Looking for a simple way to change the look of your WordPress header? Because your header appears at the top of every page, it is critical for branding your site, assisting users in navigation, and presenting your most important information. However, you’ll need a method to alter your site’s header to get the most out of it, which many themes don’t provide. In this post, we’ll go over a few different ways to customize Headers in WordPress.
What Is a Header in WordPress?
You’ve probably come across the term Header while building your WordPress website. A webpage’s header is the most visible portion of the page. A header welcomes visitors to your website. So your header makes the first impression.
Using our LTHEME website as an example, the header is the white bar at the top of this page, which includes all of the following features:
Because of its prominent location, the header is frequently your visitors’ first impression of your website. It’s also where you’ll find important information and CTAs (Calls To Action). You can see our logo, major menu links, and the Book a Call button in the example above.
Whether you’re running a blog, an online store, a portfolio, or something else entirely, your WordPress header is crucial. Many themes provide options that let you customize the header with your own styling, text, or image, which is known as a WordPress custom header.
How to Customize Headers in WordPress
WordPress, as one of the most user-friendly website builders, makes most tasks straightforward. This is also true when it comes to changing your style. The WordPress header can be edited and customized in three ways.
Method 1: Customize the Header Using a Plugin
This is the ideal option if you prefer WordPress plugins to coding and editing the core files. “Insert Headers and Footers” is a free plugin accessible in the WordPress plugin repository. Moreover, this plugin is one of the best WordPress header plugins. This simple utility requires no difficult setup.
To add a new plugin, you can follow these steps:
Step 1: First, log in to your WordPress backend.
Step 2: Go to Plugins > Add New. You may then search the repository for new WordPress plugins or upload the plugin files to install them. Type Insert Headers and Footers into the search bar.
Step 3: Select the correct option and install it. Then, activate it.
Now it’s time to configure it. The Insert Headers and Footers Settings, as shown below, are found in the Settings section.
You’ll notice that there are three sections you can edit there:
- Header
- Body
- Footer
If you include code in the header section, it will appear before the </head> tag. The same goes for the body and the footer. Before the </body> and </footer> tags, the code will appear. You’re modifying the header in this case, so look for the </head> tag.
Add the code you want to place in the head tag to the Scripts section of the Header section.
Don’t forget to save the changes after you’ve added the code by clicking Save.
Your header will be updated with the code. Overall, Insert Headers and Footers is a great option for individuals who wish to make changes to their WordPress header without having to deal with coding.
Method 2: Change the theme’s Header.php file
We’ll show you step-by-step how you can still alter your WordPress header with a little scripting. You’ll need to change the theme’s core files to accomplish this. As a result, we recommend that you start by creating a child theme. You can do it manually or with the help of a child theme plugin.
Let’s look at how to edit the header file using the WordPress admin dashboard once you’ve created the child theme.
Step 1: To begin, go to the admin section and log in.
Step 2: Choose Theme Editor under the Appearance section.
You can edit the theme’s core files from this location. The editor will, by default, edit the current theme’s style.css file, which will look like this.
Step 3: On the right side, you’ll see a list of all the files and folders in the current theme’s directory.
Find header.php by scrolling down the list (under the Theme Header).
The file will open in your editor after you select it. We used the Twenty Twenty-One WordPress theme to make this guide, so it looks like this.
Step 4: Now it’s time to have some fun. Make sure to place the snippet between the <head> and </head> tags when changing the header.php file and adding your custom code. We’ll put some sample text immediately before the </head> tag in this case.
To save the changes, click Update File. The changes have been saved correctly if you get the File edited successfully notification. You can check it by going to the front end of your site and looking at the source code.
Method 3: Use Your Theme’s Customizer Settings
In the native WordPress Customizer, most WordPress themes provide you with some control over your site’s header. You won’t have the same amount of detail as LTHEME, but you will have some flexibility over how your header looks and performs.
To use the native WordPress Customizer, go to Appearance > Customize in your WordPress dashboard.
Depending on your theme, you can access these options by clicking on the blue pencil icon next to components in your header. In the Twenty Twenty-One default theme, for example, you can customize your:
- Logo
- Site headline
- Menu
Wrapping Up
To summarize, there are a few easy ways to customize Headers in WordPress. We hope you found this post helpful. Please leave a comment in the box below if you have any questions. We’ll do our best to respond as soon as possible.
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