended)
4. Select the Post name radio button option and click the blue Save Changes button at the bottom (Step 4).

Localization & Translation

Cortics is fully translation-ready and conforms strictly to standard WordPress internationalization methods. All hardcoded interface strings are properly wrapped in localization hooks, allowing you to easily translate the theme into any language using Loco Translate (plugin) or Poedit (desktop software).

• Theme Text Domain: cortics
• Base Translation POT File: /languages/cortics.pot

How to Translate Using Loco Translate Plugin

1. Install and activate the free Loco Translate plugin via your WordPress dashboard.
2. Navigate to Loco Translate > Themes > Cortics.
3. Click “New Language”, choose your desired language from the dropdown menu, and select "Custom" location to prevent your files from being overwritten during future theme updates.
4. Select any string from the Source Text list, enter your localized text in the translation area below, and click Save.

Translating Core Extensions (Plugin)

Some admin settings, widgets, and custom blocks are powered by the companion plugin. To translate these specific strings, simply follow the exact same procedure by navigating to:
Loco Translate > Plugins > Cortics Theme Pack (Text Domain: cortics-theme-pack).

Child Theme Customization

If you plan to modify or extend the core template functionality, alter styles, or register custom actions, it is heavily critical to use the companion Cortics Child theme instead of editing the parent files directly.

How to use the Child Theme safely:

1. Upload, install, and activate the cortics-child.zip archive found inside your main Envato download package.
2. Place all your custom styles inside the child theme's style.css file.
3. Add custom PHP filters, layout hooks, or action adjustments inside the child theme's functions.php file.

Sources & Credits

Fonts Used
Google Fonts — (Note: All font assets are embedded locally within the theme package to guarantee GDPR compliance and maximum PageSpeed scores without external server requests).

Images Used in Live Preview
Magnific
Pexels
Lummi
Important: All images are used for demonstration and preview purposes only. They are not included in the final theme download package.

Plugins & Third-Party Scripts

• TGM Plugin Activation: https://github.com/TGMPA/TGM-Plugin-Activation
• Swiper Slider: https://swiperjs.com/
• Glightbox: https://biati-digital.github.io/glightbox/

All other third-party scripts, open-source libraries, and assets utilized within this template are the property of their respective owners and are integrated under standard open-source licenses.

Changelog