Accessed in Appearance → Customize → Header Settings → Type, variant, background.
General info
You can choose between vertical and horizontal header type.
Selecting each one will give you access to different options, that are relevant to header type.
You can also set various things about header background.
Horizontal header
Choosing horizontal header gives you access to few special features like:
- top bar
- header color variants
- sticky version of header and how it will behave
- footer widgets
It also have 5 different variants you can choose from to add more to the mix. Variants are different layout for elements inside theme header.
Sticky header
Using sticky header is great way to make sure that your site navigation is always available for users.
Best version of sticky header is Hiding when scrolling down option. This way header never hides your content while the user scrolls down your page, but when he tries to reach the menu by scrolling up it shows up.
If you want to change some settings of sticky version you can do it in overrides panel.
Vertical header
Vertical header is more limited in extra features then horizontal but it has its own advances, like:
- it is always available to the user(at least on devices with screens above 1024px width)
- it never covers content
- it has more place for tools that are constantly available for user
What is cool thing to do is option to setup background image under whole header. You can also decide on which side of screen should it appear and center its content.
As vertical header doesn’t have social icons option, you will have to use social icons from footer for it.
Custom sidebar feature
Vertical header gives you access to interesting concept – Custom sidebar. In widgets menu you can fill Header(vertical) default widget area and all those widgets will appear in header.
Custom sidebar option is extension of this concept.
On each page, blog, or shop you can choose Custom sidebar to add special widgets just for this page.
In Appearance → Customize → Header Settings → Type, variant, background → Custom sidebar you can define “default” custom sidebar, that can be overwritten on those pages. However, you don’t have to use it.
It may sound complicated but should be easy to understand once you will start to use it.