Ready to start customizing your site with Apex Pro? Follow this guide to learn how to use each of Apex Pro's features on your site.
If you need help installing Apex Pro, please follow this tutorial first: How to Install Apex Pro.
Table of Contents
Introduction
This guide will teach you how to use each of the new features added with Apex Pro. The tutorials are newbie-friendly, so every step is explained in detail.
It's recommended that you follow along with your site as you read.
New Layouts
Apex has a right-sidebar layout. With Apex Pro, you have the following eight layouts:
- Right sidebar
- Left sidebar
- Narrow
- Wide
- Two-column - right-sidebar
- Two-column - left-sidebar
- Two-column - narrow
- Two-column - wide
The layout is applied to all pages on your site. However, every Post/Page can also use its own layout.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to change to a new layout:
Tutorial: How to Change Your Layout
Custom Colors
Apex Pro adds color controls for virtually every element on the site. This includes colors for specific elements, like widget titles and menu links, and hover effects for buttons, social icons, and more.
The color controls are grouped into sections. Each section covers one area of the site, such as the Primary Menu or the Footer.
Changing these colors will allow you to match your site to your brand's colors (or simply pick a color you like).
Follow this tutorial to learn how to change your colors with Apex Pro:
Tutorial: How to Change Your Colors
Use New Fonts
With Apex Pro, you have a selection of 728 fonts for your site.
With the increased selection, you can choose the font that perfectly complements your content.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to apply new fonts to your site:
Tutorial: How to Use Your New Fonts
Flexible Header Image
The header image is a large image displayed at the top of your site, spanning from one side of the screen to the other.
It's great for displaying a welcome message on just the homepage, or an interesting graphic across the site.
Learn how to add a header image to your site with this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Add a Header Image
Featured Videos
Just like Featured Sliders replace Featured Images, Featured Videos can be used to add videos in place of Featured Images.
This gives you a simple and beautiful way to publish videos on your site.
Apex Pro will responsively embed videos from any of the following sites:
- Youtube
- Vimeo
- Dailymotion
- Animoto
- Funny or Die
- Hulu
- TED
- WordPress.tv
- Blip
- Vine
All you need is the URL of the video to embed it. While not video sites, you can also embed SlideShare presentations and SoundCloud tracks with Featured Videos.
Tutorial: How to Add Featured Videos
Featured Sliders
Featured Sliders can be used to replace Featured Images with slider by integrating with the Meta Slider plugin.
Like with Featured Images, every Post and Page can have a different Featured Slider.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to add Featured Sliders to your site:
Tutorial: How to Add Featured Sliders
Featured Image Sizes
Featured Image have a fixed 2:1 aspect ration in Apex. With Apex Pro, you can choose from a variety of new sizes including using the image's natural dimensions.
You can change the aspect ratio for individual images in the post editor as well.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to edit the Featured Image Sizes on your site:
Tutorial: How to Change the Featured Image Size
New Widget Areas
If you followed along with the Apex Getting Started guide, you'll remember that the sidebar is a "widgetized" area. In other words, it's a part of the site where you can add any type of content you want by adding widgets.
Apex Pro adds four new widget areas to your site:
- Before Main Content
- After Post Content
- After Page Content
- Footer
Each widget area can display any widgets you'd like (or none). If you want to learn how to add widgets to one of these new widget areas, check out the tutorial below:
Tutorial: How to Use Your New Widget Areas
Display Controls
Apex Pro allows you to hide any of the default elements on the site.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to show or hide elements on your site:
Tutorial: How to Show/Hide Site Elements
Custom Footer Text
By default, the footer text in Apex reads, "Apex WordPress Theme by Compete Themes", and links to our site.
With Apex Pro, you can easily replace this text with whatever you want it to say.
To learn how to replace the footer text, follow this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Change the Footer Text
Conclusion
If there's anything else you want to change about your site that wasn't covered, check for an article about it in the sidebar to the left. Otherwise, there's probably a free plugin available for it on wordpress.org .
Check out our WordPress Resources page to find awesome plugins and tools we recommend, and if you want to try using CSS to customize Apex Pro, we've got some pre-written snippets for you to get started with in the Apex CSS Snippets Collection.