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What You Should Tweak in Your WordPress Theme Options Page (But Forgot) Posted: 26 Nov 2014 04:00 AM PST Every website or blog needs some modification in its theme. Only then can you make your blog to stand out from the crowd and bring traffic to it. WordPress theme options page is a custom admin page that allow users to change theme settings without modifying the theme files. These theme option pages can be simple or have lots of customization split into either tabs or multiple pages. Theme options are good for majority of the users; however, these options do have a tendency to confuse things on the development side. So if you are a WordPress site developer, here are some of the options that you should be including in your WordPress theme page option. Moreover, the article explains why you should include these features in the WP theme options page. Avada is the best selling theme on ThemeForest, we are using it as example in this article. We have covered the most important options below. For further information, you can also check complete documentation here. General Options General Options will let people control the look of their site. There are three main sections in this option: Responsive Options, Favicon Options, and Tracking Options Responsive Option – needed to make your website design layout responsive or fixed. Responsive design will adjust your website on different devices, whereas fixed layout is for users who want to display the site in fixed width. Favicon Option – needed to associate an icon with your website URL that represents your website's favicon. Tracking Option – adds a track code into the footer template of your theme that allows people to use services like Google Analytics, among others. Header Options The Header Option lets users customize everything above the content area, including the menu. It has three main sections: Header Content Options, Header Background Options, and Header Social Icon Options. Header Content Option – needed to change header design, slider position, transparent header and website's logo, etc. Header Background Option – required for inserting background image in header. Users can choose various options like, repeat and even modify the heading top and bottom padding. Header Social Icon Option – needed for customizing the social icons that are displayed in header. Footer Options The Footer Options help in customizing the different areas of website footer. The footer tab has two sections: Footer Widget Options and Footer Copyright Option. Footer Widget Area Option – needed if you want to set number of footer columns. This option will let you insert an image URL for footer widget area background. Copyright Area Option – useful for displaying copyright text in footer. This option will also will also help you in displaying social icon on footer of page (if you want). Background Options The Background Options will let you change background for box and wide mode layout. Background Option for Boxed Mode – needed for changing the background colors and pattern. This option is also recommended to change the background image and how the image repeats. Typography Options The Typography Options let you to customize fonts. There are five sections in it: Custom Font for the Navigation Menu and Headings, Google Fonts, Standards, Font Sizes and Font Line Heights. Custom Fonts – needed to use custom fonts instead of Google and Standard fonts. Google Fonts – integrating Google Fonts lets the user choose fonts for body, menu, headings, and footer headings for Google Font directory. Font Size – needed to change font sizes for different areas of the theme page including sidebar widget, footer widget and copyright font size etc. Font Line Height – allows setting font line for body and heading of theme page. Styling Options The Styling Options are needed to customize the colors of your website. This option has five sections: Background Colors, Element Colors, Element Options, Font Colors, and Menu Colors. Background Color Option – needed to modify colors for several page items including header, content, footer and copyright, etc. Element Colors Option – lets user control the colors for button, sliding bar, footer widget, form, blog grid and social share box, etc. Element Option – used to disable button text shadow, sliding bar text shadow and footer text shadow. Font Color Option – needed for controlling the text color of buttons, header tagline, heading, body, link, sliding bar, footer heading, and footer font color, etc. Menu Color Option – gives you the complete control over colors for menu background, font and header. Blog Options The Blog Option can be good if you need to publish blog posts related to the content. It can also be used for customizing different blog aspects such as layout, sidebar, excerpts and date formats, etc. General Blog Option – allows you to choose the title, layout, sidebar position, excerpt length and pagination, etc. Blog Single Post Page Option – allows you to have a featured page with no sidebar and other distracting content. Portfolio Options Portfolio options enable user to customize different aspects of portfolio page, such as the number of items per page, sidebar, excerpts and more. Social Media Social media options can help if you want to display the social icons on your site. These will help grow your social presence; also, they will add to your network marketing efforts. Contact Page Options Most people use custom contact form plugins, but having a built-in option can be helpful for non-techie individuals. These options let you customize the contact page on your blog. This option has two sections: Google Map Options and Recaptcha Spam Options. Google Map Option – added if you want to show a Google map, and having direction to your business address. This option also allows you to set the width and height of  the map. ReCaptcha Spam Option – helpful for securing your blog or a website with public and private ReCaptcha. Sidebar Options Sidebar options are needed for customizing the width of the content area and sidebar. This option is also needed if you want to choose sidebar background colors to match your content. Custom CSS Options Custom CSS option will be needed if user wants to overwrite or add new CSS properties to the theme. The HTML themes cannot be modified; however, custom CSS provides the power to create a custom design. Conclusion Every popular WordPress Theme has a powerful options panel. It offers a great way for customizing the page that can be managed and understood easily. Many users don't know what a CSS is but, they can easily use these options to change colors, headings, fonts, and more. Any developer who is creating a website or a blog on WordPress should consider these options for the theme option page. Which of these options have you included in your theme option page? Please share your thoughts in the below comment section.

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