Each theme offers different options to customize. If you are ever unsure about how to customize your theme, refer to its documentation for information. This example uses the theme Edin. As you work through these options, remember to frequently use the save and publish button at the top to ensure your changes are saved.
Here are the options to customize in that theme:
Customize options
Site Identity: aka your site title. You can also change your tagline here. In either case, feel free to be clever and creative in your use of a title and tagline.
Header Image: Whether you have a header or a logo, remember this main page visual is your first opportunity to visual explain who you are and to express your personal brand in a glance. Consider this – in 2.6 seconds a website viewer decides if a site is good or bad. That positive first impression can be made with a good header.
Colors and Backgrounds: Be cautious about altering these. While backgrounds (especially images) are never a good idea, if the designer has given you options for different color palettes you can safely work with those.
Fonts: This is one option that you should never change. Typically, a theme designer has selected fonts and sizes and designed around those. There is a good chance that changing those could cause some part of the site’s design to look awry.
Menus: You create, place and edit your menu all within the customizer. Menus can include custom links, pages, posts, categories, etc. Refer to the separate video for more information.
Content and Theme Options: These are very specific to a theme. Often it will be what you include with posts or how you want a front page to look.
Widgets: You can think of widgets as sidebars. This is content that you can place usually at the bottom of sides of pages to offer reader services throughout your site. One caution is to avoid widgets that pull feeds from outside sources, they can often slow your site load time down, especially if they are Flickr or Instagram feeds.
Static front page: No matter your theme, you can choose your home page to stay the same (static) or have your latest posts. For a portfolio, a static page is a great way to ‘welcome’ people to your site.
Table of Contents:
00:07 – Customizing our theme
00:30 – Appearance, Customize
00:56 – How to check help info aka documentation
01:28 – Changing site title
02:16 – Changing colors – use palette
02:49 – Content options
03:09 – Widgets – adding search bar and contact
04:52 – Homepage settings – home stays same
