Dansal is a free child theme of Twenty Sixteen, built specifically for bloggers and writers. It inherits Twenty Sixteen’s typography and reading layout, keeps the parent’s customisation options intact, and was released free on WordPress.org.
If you arrived here from a footer credit on a site running Dansal, this page covers what the theme is, what its child-theme architecture means in practice, and how to think about staying put or moving on.
View the demo · View the listing on WordPress.org
What Dansal does
Twenty Sixteen was built around reading. It uses a horizontally centred column with generous margins, a hard-working type scale, and an optional sidebar that does not fight the content. For a text-led blog it holds up unusually well — the design decisions were about legibility rather than fashion, which is why it has aged better than most themes of its vintage.
Dansal is a customised version of that, aimed at people writing at length. It is fully responsive and optimised across laptop, tablet and phone viewports. It uses Twenty Sixteen’s typography directly rather than replacing it, which is deliberate — that typography is the parent theme’s strongest feature and there was no good reason to override it.
Crucially, Dansal inherits the parent’s design and customisation options rather than stripping them out, so you keep the full flexibility of Twenty Sixteen’s Customizer while getting Dansal’s presentation on top.
Why a child theme puts you in a better position
This matters more than anything else on this page.
A child theme inherits templates, functions and styling from its parent, overriding only what it explicitly changes. Dansal is a layer over Twenty Sixteen — most of the code running on your site every day is not ours, it is WordPress core’s.
And Twenty Sixteen is still maintained. WordPress default themes are maintained by the project itself, which keeps them compatible with new core releases and new PHP versions long after third-party themes of the same age have been abandoned. When a WordPress release would otherwise break something, the default themes are fixed as part of it.
Your practical position, then: the majority of your theme code is actively maintained by the WordPress project, and only the thin layer on top is not. That is meaningfully safer than running a standalone unmaintained theme — see the Delish theme page for what that harder case looks like.
Where the real risk sits
The child layer is unmaintained
Dansal’s own template overrides and styling are ours, and they are not being updated. If a future WordPress release changes something those overrides depend on, the parent gets fixed and the child does not. The surface is small — typically a stylesheet, a functions file and a few template files — but it is not nothing.
It is a classic theme, not a block theme
WordPress has moved toward block themes and full site editing. Twenty Sixteen and its children are classic themes: they use the Customizer, not the site editor. Nothing breaks, but block-based template editing, global styles and the newer design tools are not available to you, and the gap grows with each release.
No amount of maintenance on a classic theme gets you there — that requires a block theme. Our Gutenberg theme guide covers the current field.
PHP version drift
Hosts upgrade PHP on their own timetable. Twenty Sixteen is updated for those changes; Dansal’s additions are not. If your host has moved you to PHP 8.x and you are seeing deprecation notices, your error log will tell you whether they come from the parent or the child.
How to check where your site stands
- Appearance → Themes. Confirm Dansal is active and Twenty Sixteen is installed as the parent. A child theme without its parent will not function.
- Tools → Site Health → Info. WordPress version, PHP version and server environment in one place. The Status tab flags what WordPress itself considers a problem.
- Make sure Twenty Sixteen is updated. As the parent, its updates matter more than anything else here. Never delete it.
- Check your error log. Warnings naming files in the Dansal directory point at the child layer; warnings naming Twenty Sixteen usually mean a pending update.
- Test on a real phone. Not an emulator. Click through a few posts and check the sidebar behaviour at narrow widths.
Should you move?
Not urgently. The theme works, its parent is maintained by the WordPress project, Twenty Sixteen’s reading experience is still good, and a classic theme on a text-led blog is a perfectly reasonable setup. Migrating costs time and risks breaking what currently works.
Three situations change that calculation:
- You want block editing and full site editing. The strongest reason, and the only one a classic theme genuinely cannot answer.
- You are hitting real errors traceable to the child layer, which nobody will fix.
- The site now matters commercially. Once revenue depends on it, unmaintained code becomes a business decision.
If you migrate
For a reading-focused blog, the sensible successors are Twenty Twenty-Five (the current default — the same project-maintained advantage, but block-native), Kadence, Blocksy or GeneratePress. All have usable free versions; we compare them in our free WordPress themes roundup.
- Back up first — files and database, off the server. Our backup plugin comparison covers the options.
- Work on staging. If your host does not provide it, consider better WordPress hosting.
- Screenshot the Customizer. Theme mods are theme-specific and will not transfer.
- Expect widgets to be orphaned into Inactive Widgets, and menus to need re-mapping.
- Keep permalinks identical. This is what protects rankings.
- Verify SEO settings. These live in your SEO plugin, not the theme, so they should survive — but check. See our SEO plugin guide and RankMath Pro review.
Common questions
Can I delete Twenty Sixteen?
No. Dansal requires its parent installed to function. Deleting Twenty Sixteen breaks the site.
Is Dansal still downloadable?
It has a WordPress.org listing. Availability of older themes can change, so check the current listing rather than trusting this page. Never install a WordPress theme from a third-party mirror — repackaged themes are a well-documented malware vector.
Does changing theme hurt SEO?
Not by itself. URLs, content and metadata are unaffected. Damage comes from side effects: losing widget-based internal links, changing heading structure, or regressing mobile layout and page speed.
Do I have to keep the footer credit?
No.
The short version
Dansal is a child theme of a still-maintained WordPress default, so most of your theme code is being looked after by the WordPress project. Keep Twenty Sixteen installed and updated, watch your PHP version, and move to a block theme when you actually want block editing rather than because this one is old.
Our other free themes: Parole 2015, a Twenty Fifteen child theme in the same position, and Delish, a standalone theme and therefore a different case.