The Included Nectarblocks Theme

So far, we’ve focused on the plugin itself, which is all about building your page content. But the theme is what controls everything else—the structural and styling aspects that sit outside of that content.

Here’s the distinction to keep in mind:The plugin is where you design your page content—sections, layouts, animations, and everything inside the editor.The theme is responsible for the rest. Things like your archive pages, single post templates, your header navigation, mobile menus, and a wide range of general styling controls.

The two work together: the plugin gives you design freedom inside the page, while the theme ensures the rest of your site stays consistent and polished.

Using the theme also unlocks the WordPress Customizer, where you’ll find hundreds of styling options.Here you can adjust typography, spacing, button styles, colors, and much more. Think of it as the command center for your site-wide styles.

The Nectarblocks Theme is a hybrid theme. It doesn’t rely on WordPress Full Site Editing. Instead, we’ve built a system that gives you the same kind of flexibility, but with tools that integrate directly with Nectarblocks.That’s where Global Sections and the Theme Builder come in.

Global Sections let you design content in Nectarblocks and attach it to theme areas. A common example is building a custom footer or sidebar.To make this easier, we’ve built a visual hook system. When you’re working with Global Sections, you can enable visual hooks to see exactly where theme locations are. That way, you can attach your custom content to the right spot without guesswork.

The Theme Builder takes things a step further. Here, you can design complete templates for different content types—like single blog posts, product pages, or archive layouts. Once created, the theme automatically applies your template to that content type across your site.We’ll dive deeper into this in a later course, but for now, just know the included theme gives you access to all of this.

So to recap:The plugin handles page content.The theme handles everything else—archives, single templates, navigation, and general styling.You get access to the Customizer, with hundreds of design controls.It’s a hybrid theme, unlocking Global Sections with visual hooks, and the Theme Builder for full template control.

Together, the theme and plugin give you complete control over both your site’s content and its structure.

And in the next course, we’re heading back into the plugin to cover one of the most important skills: Layout Fundamentals. This is where we’ll build the foundation for how to structure your pages effectively with Nectarblocks.