Ready to get started?
Follow along with this guide to get Chosen installed and fully customized on your site. Every step is explained in detail, so you'll have no trouble even if you're new to WordPress.
Table of Contents
Install Chosen
If you don't have Chosen installed on your site already, this is the first step before you can begin customizing.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to install & activate Chosen on your site:
Tutorial: Install & Activate Chosen
Import the demo site data
Are you launching a brand new site?
Importing the content from the Chosen demo site is a great way to jumpstart your customizations. It can be much easier to customize and tweak the design of the site after you've got some content to work with.
Follow this tutorial to access the demo data download and learn how to import it into your site:
Tutorial: Import the Demo Site Data
Customize Your Menu
By default, the menu will contain all of the published Pages on your site, listed in alphabetical order.
As you publish new Pages, they will simply be added to the menu. You can create a custom menu to change this.
With a custom menu, you get full control over which Pages are included, and in what order. In fact, you can even add links to Categories, Posts, or anything else you'd like.
The tutorial below will show you how to:
- create a custom menu
- reorder menu items
- add submenus
- and more...
Tutorial: How to Customize Your Menu
Add Your Logo
When you installed WordPress, you were asked to provide a "site title". That same site title is displayed at the top of your site, in the header.
With Chosen, you can replace the site title with your logo instead. If you don't have a logo, you can skip to the next section. Otherwise, follow this tutorial to learn how to upload, position, and resize your logo:
Tutorial: How to Add Your Logo
Note: You can edit your site title any time from the General Settings menu, or in the "Site Identity" section in the Customizer
Add Your Social Icons
There are two types of social icons:
- Icons that link to your profile
- Icons/buttons that share your content
Most themes, including Chosen, have a way to add social icons that link to your social profiles. This provides a stylish way to link to your profiles, so your visitors can find and follow you on your social networks. These icons are usually included in the header or in a widget.
Social sharing icons/buttons are added to make it easier to share your content. They are typically added with plugins, like Simple Share Buttons Adder . These icons are usually included before and/or after Post content.
As mentioned, Chosen provides a simple way to add icons in the header linking to your social profiles. Follow this tutorial to add yours:
Tutorial: How to Add Your Social Icons
Choose Posts Per Page
When customizing the blog, you may want to change how many posts are displayed per page on your blog. This option is set to 10 by default, but can be increased or decreased from the settings menu.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to change the post count per page on the blog:
Tutorial: How to Change the Number of Posts on Your Front Page
Add Featured Images
In WordPress, every Post and Page can have a Featured Image. It's simply a way of assigning one image as the primary image for the Post/Page.
Chosen places Featured Images neatly above the Post titles on the Blog and Post pages.
If you'd like to add Featured Images to your Posts, follow this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Add Featured Images
Extra Wide Blog Post
You'll notice that on your blog, the newest Post fills the entire width of the page, while the other Posts fit into columns.
If you don't want your first Post displayed larger, you can turn this option off in the Customizer. The first post will then display normally, like this:
This option is also compatible with all layouts added in Chosen Pro.
Follow this tutorial to learn how to turn off the extra wide first blog post:
Tutorial: Make the First Blog Post Normal Width
Customize Your Post Excerpts
When you first install WordPress, all of your Posts will show on the homepage. The page with your Posts can also be referred to as the Blog or Posts Page.
With Chosen, each Post on the Blog will include a 25 word excerpt using the first 25 words in the Post.
Chosen gives you a lot of control over what text you want shown in the excerpts. To learn how to fully customize your Post excerpts, check out this tutorial:
Tutorial: How to Customize Post Excerpts
Conclusion
You're finished customizing Chosen!
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, we've got some pre-written snippets for you to get started with in the Chosen CSS Snippets Collection.
Upgrade Today: Want even more features and flexibility for your site? Upgrade instantly with Chosen Pro.