How I Customized My WordPress Theme (The Basics Made Simple)

Bakery Business, Creative Business Tools + Growth

When I first installed my WordPress theme, I didn’t want to spend weeks designing every detail. I wanted something polished and functional — quickly. With just a few customizations, I had my site looking ready to go in under an hour.

✨ Quick Note: There’s a difference between customizing and editing a page. Customizing changes the overall look and structure of your site (things like colors, fonts, menus, and social media icons). Editing a page changes the content of a specific page, like writing your About page or publishing a blog post.

In this post, we’ll focus on basic customizations to make your site look clean and professional right away.

Step 1: Set Your Site to Coming Soon Mode

Before I started customizing, I turned on Coming Soon Mode so visitors couldn’t see an unfinished site.

Why I love this step:

  • Keeps your site private while you design.
  • Shows a simple “Coming Soon” page to anyone who visits.
  • Makes the process less stressful because you don’t feel rushed.

Step 2: How to Start Customizing

From your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance → Customize.

This will open the Customizer, where you’ll see your site on one side and editing tools on the other. Changes update live, so you can preview before saving.

Step 3: Site Identity

The Site Identity section is where you set the basics that make your site look like you.

Here’s what to update:

  • Logo: Upload your own (size depends on your theme’s recommendation).
  • Site Title: The name of your site.
  • Tagline: A short description or motto (optional).
  • Favicon: The tiny icon that shows up in the browser tab.

Step 4: Colors & Fonts

Next, I adjusted the look and feel of my site.

  • My theme allowed me to save up to 3 palettes, so I chose one that matched my branding.
  • Swapped a few demo colors for my own shades.
    • 1: #C7CFC7
    • 2: #D4DDD4
    • 3: #2F2E2C
    • 4: #2F2E2C
    • 5: #FFFCF7
    • 6: #CACFCA
    • 7: #FFFFFF
    • 8: #FAFAFA
    • 9: #FFFFFF
  • Kept the demo fonts because they fit my style perfectly:

Step 5: Header Section

The Header Section controls the top of your site — the first thing visitors see.

Here’s what I set up (I left pretty much everything the same but swapped with my own info):

  • Primary Navigation (Menu): I left a simple menu for now, didn’t change it’s placement just edited the menu layout in the backend (I’ll share a full post on how I set up my blog categories and menu layout later.)
  • Cart Icon: I kept mine since I plan to sell digital downloads. You can remove it for now if you’re not selling anything — and bring it back later with one click.
  • Social Media Menu:
    • Click on “social” , here is where you can choose what social media/email/external links you want appearing on your site.
    • I am keeping it basic with pinterest, instagram, tiktok, and then I added two custom.
    • Adding Custom – you will have to upload your own image/logo
      • Custom 1: My Amazon Storefront
        • uploaded a small amazon logo I found on google (make sure it has a transparent background)
      • Custom 2: My bakery’s website
        • I created a small little image of a bakery made through canva (Downloadable Link Below)
Bakery IconDownload

Step 6: Footer Section

I didn’t spend much time here yet. Once I get things set and running I will come back to this section to make it more advanced.

For now, I recommend keeping your footer simple — maybe just your copyright and a basic contact link. Once your site grows, you can add:

  • Newsletter sign‑ups
  • Social icons
  • Quick links to popular pages

Closing

That’s it — just a few small tweaks and your site can look polished in under an hour.

Next up, I’ll show you how I:

  • Picked my blog categories
  • Built out my menu layout so visitors can navigate easily

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