While the out-of-the-box look of your theme might be already quite nice, you should still do some basic customizations to make it fit your needs hand-in-glove. In the beginning it seems to involve a learning curve, but it’s really intuitive, especially over time.
To begin, go to Appearance → Customize. You’ll see the main WordPress Customizer interface.
From there, you can fine-tune a load of things. We’ll start with the homepage, since it’s the most representative.
Setting up your homepage.
Do the following:
- In the sidebar, go to “Homepage Settings“.
- Select the option, “A static page” under your homepage display setting.
- Click on “Add New“, to create a new page to act as your homepage.
- Input the name for the page – “HOME” seems like a good idea – and click on “Add“.
This will replace the default listing of your site’s most recent articles with a completely custom homepage. By default, you’ll see some cool elements on your new user-friendly homepage. These look nice both on laptops, smartphones, and other mobile devices.
For starters, let’s change the main headline on the page. It’s a good idea to put either the name of your business there or anything else that serves as the title for the entire site.
To make the changes, click on the pencil icon that’s next to the headline.
When you do so, a customization panel will appear on the left.
Through it, you can:
- change the background image – make it something related to your business
- change the title
- change the text under the title – you can remove this completely if you want to
- change the button text – usually leading to your products or most crucial pages (more on that in a minute)
Underneath that, you get to adjust any of the other available homepage blocks. It works similarly to the mechanisms offered by the popular website builders (like Wix, Squarespace, or Weebly). By default, you get all of these (see this list by going to “Frontpage Sections” from the Customizer sidebar):
- The Features section is a great place to explain what your company has to offer or what the purpose of the website is – that “purpose” is probably the no. 1 thing to keep in mind as you learn how to make a website.
- The About section is a great place to talk about your story.
- The Team section you can use if more people work in your business and you’d like to highlight them.
- The Ribbon is another place where you can mention your primary call to action.
- The Testimonials section is awesome when you want to showcase what your previous customers had to say about your business.
- The Contact section is where you can display your contact information and let people know how to best reach you.
There are also a handful of more sections available. It’s best to browse through those and pick the ones that make sense to use for your business and in your specific situation.
When you’re done adjusting the homepage, don’t forget to click on the main “Publish” button that’s at the top.
Adjusting the typography.
The next thing to do would be to take care of your site’s typography – the fonts used throughout the site.
You can do that by going to Appearance Settings → Typography from the WordPress Customizer sidebar. In there, you will be able to pick a font and see it on your site immediately.
Colors.
Out the box, your new theme is going to use a couple of primary colors that define its default color scheme. You can change that setting in the WordPress Customizer. Just click on Colors in the main sidebar.
The Accent Color is usually the color used for buttons, links, and everything else that’s meant to stand out from the rest of the site’s design.
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After doing the above, your website will start feeling like it’s truly yours. You will have made all the necessary tune-ups and customizations to make it fit with your brand.
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