The Customizer
The Customizer is the place where you can make many global changes to your site.
Global means affecting anything the will show up on every page of the site.
Things like:
- adding your logo,
- setting your homepage,
- set your colours and fonts,
- set site-wide layouts,
- and much more.
Every theme has different options.
It is important to note that each theme provides slightly different options within the Customizer. So watch our video but remember that you will not have the exact options with a different theme.
**For our course project we are using the Onepress theme.
New tasks will emerge in the process.
As you use your customizer you may find that when you set different options that new tasks crop up as ‘needing to be addressed’. It is important to not let yourself get side-tracked by these tasks. Keep a list of every new detail that you realize you’ll need to address, but stay on track to finish all of all the Customizer options.
An example:
in this video I made a few notes to myself of things that I was not happy about, in terms of the general layout. I felt that the main page title was a bit bold – and made a note that there was no option in the customizer to change that. I also noted that the logo felt a bit small – so made a note to research and trying some css to make it display as I envisioned it to be.
It is normal to have a list of 15-20 new tasks that you might have to redo after customizing. Some things do not become evident until this point of the process. So download the worksheet to keep track of these items.
Live preview, to see your changes.
A great feature of the Customizer is that it has a live preview which allows you to see the changes that you are making to your site before publishing them.
Once you are happy with the changes – make sure to press “Publish” so that you don’t lose them.
Be aware that the live preview can sometimes not work perfectly (it is technology after all). I recommend making just a handful of changes – and then saving them before continuing on. That will ensure that you always see a true depiction of your changes.
In Customizer you can preview your site for every device (desktop, tablet, and phone). This option is available in the bottom left-hand corner. Simply click on the icon to view it for each device.
You must tell WordPress which page you want to display for your homepage otherwise WordPress will simply use a list of blog posts as that main page.
In Customizer select “Homepage Settings” – and choose which page you want to display.
The little blue pencils are quick-links to edit the specific item that it sits beside.