Basic settings in the Customizer - Verba

Everything the free theme configures lives in one place: AppearanceCustomizeVerba Theme.

A site set up entirely from the Customizer is a finished site. The Pro plugin adds another layer on top, and that layer is optional.

#How the Customizer behaves

Changes show up in the preview on the right as you make them, and nothing reaches your visitors until you press Publish.

If you close the panel without publishing, your changes are discarded. WordPress will warn you first.

#The panels

Open Verba Theme at the top of the Customizer and the theme's panels are inside it. Each panel splits into tabs across its top.

General

Site-wide behavior: the site layout (default, boxed, or wide), branding and logos, dark mode, breadcrumbs, the scroll-to-top button, reveal animations, and your social profiles.

Theme Styles

How the site looks. Fonts, text sizes and weights, headings, buttons, labels, forms, the light and dark color pairs, container widths, corner radius, and the style kits. See Colors, fonts, and style kits.

Pages

The page header on ordinary pages, plus two site-wide features: the content zones above and below the page content, and the call to action above the footer.

Navigation

The header. Layout, header branding, the call to action, menus, mobile behavior, search, the category row, and the posts ticker. See The header.

Footer

The footer, its appearance, its branding, and its ticker. See The footer.

Archive

Category, tag, author, date, and search pages. Layout, sidebar, card style, page header, featured post, author pages, and the search results page. See Archives in the free theme.

Posts Page

The page that lists your latest posts, and what opens it: a page header, a showcase, or a featured author. See The posts page.

Single Post

The article page. General options, the sidebar, the post header and footer, navigation between posts, and related posts. See Single post settings in the Customizer.

404 Error Page

The not-found page: illustration, copy, buttons, and quick links. See Search results, the 404 page, and protected posts.

The fastest way to a finished look is a style kit, on the General tab of Theme Styles. It sets fonts, headings, and both color schemes in one click and leaves your layout widths alone.

#Widget areas

The theme registers four widget areas, and they use the block editor rather than classic widgets.

• Footer Columns: widgets arranged in columns in the footer.
• Footer Full Width: widgets shown full width below those columns.
• Archive Sidebar: shown alongside category, tag, author, date, and search listings.
• Single Post Sidebar: shown alongside the article, when the single post sidebar is turned on.

You fill them at AppearanceWidgets; Widget areas: what they are and why one is missing covers adding blocks there. You turn the sidebars on in the Customizer, on the Sidebar tab inside the matching panel: the archive sidebar under Archive, the post sidebar under Single Post. Narrow-screen behavior and what happens while scrolling live on the same tab.

#Where the free layer ends

The Customizer and Theme Options are two separate stores. Theme Options configures what Pro adds; it does not extend or override the Customizer. The same setting name in both places is two different settings, and changing one does not move the other.

What the free layer does not do: custom post listings with your own rules, content inserted inside an article or between the cards of a listing, object fields on posts, pages, categories, and authors, and Elementor templates. Those come from Pro. The full comparison is in Free vs Pro.

#When a change does not show up

I changed a setting and the site looks the same

Two usual causes.

Caching. A page cache, a CDN, or an optimization plugin can keep serving the old page. Clear the cache and reload with a hard refresh.

A local override. With Pro, a value set on one specific post or page beats the site-wide value, so one article can differ without changing the rest of the site. Open that post and check its own options.

More causes are in Settings will not save, or changes are not visible.

Can I use both the Customizer and Theme Options?

Yes, and with Pro installed you will. The Customizer keeps the basics, Theme Options carries everything Pro adds. A value in one does not change the other. See Theme Options: the advanced settings panel.

Last updated 1 Oct 2026