Squaretype 4.0.0 – Modern Blog WordPress Theme

I spent a weekend poking at Squaretype – Modern Blog WordPress Theme on a messy staging site with old posts, lazy embeds, Rank Math, WP Rocket, and one client who “just wanted it to look like the demo”. Famous last words.

First impression? It looks good. Annoyingly good. The layouts are clean, the typography is not the usual ThemeForest circus, and the magazine/blog blocks actually feel usable.

But yeah, I still had to open DevTools within ten minutes.

What I liked before the caffeine wore off

The best part of Squaretype is that most visual stuff is not buried in some cursed page builder.

You can change the useful bits here:

Appearance -> Customize -> Theme Options

That’s where I adjusted:

• header layout
• archive style
• single post sidebar
• featured image behavior
• footer columns
• post meta visibility
• basic color scheme

Typography sits under:

Appearance -> Customize -> Typography

I changed body font, headings, font size, and line height there. No need to touch CSS for basic readability, which is honestly a lifesaver when you inherit a blog with 900 posts and zero design discipline.

The font loading made me swear a bit

I opened Chrome DevTools, went to the Network tab, filtered by font, and saw multiple Google font weights loading that I absolutely did not need.

The theme was pulling regular, medium, semibold, bold — cute, but no thanks.

My fix was not glamorous. I disabled Google Fonts in the Customizer where possible, then added local fonts through functions.php:

add_action('wp_enqueue_scripts', function() {
    wp_enqueue_style('local-inter', get_stylesheet_directory_uri() . '/fonts/inter.css', [], null);
}, 20);

Then I overrode the font stack in the child theme CSS. Ugly? Slightly. Faster? Yes.

The stuff you can’t really fix in the Customizer

This is where Squaretype gets less friendly.

If you want to move post meta around properly, you’ll end up inside template files. On my install, the files I had to inspect were:

• template-parts/content-single.php
• template-parts/content.php
• template-parts/header/header-main.php
• inc/classes/class-theme-setup.php

The Customizer can hide the author/date/category, sure. But if you want custom reading time placement, different schema output, or a weird sponsor label above the title, you’re editing PHP.

I used a child theme and hooked into:

add_action('wp_head', 'my_custom_schema_cleanup', 99);

Not elegant, but I’d rather do that than patch the parent theme and cry during the next update.

Demo import and activation, plain version

I tested the GPL package of Squaretype on my local and staging installs. It worked without site limits — basically unlimited website usage from a practical WordPress point of view.

There was no magical cloud dependency blocking the theme from running.

Demo import went through:

Appearance -> Import Demo Data

The annoying part is that some demo sections expect the recommended plugins to be active first. Install those before importing, or you’ll get a half-baked homepage and wonder why the cards look drunk.

Updates are manual if you’re not using an official license dashboard. I just uploaded the new theme ZIP via:

Appearance -> Themes -> Add New -> Upload Theme

And yes, use a child theme unless you enjoy losing edits like a rookie.

The cache plugin fight

With WP Rocket, delaying JavaScript broke my mobile menu. Classic.

Console showed a lazy little error around the theme navigation script firing before jQuery was ready. I excluded these from delay:

• jquery-core
• jquery-migrate
• the theme main JS handle, on my install loaded as squaretype-scripts

After that, the hamburger menu stopped acting like it had trust issues.

For CSS, removing unused CSS was mostly fine, but it nuked a few archive card styles. I safelisted:

.entry-card
.cs-entry
.navbar
.offcanvas

Not pretty, but stable.

Database and bloat notes

Theme settings are stored mostly in wp_options, as expected. Search for:

SELECT * FROM wp_options WHERE option_name LIKE '%theme_mods%';

For my test site, the relevant row was something like:

theme_mods_squaretype

That’s where a lot of Customizer choices live. If you migrate between staging and production, don’t forget this row, or the site comes over looking like it got dressed in the dark.

The DOM is not insane, but homepage blocks can get chunky if you stack too many featured grids. Lighthouse complained less after I removed one hero section and stopped loading three different post sliders above the fold.

My verdict after too much debugging

Squaretype – Modern Blog WordPress Theme is one of those themes I don’t hate, which is high praise from me.

It’s clean, readable, and actually usable for editorial sites, personal blogs, and niche magazines. But it is still a WordPress theme, so expect the usual nonsense: font bloat, JS timing issues with cache plugins, and template edits the Customizer pretends you won’t need.

Would I use Squaretype again? Yeah. But only with a child theme, local fonts, WP Rocket exclusions, and DevTools open from minute one.

FAQ

Why does the mobile menu stop working after optimization?

Usually delayed JS. Exclude jquery-core and squaretype-scripts from delay/defer in WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache.

Can I move post meta without editing PHP?

Only basic hide/show stuff. For real control, edit template-parts/content-single.php in a child theme.

Why does the imported demo look broken?

You probably imported before installing recommended plugins. Activate them first, then rerun demo import.

Is the homepage too heavy?

It can be. Too many featured grids and sliders add DOM weight fast. Remove one hero block before blaming hosting.