WordPress is the content management system (CMS) that runs 35% of the most visited websites in the world. Its huge user base raises tons of questions about its usage, features, supported plugins, and of course, visuals.
With such a high usage, users often have some problems:
How can I modify the theme styles to suit my needs?
What is the best plugin for the functionality I need?
We'll show some of the main ways users can resolve issues related to the appearance of a website.
WordPress themes
A WordPress theme is a collection of code that defines the structure and styling rules of a website. Its main purpose is to determine the visual components of the site, and may or may not add custom functionality.
We won't go into the basics of finding and setting up a theme. Instead, we'll focus on how to modify every aspect of it to better suit your needs.
Themes typically have the following features:
Theme Options – If you purchased a theme from a vendor, there is a good chance that it will come with an options panel. Before modifying anything via code, make sure to check if there are options to tweak.
Theme Editor – This is the default feature in WordPress that allows you to modify your theme’s code files. It is strongly recommended not to do this. (We'll explain why later.)
Subthemes – If you use a subtheme (it may be part of the main theme, or you can develop one yourself), you can make custom changes there.
Customizer – The Latest Mailing Database WordPress Customizer is where you can make visual changes to your theme in appearance. Some customizers have customization settings, some don't, but all have a "custom CSS" option to enter style code.
WordPress plugin
Not all components on the website come from an installed theme. Some of these are most likely generated by plugins. Examples of such plugins include Contact Form 7, Jetpack, BBPress, Yoast SEO, and more.
Most themes and plugins are developed by external vendors. They are tested against various WordPress core versions, but cannot test the compatibility between thousands of themes and plugins on the market.
The important thing here is that not all themes come with styles that support plugin code output. One of the most common reasons to apply custom styles to a theme is to support these third-party plugins.