Your website’s design affects the visitor’s experience. Poor choice of colors and layout can frustrate visitors, forcing them to abandon your site. While some themes come with compelling designs, you might need to edit certain elements to improve the overall design.

But editing a WordPress theme without adequate knowledge of CSS, HTML, and PHP can result in more damage than good. It’s possible to lose your content and settings, which took hours or even days to configure. It can also cost you to fix a broken site.

Fortunately, there’s a way to do it without coding. WordPress plugin repository offers lots of tools and plugins you can use to customize your theme without coding. You can also use the Customizer to improve your theme’s layout and appearance.

Keep on reading to learn more!

The Customizer

The Customizer is a tool provided by WordPress to allow you to make changes easily to your theme without touching the code. Additionally, the tool provides a live preview of your changes before publishing them.

Using the tool, you can change your site’s title and taglines, create custom menus, add widgets, change Homepage settings, and other functions.

There are two ways to access the Customizer:

Option 1: From your WordPress dashboard, go to Appearance, and then click on Customize. This will open the Customizer interface with a preview of your theme. On the left side of your screen, you’ll see the menu options, which you can change.

Option 2: When viewing your site while logged in, click on Customize at the top of the screen. This is usually in the admin bar. This will also open the Customizer interface.

There is a large proportion of WordPress themes that support the Customizer. So, this won’t be a difficult thing to do if you want to edit your theme. You can use it to:

• Configure your website identity and design
• Manage and configure menus
• Change website colors
• Change single post settings
• Modify your background image

Apart from the desktop mode, the Customizer also supports tablet and mobile views. You can switch between the three options to see how your theme looks like on different devices.

NOTE: Alternatively, there are themes known as frameworks, which are designed to be significantly customized and extended. Framework themes come free or paid – it depends on what you want and the features the theme offers.

Frameworks are commonly described as the foundation of WordPress themes. They usually come with the core code, which covers the basic design elements and features. This provides the starting point for designing and creating your theme.

You can add new elements and features as you wish to get the theme you want. Good examples of frameworks, include WPZoom, Beans, and Genesis. Bear in mind that there are also themes that are built upon these frameworks.

Use Plugins

You can also use plugins to edit your theme. There are different plugins and tools that are effective in customizing the appearance of your site. They offer user-friendly interfaces, with drag-and-drop features. Good examples are page builders, and we are going to cover some of them here.

1. YellowPencil

YellowPencil is a CSS style editor plugin, which allows you to customize your website in real-time. You can edit colors, fonts, font sizes, positions, and other style properties.

It offers a free version with limited features, or you can opt for the Regular (paid) plan for your website/domain. You can use it to customize any theme and plugin without coding, allowing you to take full control over the design of your site.

2. Beaver Themer for Beaver Builder

If you have the Beaver Builder, you can take its functionality even further with the Beaver Themer. This add-on lets you bridge the gap between your theme and pages.

You can use the Beaver Themer to build your blog layouts, footers, headers, and more within the builder. The tool offers different features, such as theme templates, theme parts, field connections, and post grids.

However, buying the Beaver Builder and adding the Themer might be somewhat costly for beginners. The standard plan is available at $99 without the Themer. You’ll need the pro license, which is priced at $199, as of November 2020.

The good thing is that you can use it on unlimited sites.

3. Elementor

This is one of the most popular WordPress website builders, with a community of over 5 million users. Elementor offers different features, including Editor, Design, Theme Builder, among others.

With the theme builder, you can create your own blog page, header, footer, 404 pages, and blog post. It offers a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easy for you to design your WordPress theme.

The tool lets you improve areas of your site that are mostly used by visitors. It has every widget you’ll need to edit your theme. Elementor offers both free and paid plans.

4. Divi Builder

Divi is an all-in-one theme that comes with a website builder. You can choose to use it as your WordPress theme. Or, you can use its website building platform to edit any WordPress theme.

It offers different features, including custom CSS control, drag & drop building, inline text editing among others. You can use the building platform to manage your entire website design thanks to its global styles and elements.

The platform offers modules for everything, such as forms, testimonials, galleries, blogs, sliders, call-to-actions, forms, and more. Divi Builder is somewhat costly. The basic version requires you to part ways with $89 every year.

5. Ultimate Tweaker

At a reasonable price of $16 on CodeCanyon, Ultimate Tweaker offers another option for editing your WordPress themes without coding. This tool enables you to make over 200 tweaks.

You can change everything from your login page to your comments section. The drag & drop feature lets you move menu elements to any place you want, while custom icons allow you to upload any image and set your desired colors.

6. Microthemer WordPress CSS Editor

Microthemer is a powerful visual editor that enables you to customize the CSS styling of your theme. Whether it’s the fonts or the layouts, this tool is great for both coders and non-coders. It also works well with page builders, such as Oxygen, Beaver Builder, and Elementor.

You can customize any CSS styling of your page, including the footers, menus, sidebars, headers, and plugin content. Its intuitive visual editor lets you preview every change in real-time while editing.

With over 100 CSS style options, Microthemer gives you access to box-shadow, rounded corners, gradients, animation, flexbox, and other styles. You can also work with web design essentials, such as background images and typography, to get the look you want for your theme.

You can install the Microthemer Lite, which is free on WordPress.org. Or, you can get the premium version from Themeover.com

7. Headway Themes

This is a WordPress front-end page builder that allows you to create any layout for your blog or website. Whether you’re a hobbyist, designer, or freelancer, this tool is designed to meet the needs of every user.

Headway’s visual editor lets you make changes to your theme fast while giving you a real-time preview of every change you’re making. You also use the available templates to inspire your design or try something new for your theme.

You can also use it to enable responsive designs, allowing your theme to adapt to smaller devices as needed. Headway Themes is a premium builder with two package options. The basic plan costs $89, and it supports up to three sites.

8. Visual Composer Website Builder

Another great tool is the Visual Composer website builder. This builder is free, but you can always get the premium version if you want more features. However, the free option doesn’t include the Theme Builder – you’ll definitely need a paid plan.

It has a user-friendly drag and drop editor that lets you use blocks, extensions, and elements in your layout. All the templates and elements are mobile ready and responsive, allowing you to make your theme mobile-friendly from the start.

Visual Composer works with any WordPress theme, enabling you to edit the layout of your pages, posts, or even create custom posts. You can edit your theme as often without losing your designed layouts.

Final Thoughts

With WordPress, getting your desired theme design isn’t a difficult thing, even if you don’t have any coding skills. WordPress has a large community of different users, including enthusiasts, programmers, web designers. developers and coders.

So, whatever idea you have, there’s probably a tool or plugin that will help you actualize the idea. Plus, there are forums where you can get help when you get stuck. Most of these tools offer drag & drop features with previews to allow you to edit your theme seamlessly.

You can still get a theme that requires little to no edits after installation. There are lots of great themes with clean and unique designs. Take the time to compare different themes to find one that suits your design and idea. Be sure to consider key factors, such as SEO, mobile-friendliness, compatibility, and support.