FAQ and common issues

I set an accent color and nothing changed

Accent color does nothing on its own. Pick a Link style or a Nav link style under it — Basil, Parsley, Thyme, Rosemary, Chive or Tarragon — and the accent is what those wear. Sage, the default for the content, leaves links reading as plain text. See Design.

There isn’t one. Fern is a single column by design — no widget area beside the content, on any template. If you need a sidebar, this is the wrong theme rather than a setting you have missed.

Fern does not invent a menu from your pages. Build one at Appearance → Menus and assign it to Primary menu. Sub-menu items are not printed either — both menus are capped at one level. See Header.

That is deliberate. There is no hamburger and no off-canvas panel: the menu is one row at every width, which is what lets the theme ship no front-end JavaScript at all. Keep the primary menu to a handful of short items.

Comments do not show up

Two switches have to agree. Customize → Single post → Display comments? is off out of the box, and WordPress’s own Settings → Discussion and the per-post discussion box still apply on top of it. A post created while discussion was closed stays closed even after you turn the theme setting on — open it in the post editor.

The blog shows only titles and dates

That is the Inline blog layout, which is the default. Switch Customize → Blog → Blog layout to Stack for thumbnails and post text. See Blog and posts.

How do I hide a page’s title?

Open the page in the editor and tick Hide page title? in the Page options box in the sidebar. For a static front page, use Customize → Homepage Settings → Display homepage title instead — it is off by default.

Where are the demo sites / the import?

There is no importer and no demo content. The pages, the menu and the settings are yours to make, and a page with someone else’s words in it is worse than no page at all.

How do I add my own CSS?

Appearance → Customize → Additional CSS for anything small. The theme publishes its colors as CSS custom properties — var(--accent) and var(--secondary-text) among them — so your rules can follow the Customizer rather than hard-coding a second copy of the palette.

For template changes, use a child theme so an update cannot overwrite them.

Can I use the classic editor?

Yes — Customize → Misc → Enable classic editor, and Enable classic widgets beside it. Neither needs a plugin. See Misc and the admin.

Where do I get support?

At support.quietsite.org. Customize → Info lists the theme version you are on, which is the first thing anyone helping you will ask for.