PokaTheme 5.0.2: the main demo rebuilt, Esports Arena and dark mode per style

PokaTheme 5.0.2 is out. It rebuilds the demo most buyers open first, adds a sixth one-click demo for esports, and lets a style variation carry its own dark mode. It is a free update for every PokaTheme customer, in your account under purchase history.

It is an update in place: upload it over 5.0.1. There is nothing to migrate, and nothing about an existing site changes its look until you pick one of the new styles.

5.0.1 brought five demos and eight style variations. 5.0.2 brings the sixth demo, the ninth and tenth styles, and a dark mode that belongs to a style rather than to the theme.

The main demo, rebuilt

The PokaTheme demo is now a casino review site built the way we would build one today, from the theme’s own blocks. It ranks twelve invented casinos on three things it says it measured: how long the money took to arrive, what the bonus really costs, and whether the licence is on the regulator’s register. All twelve have review pages, and the homepage board ranks ten of them.

It shows its working rather than asserting it. One withdrawal is timed minute by minute at the top of the page — requested at 09:12, documents asked for at 09:40, approved at 12:31, paid out at 12:52 — and the ranking reads like a departures board, with the figures turning over when it is sorted. Offers carry their terms beside the number: wagering, minimum deposit, maximum cashout. There is a payments table, a head-to-head page of the kind covered in comparison tables and /vs/ pages, and a “How we rate” page that explains the three measurements.

The pages that show every block, list, table and page type are still there, under Demo Pages, Elements and New in v5. Nothing was dropped to make room for the new homepage.

Every casino, offer, payout time, rating, regulator and author on it is invented, the regulators are marked “(demo)”, every affiliate link goes to example.org, and the artwork was drawn for it with no people in it. See it live.

On 5.0.2, Appearance → PokaTheme Demos imports the rebuilt demo under the PokaTheme card. Sites still on 5.0.1 keep importing the classic main demo, which stays online for them: changing it in place would hand them a demo built for a style their theme does not have.

Casino Ledger, the style behind it

Casino Ledger is a tenth style variation, which means you can put an existing site on it under Customizer → Visual Settings → Style without importing anything. It is a cool grey page under a board-black header, white flaps on a black frame with a fine hinge line across each, figures in fixed columns, and the logo’s green kept for the action.

It ships a skin of its own — one stylesheet for the shapes a set of colours cannot describe — and a dark palette of its own, which is the next item below. Every text colour pair in it passes WCAG AA in the light and in the dark.

Esports Arena: a sixth demo

Esports Arena is an esports betting comparison and news site, dark by design and laid out like a match broadcast. It ranks twelve esports books on the three things that separate them in practice: which titles they price all year rather than only at a major, how deep the markets go past match winner, and whether their void rules are written down anywhere.

The part worth opening the demo for is the pick strip. Six markets — match winner, map winner, map handicap, total maps, round markets and player markets — each showing which of the top three books price it. Match winner: all three of them. Player markets: one. That is the shape of an esports comparison, and a table of ticks does not show it.

Around it sit six invented game titles, each with its own page and a count of how many of the twelve books price it outside the majors; twelve offers laid out as scorebugs, with their wagering, minimum deposit and maximum cashout; and thirty-two news stories in eight categories, void rules and patch watch among them.

Every book, game title, tournament, regulator and offer on it is invented, the regulators are marked “(demo)”, every affiliate link goes to example.org, and its artwork was drawn for it with no people in it. The 18+ lines, the commission disclosure, the “How we rate” page and the responsible-gambling page come with the import, as on every demo. See it live.

Esports Arena is a ninth style variation as well: a graphite page under a near-black broadcast bar, signal-orange buttons, broadcast-blue picks, and square plates with slanted ends, with a skin of its own. Every text colour pair in the style and its skin passes WCAG AA, as on the other variations.

Dark mode a style can bring with it

Until now dark mode was one palette for every style: the surfaces and the inks change, the brand colours stay. That is the right answer for a style that was only ever designed in the light, and the wrong one for a style designed in both — a skin whose shapes were drawn for its own night ends up sitting on a generic navy that nobody drew them for.

From 5.0.2 a style variation may say what it looks like in the dark. It declares pokaDark in its JSON, using the same setting names as pokaSettings, and colours only: anything that is not a colour setting is dropped, so a dark palette can repaint a style and never rebuild it. Fonts, sizes and radii are the same at night.

Casino Ledger is the style that ships one today, so with Casino Ledger picked the dark-mode switch turns the page into the board at night instead of the generic dark palette. Styles without a pokaDark block look exactly as they did.

Fixed

• The theme’s own logo vanished on a dark header. A site that had not uploaded a logo yet showed the shipped wordmark in dark ink, which on a dark header left “POKA” and nothing after it. The shipped wordmark now follows the header’s colour, and an uploaded logo is never replaced.
• The icon font reached text that was not an icon. Every element whose class started with poka- drew its ::before in the icon font, so a comparison table’s labels on a phone could turn into glyphs. Only the theme’s own icons use the icon font now.
• Menu badges stretched into bars in the phone menu. “New”, “Top” and the rest stay badges in the mobile menu.
• A whole-number rating read “4/5” beside “4.9/5”. Ratings are printed as they are read: a whole number keeps one decimal (4.0), a finer one prints as stored (4.75). The stars line in tables, reviews and lists, the comparison page and table, and the rating blocks all use it. Sorting and the review’s structured data keep the plain number.

How to update

Download PokaTheme 5.0.2 from your account and upload it through Appearance → Themes → Add New, letting WordPress replace the installed version. Please do not overwrite the theme folder over FTP while visitors are on the site. The child theme has not changed, so leave yours as it is.

If you want one of the new demos, import it into a fresh site: a demo import replaces the front page and the primary menu. If you only want the look, pick the style under Customizer → Visual Settings → Style and import nothing at all.

All six demos are on the demos page, the documentation covers the styles and the import screen, and the FAQ answers the upgrade questions from v4. If something does not look right after the update, tell us or ask on the support forum, and we will have a look.