WordPress Customizer is probably one of those elements of WordPress that has remained uninteresting since quite long. However, the recent updates have changed it for better and have made the WordPress Customizer one of the excellent options in their own right.
What exactly is a WordPress Customizer? How beneficial would it be in designing your WordPress site? Let us explore the concept in finer detail.
What is WordPress Customizer?
Well, WordPress Customizer is an excellent option that helps you take care of the appearance and look of your theme. It offers you a unique interface for changing the appearance and functionality of your WordPress.
The changes you can make with WordPress customizer range across a broader spectrum. It can even help you make some massive changes like site title, background image, and menu items. What makes it even more important and unique is the fact that all this can be managed from one single screen with an easily manageable interface.
An Overview of the Customizer Functionality
WordPress has indeed been an excellent Content Management System for users. However, lack of customization was so far limited to developers and thus involved hiring experts if you wanted to make your WordPress site or blog more personalized. But, the recent updates have made the WordPress Customizer a simplified and easier feature to work with your themes.
As you will be witnessing in the following explanation, and tutorials, it lets you perform a lot of tasks that help transform your website for your visitors. What makes it an excellent option is the easier and simple interface that it offers you. We consider it an attractive option for customizing your WordPress blog. Instead of checking out the options for customizing your site from some other back-end, make complete use of the WordPress Customizer functionality.
Where to find WordPress Customizer in the Dashboard?
Go to your WordPress Admin Dashboard and navigate to Appearance/Customise option. You will be taken to the Customizer interface with the preview of your existing theme on the right and the customization options on the left side.
The Customizer provides you options for a variety of configuration options including editing the footer, header, site identity, colors and backgrounds to name just a few. You can check the preview before finalizing any of the changes.
How to Use WordPress Customizer – Step by Step Instructions
How WordPress Customizer let you configure your WordPress site? There are several areas you would be able to customize with the Customizer. Let us examine the features, functions and the customization options that the WordPress Customizer offers you.
However, do note that the customizability of a theme is dependent upon the features and the development of the theme that you are attempting to customize. Some of the features may not be supported in a few themes.
1) Site Identity Configuration
First things first, we will begin with the first item in the WordPress Customizer. This offers you an option to edit the name and tagline of your website. Click on the Site Identity and go with the settings that it offers you.
Just fill out the fields, and you will find the results in the preview window instantly. Click on Save & Publish and you are done! You can even upload an icon through this page easily.
2) Customize the Menu
You can even customize the Menu items of your website if you do not like the default menu on the theme and want to change it. Click on the Menu option on the WordPress Customizer.
Click on Add a menu, type a name for your new menu and then click on Create Menu. This will create a new menu.
Once the new menu is created, next on the line is to customize it further. This will involve editing its settings. You can perform a lot of things with the newly created Menu item. You can change its name, change its order, adjust the other options for the menu and change its location.
The settings are much easy to comprehend even for the newbies. You can practice with the setting up of the menu until you are comfortable with the configurations.
3) Change Website Colors
This is yet another option offered by WordPress Customizer. Changing the colors can considerably change the appearance of your website or blog.
Navigate to Colors option from the WordPress Customizer. Of course, the options available for you will be dependent upon the colors that your theme can make use of. You should be able to customize the colors for a variety of items including Titles, top slider post title and posts, and section posts title and text.
4) Customize Post Settings
This is one of those settings that you can achieve with WordPress Customizer alone. Most other customizations can be carried out from other locations as well, but the single post settings are not available anywhere else.
Click on Single Post Settings under WordPress Customizer menu. You will have access to a plethora of configurations that can be applied to your blog posts to make them unique and different. This will define the way your post text and other elements of your post will be visible on your WordPress blog. There are several settings like the option to hide author name or hide the related posts. You can even hide the post thumbnails.
5) Customize the background Settings
The functionality will be available if your theme makes use of a Background image or supports it. WordPress Customizer lets you customize the settings so that you can disable the background image or change it to an image of your preference.
Click on Background Image under the WordPress Customizer menu. Apart from changing the background image, you can also use the customization option to apply a few other options to the background image. Some of these additional settings include configuring background-repeat structure like tiles, horizontal tiles or vertical tiles. You can also configure background position and attachment.
6) Previews for multiple platforms
Google and other search engines, of late, have been focussing on mobile-friendliness of a site or blog. This can be one of the major points that can affect the SEO performance of your site. It would be quite essential to check if your theme supports responsive layout and can be viewed comfortably across multiple platforms.
WordPress Customizer lets you check the mobile and tablet previews of your site from within the tool. By default, it displays the site in the desktop view. You can make use of the icons at the bottom the page to switch between multiple platforms and check the compatibility of your site.
7) Set up a Custom Header
The header along with the logo is one of the most important aspects that make your website or blog more visible to the visitors. WordPress Customizer helps you achieve the best possible customization functionality for your blog.
Go to WordPress Customizer and click on Header. Some themes may display it as Header Image or something on those lines. Click on Add New Image if your Header does not come with an image already. You would now be able to upload an image just the way you would upload the image into your post or media gallery.
The exact size and dimensions of your image would be dependent upon the theme you have installed. Make sure that the picture you are uploading is compatible with these standards. Of course, you can scale them down using the tools from within WordPress.
The Concluding Thoughts
Well, that was all we had with respect to WordPress Customizer. It is indeed an excellent option for all your needs in customizing the site to meet your exact needs. We assume it to be a good option when compared to other backend options you may have been working with till now.
However, please do understand that the customization options that are available at your disposal would be completely dependent upon the theme you have installed on your WordPress installation. While some of the themes may support all the features that WordPress Customizer provide you, a few of them may not be compatible with some functions.
Make sure that your existing theme is updated to the latest version to ensure that the customization functionality works to your expectation. If you are not getting the level of customization you expect, you may consider checking some other theme.
Which customizations above did appeal to you the most? Which of the themes you think is best suited for the broadest degree of customization? We welcome you to share your experiences with WordPress Customizer and the features that you loved the most with the tool.
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