This theme is the product of a collaboration between University Marketing and the WiscWeb team at DoIT. It evolved from needs and demand that arose from the redesign of the wisc.edu site in January 2016. It represents more visual flexibility than UW Theme Lite, all while adopting current best practices in WordPress theme development, as well as CSS, Javascript, HTML and accessibility. This theme offers a solid, responsive design solution out of the box.
The UW themes are copyrighted by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System.
Using the theme
After downloading and unzipping the theme, install it in your site’s themes folder and activate through your admin dashboard.
Using a child theme
If you want to extend the theme, you should use a child theme. Do not edit the theme files themselves. If you do so, you will lose those changes when upgrading the theme in the future. See the WordPress documentation for Child Themes.
Customizing the theme options
Use WordPress’s Customize screen to set options for the theme. For more info on the options available, see the Sitewide Settings page.
Developing with the theme
Web developers who use the theme can work with it in a number of different ways:
As a child theme
As with any WordPress theme, you can create a child theme if you want to extend or override its functionality beyond what is possible using the theme customizer. See the WordPress documentation for Child Themes for documentation. The theme does provide a few hooks (see WordPress docs) that might be useful:
If you have suggestions for additional filters or action hooks, please contact us or consider contributing to the theme’s development (see below).
Customizing CSS
CSS customizations should be done within a child theme.
Getting the source code
The zip download includes only the files needed to run the theme. The theme’s source code is stored in the campus’s Gitlab service, which is maintained by DoIT. To request the files, please email wordpress@umark.wisc.edu.
Contributing to the project
Reporting issues and requesting features
Please use WiscWeb’s feature request board for this purpose.
Contributing code
At this time, there is a freeze on new feature development for the UW Theme. Let us know if you have questions by emailing wordpress@umark.wisc.edu.