Ready to start customizing your site with Chosen Pro? Follow this guide to learn how to use each of Chosen Pro’s features on your site.
If you need help installing Chosen Pro, please follow this tutorial first: How to Install Chosen Pro.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
This guide will teach you how to use each of the new features added with Chosen 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
Chosen uses a single column layout. With Chosen Pro, you have the following eight layouts:
- One column
- Two columns
- Right sidebar
- Left sidebar
- Two columns with right sidebar
- Two columns with left sidebar
- Three columns
You can choose a layout for an entire post type at once from the Customizer and visit individual posts & pages to change their layouts individually.
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
Chosen 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 Chosen Pro:
Tutorial: How to Change Your Colors
Use New Fonts
With Chosen 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.
Chosen 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 Images have a fixed 2:1 aspect ration in Chosen. With Chosen 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
Chosen doesn’t include any widget areas, but with Chosen Pro, there is a sidebar used in certain layouts and five other widget areas.
Chosen Pro adds the following six new widget areas to your site:
- Primary Sidebar
- Before Main Content
- After 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
Chosen 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 Chosen reads, “Chosen WordPress Theme by Compete Themes”, and links to our site.
With Chosen 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 Chosen Pro, we’ve got some pre-written snippets for you to get started with in the Chosen CSS Snippets Collection.