Finding a WordPress theme with the exact design and functionality you want can be difficult. You may be tempted to tweak your theme to fill up these gaps with some additional, exciting features. In cases where you do not have a good knowledge of coding, you might want to skip to effortless ways. Let’s learn some tips and tricks to improve your website’s design and user experience with the easy-peasy built-in tools on WordPress.
For Quick Customization
There are two main ways you can quickly customize your WordPress theme’s appearance:
#Theme Options
Many highly customizable WordPress themes come with ‘Theme Options,’ which helps you customize your theme effortlessly and efficiently. Just navigate to Appearance >> Theme Options on your Dashboard. Here, you can change the layout, styling, typography and also modify the header and footer. You do not need any programming knowledge to tweak your WordPress theme with the ‘Theme Options’ page.
#Theme Customizer
With the theme customizer, you can easily configure the appearance of your site. You change your site’s title and tagline, modify the header image, color scheme, change the site icon, and add additional CSS. While customizing your site with the available widgets on your theme customizer page, you can see an instant live preview of your site on the right side. This helps you to decide on the changes you want to keep simultaneously. After you’re done selecting, click on the ‘Save and Publish’ button to save your changes.
Other Customization Options
Apart from the above mentioned quick steps, you can use the following ways to customize your WordPress theme:
#Add Plugins
You can try installing and activating specific plugins to change or extend your WordPress site’s style and functionality dramatically. You can modify the visual elements, add or remove blocks, drag and drop page builders, etc. To use plugins, it is not necessary to have CSS knowledge. Site Origin CSS lets you alter visual elements even with zero CSS familiarity. Some developers offer the essential features free of charge and quote a small premium for further in-depth functionality.
#Using or Adding Custom CSS
You can either add custom CSS codes directly from the admin area or opt to install a CSS plugin. There are plenty of plugins that let you write customized style sheets. Using a custom CSS plugin, you are saved from writing any code and can easily switch themes. Beginners can prefer to use the Customizer’s in-built CSS editor or the Jetpack plugin, while if you are quite familiar with CSS, you can try the Advanced CSS Editor.
#Using Child Theme
We do not recommend adding Custom CSS into your parent theme. In case you forget to save your custom changes and accidentally update the theme, all your CSS changes will be lost. Try using a child theme instead.
Child themes are always recommended to customize a WordPress theme, though beginners may find it a little difficult to understand. With the child theme, you can change the functionality of your parent theme without directly modifying it. You can also create custom page templates, add new files, implement a security feature, and whatnot.
#Hire a Professional
While you can go with any of the above routes mentioned to tweak your theme’s appearance, there are many times when you’re required to make advanced customizations. If that is the case, the only option you have is to hire certified WordPress developers to carry out customizations. Ideally, you should hire a professional to customize your WordPress theme if:
- You need an utterly unique design
- It’s a WordPress eCommerce site
- There is PHP/JavaScript is involved in the customization
- Something goes wrong during customization
- You don’t find a plugin to integrate specific functionality to your site
- You can’t or don’t want to perform customization
All in all, even if you can customize the theme yourself, it would be a wiser option to hire a WordPress professional.
Points to be Noted
When tweaking a WordPress theme, keep the following things in mind to ensure seamless customizations:
- Remember to keep a backup of your theme before you start tweaking it.
- Pick a good parent theme that doesn’t require you to write many codes on yourself.
- Use a child theme only if you really need to override the core parent theme functionality and features.
An alternative and the best option is to opt for a custom WordPress theme. You can always hire a reliable development partner to develop a custom WordPress theme according to your specific business requirements.
