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Getting Started with Shift Pro

Ready to start customizing your site with Shift Pro? Follow this guide to learn how to use each of Shift Pro’s features on your site.

If you need help installing Shift Pro, please follow this tutorial first: How to Install Shift Pro.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

This guide will teach you how to use each of the new features added with Shift 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

Shift has a right-sidebar and left-sidebar layout. Shift Pro adds the following six new layouts:

  • Narrow
  • Wide
  • Two-column – right-sidebar
  • Two-column – left-sidebar
  • Two-column – narrow
  • Two-column – wide

Shift Pro Layout

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

Shift 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.

Shift Pro Colors

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 Shift Pro:

Tutorial: How to Change Your Colors

Use New Fonts

Shift Pro adds 728 new fonts to choose from.

Shift Pro Fonts

With the increased selection, you can choose the font that perfectly complements your content.

Follow this tutorial to learn how to apply a new font 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.

Shift Pro Header Image

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.

Period Pro Featured Video

Shift 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 sliders.

Period Pro Featured Sliders

Shift Pro integrates with the Meta Slider plugin to add Featured Sliders. 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 Shift. With Shift Pro, you can choose from a variety of new sizes including using the image’s natural dimensions.

Shift Pro Fi Sizes

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

Background Images

The Shift Pro plugin lets you add a custom background image behind the site content.

Shift Pro Background Image

To learn how to add new background images to your site, follow this tutorial:

Tutorial: How to Add a Background Image

Background Textures

Just like the background image feature, Shift Pro lets you add a repeating background texture to your site.

Shift Pro comes with 39 bundled textures.

Shift Pro Background Texture

Follow this tutorial to learn how to add a texture to the background of your site:

Tutorial: How to Add a Background Texture

New Widget Areas

If you followed along with the Shift 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.

Shift Pro adds four new widget areas to your site:

  • Before Main Content
  • After Main Content
  • After Post Content
  • After Page Content

Shift Pro Widget Areas

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

Shift Pro adds a simple option to make the header stay at the top of the screen at all times.

Shift Pro Navigation Styles

The secondary menu is well-suited for category pages and other non-essential navigation items.

Follow the tutorial below to learn how to set up your new menu:

Tutorial: How to Use the Fixed Menu

Display Controls

Shift Pro allows you to hide any of the default elements on the site.

Shift Pro Display Controls

Follow this tutorial to learn how to show or hide elements on your site:

Tutorial: How to Show/Hide Site Elements

By default, the footer text in Shift reads, “Shift WordPress Theme by Compete Themes”, and links to our site.

With Shift Pro, you can easily replace this text with whatever you want it to say.

Shift Pro Footer Text

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 Shift Pro, we’ve got some pre-written snippets for you to get started with in the Shift CSS Snippets Collection.

Return to Shift Support Center

Copyright © 2021 Compete Themes LLC.