Do-It-Yourself Themes

All Cadenza Themes have beem thoughtfully developed with the purpose of being aesthetically appealing, while also giving your home page useful, dynamic information blocks like News and Events, saving you some time figuring out how to include content yourself.

However, you are completely free to build your own custom theme just the way you want it! By using the Page Builder tools, you can create similar or totally different Do-It-Yourself (DIY) themes, just as you would create any page.

Before trying to completely replace your Theme, you should read this section about changing Home pages!

Start from Scratch

If you feel strong with your Page Builder skills, then jump right in! All Cadenza Themes were designed and built using just the Page Builder and Content Modules in their construction, and you can, too. Cadenza Themes use different combinations of sliders, post layouts, calendar widgets, text boxes, headings, buttons and more. Fancy yourself a designer? The Page Builder tools will give you plenty of options for creating dynamic pages that you can fully customize.

If you want to design from scratch, then you’ll want to choose a Default Preset to get started. These presets still have some basic styling to give you a head start, but are generic enough to allow you to freely customize all of the settings.

WARNING: Changing your Preset and clicking the Publish button, WILL reset your style customizations. You can experiment with Customizer settings and preview your changes, but DO NOT click the Publish button unless you are positive that you want to change your presets and styles. THERE IS NO UNDO! 

To switch to a Default Preset, do the following:

  1. From your Dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Customize
  2. Click on the Presets menu option
  3. From the drop down menu, select either Default or Default Dark
  4. Your live preview will display the changes based on your selected Preset
  5. Click Publish to make your changes live

Start from a Cadenza Theme

If you mostly like a Cadenza Theme, but wish some things were different, then feel free to change things up a bit. By using the Page Builder, you can remove certain elements and insert others, either by using different Content Modules, or by dragging and dropping Saved Rows from other themes. Keep as much or a little as you like. This might be especially useful for easily retaining such useful modules as the Recent News block or Upcoming Events, which are pre-programmed to display this content without you having to go through your own configurations.

Hybrid Theme

Maybe you want to really mix things up and choose your favorite parts of different Cadenza Themes, plus add your own. Select from Saved Rows, drag and drop them any way you want and add as many new rows and content areas and Content Modules that you need. Study the functionality in Saved Rows for News and Calendar modules to see how things work.

Tweak & Polish

If you create your own Theme from scratch, or piece it together from Cadenza Themes and Saved Rows, you’ll want to spend a little time customizing the modules to compliment each other. This may mean adjusting font sizes or spacing a little to get things to line up and match everything else on your page. When you use Saved Rows, everything is colored in shades of grey, so you’ll need to add your own colors anyway. When your color scheme is consistent throughout your page, then things should really come together nicely!

Posted in Themes and Presets