The Barbican theme

Your public site is built from four layers, from the outside in: a theme sets the frame, navigation routes visitors through it, pages hold the content, and patterns and blocks are the interchangeable pieces the pages are made of. This guide walks that path, wide to narrow — Theme → Navigation → Pages → Patterns → Blocks — so you can see how much of your site is yours to rearrange.

The short version: Barbican gives you building pieces, not a locked template. Every public page is assembled from small, standard WordPress blocks you can move, restyle, or replace. This page starts at the outermost layer — the theme.

What Barbican ships

Barbican includes a small block theme, also named Barbican. It’s a full block theme: a warm, editorial baseline with templates for the pages the plugin creates (Properties, Agents, Open Houses), a header, a footer, and a matching palette and typography. It uses the self-hosted Jost typeface and a restrained black-and-neutral palette that matches the plugin’s public pages, so the theme and the blocks look like one product out of the box.

The theme is a sensible starting point, not a requirement. Barbican is theme-agnostic — the plugin and all its blocks work on whatever theme you’re already running. The bundled theme simply saves you the setup for a common case.

It isn’t activated for you

Installing the plugin does not switch your site to the Barbican theme. That’s deliberate: activating a theme changes how your whole site looks, and that’s your decision to make, not something a plugin should do behind your back. Instead, Barbican registers the theme so it appears in Appearance → Themes alongside your others, ready whenever you want it.

You’ll also see a one-time, dismissible notice in the admin prompting you to try it:

• Activate Barbican theme switches your site to it immediately (the same one-click activation as the Themes screen).
• Dismiss hides the notice for you and doesn’t touch your current theme.

If you dismiss it, nothing changes — you can still activate the theme any time from Appearance → Themes.

Note

The notice appears only to users who can switch themes, and only while the Barbican theme isn’t already active. Once you activate it — or dismiss the notice — it’s gone.

Why activate it

Activating the theme buys you one thing above all: a header that just works. The theme’s header uses the standard WordPress Navigation block, bound to the menu Barbican provisions for you, and it understands the plugin’s login state — so the right items appear and the Log in / Profile toggle works for signed-in visitors with no configuration. None of that is guaranteed on an arbitrary third-party theme; you’d wire the header and menu yourself.

You also get, for free:

• A layout tuned for listings — templates for the property, agent, and open house pages, sized and spaced for real-estate content.
• A matching look — the same palette, spacing, and Jost typography the public blocks use, so nothing looks bolted on.

Using your own theme instead

You’re not giving anything up by keeping your current theme. Every Barbican block works anywhere, and the plugin still creates its pages and menu. The two things the bundled theme handles automatically that you’ll want to check on your own theme:

• The header menu — add Barbican’s navigation to your theme’s header so visitors can reach Properties, Agents, and the rest. See Navigation & menus.
• The auth toggle — the Log in / Profile switch relies on CSS classes Barbican adds to your menu automatically; it works on classic and block themes alike. The Navigation page covers the classes to use if you’re building a custom header.

Tip

The bundled theme is also a working reference. If you’re styling your own site, open the Barbican theme in Appearance → Editor to see how its templates and the plugin’s blocks fit together.

Next

With the frame in place, the next layer is how visitors move through it — Navigation & auth-aware menus, including the CSS classes that let you show or hide menu items based on whether a contact is signed in.