FlagshipMissive
- Free
- Blog
- 4 styles
- WordPress 7.0+
- PHP 7.4+
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Overview
A newsletter-first block theme for writers: night letters in warm black and wax gold, airmail stripes, issue numbers and one narrow reading column.
Missive is a block theme for writers whose blog is the archive of a newsletter: essays, a weekly letter, a subscribe form that is the main call to action. It opens dark ("Midnight": warm black, paper-white type, a wax-gold seal) and has a light "Airmail" scheme.
What is built in, with no page builder and no extra plugins required:
- Night letters look: warm black pages, paper-white Young Serif headlines, Schibsted Grotesk body text, a wax-gold accent and airmail stripes (red and blue, precomputed colours) on the header, the footer and the subscribe cards.
- Issue numbers as the main typographic device: "No. 42" on the home page, the latest-letter cover sheet and in the archive, counted down from the newest post.
- One narrow column for reading, a subscribe card (an envelope with a flap and a wax seal that stamps in) after every post and in the footer.
- Patterns: subscribe hero, latest letter, archive index, writer with signature, how it works, reader replies, quote card, FAQ, contact, gallery and complete home, about and contact pages.
- Archive as a list of issues, saved letters (reading list), replies on posts, forms and Messages through the Symelo Theme Kit, galleries, lightbox, featured video, table of contents and share buttons.
- Style variations: Airmail (light), Oxblood and Blue ink. Gentle motion that is off when the visitor prefers reduced motion.
Missive uses the free Secure Custom Fields plugin for subtitles, disclosures, photo stories, takeaways, series covers and author profiles; it offers to install it.
Questions
Where do form messages go?
Every form submission is kept under Messages in the dashboard and emailed to the site's admin address. Change the recipients under Messages → Settings, or give a single form its own recipients in the block settings.
How do I put the subscribe card in a page?
Insert the "Subscribe card" pattern (Missive: Calls to action). Its form is the same "newsletter" form as in the footer, so submissions land in one place under Messages.
How do I add a featured video?
Open the "Featured video" panel in the post sidebar and paste a YouTube or Vimeo link or choose a video file. YouTube and Vimeo load only after a click.
Can I turn the animations off?
Animations are classes on blocks (the Motion panel in the editor). Visitors who ask their system for reduced motion never see them.
How does the light and dark switch work?
Missive is dark first. The switch in the header changes to the light "Airmail" palette and remembers the choice. The Airmail style variation is light itself, so it has no switch.
The toggle in the header switches between the light palette and its dark partner and remembers the choice; until a visitor chooses, Missive follows the system setting. With the Noir style variation the site is dark for everyone and the toggle is hidden.
All versions
- 1.0.0WordPress 7.0+ · PHP 7.4+ZIP · 1.7 MB
- First release.
SHA-256
886f19321f437635c5649b591d036b87bd01501bc1f7336e533cc4e7819909af
Credits
Missive WordPress Theme, (C) 2026 Symelo LTD. Missive is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
- Young Serif, (C) 2023 The Young Serif Project Authors (https://github.com/noirblancrouge/YoungSerif), SIL Open Font License 1.1, https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Young+Serif (assets/fonts/young-serif).
- Schibsted Grotesk, (C) 2023 The Schibsted Grotesk Project Authors (https://github.com/schibsted/schibsted-grotesk), SIL Open Font License 1.1, https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Schibsted+Grotesk (assets/fonts/schibsted-grotesk).
- Blog foundation demo images (desk-notebook, reading-nook, autumn-path, village-lane, coast-road, harbour-boats and others in inc/foundation/demo/images), Symelo placeholder library (https://symelo.com/tools/placeholder-images), (C) 2026 Symelo LTD, distributed with the theme under the GPLv2 or later.
- Signature (inline SVG in the "The writer" pattern): drawn for Missive, (C) 2026 Symelo LTD, GPLv2 or later.
- Symelo Theme Kit and the Symelo blog foundation (inc/kit, inc/foundation): (C) 2026 Symelo LTD, GPLv2 or later. Share icons: Simple Icons, CC0.
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