If you’ve installed a WordPress theme but it’s not quite right for you, you may be feeling frustrated. There are plenty of options available to you for customizing your WordPress theme.Try a free demo
The challenge is finding the right way to do it.
In this post, I’ll steer you through the options for customizing your WordPress theme, help to decide which one’s right for you and show you how to do it safely and efficiently.
Before we dive in and start making changes to your theme, it pays to understand what the options are, as they suit different situations.
Here’s an overview of the options available to you:
- If you want to add functionality to your theme, install a plugin.
- Use the Customizer in your WordPress admin screens to customize fonts, colors and maybe layout too, depending on your theme.
- If you’re working with a page builder theme, use its features to customize the design of your site.
- If you’ve installed a framework theme, use one of the available child themes to customize your site, along with any customization options viable own the admin screens.
- If your theme is specific to your site and you’re comfortable doing it, edit the theme’s code directly.
- If you want to edit the code of a third-party theme, create a child theme.
If you want to edit the code, you have a number of options available to you, from using the block editor, to the Customizer, right through to editing the files. We’ll look at them all in this post, but let’s start with the simplest option: installing a plugin.
“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”