Header Area Options

In last week’s Feature of the Week post, I took a look at how Catalyst Theme provides us with the easy means to set up and change the layout and appearance of the main components in the Header area.

That showed how Catalyst makes it a simple job to change the Header from being fixed within the width of the site, to being fluid so that it fills the whole width of the window.

It also showed how the fluid area could be extended to include the menu navigation Navbars so that they too fill the width of the window if desired, as well as some of the different location options for the Navbars in and around the Header area.

This week, I’m going to examine some of the options that Catalyst Theme provides for the Header itself.

These provide such a degree of flexibility that they enable anyone to implement almost any header design they wish!

First, the Header settings in the Catalyst Core options allow for the choice of a text or logo based Header.

Catalyst Core Header Settings

If choosing the Text option, it will use and display the Site Title and Tagline as shown in the WordPress General Settings.

WordPress General Settings

Or, if you have a correctly sized logo image you want to display, this can be uploaded using the Image Uploader and selected using the Header options (both found as separate tabs in Dynamik Options).

In either case, the text or image will fill the Header from the left hand side – so a 500 pixel wide image will fill the left-most 500 pixels etc…. (there are also easy to adjust settings available in the Dynamik options for padding and margins to push them in from the edge as required).

There is also an option to split the Header area into separate Left and Right areas by activating the Header RIght Area. This therefore gives you the ability to use both areas for different purposes.

So for example, you might use the Header Left Area for a text based header and the Header Right Area for a logo image – or vice versa, with a distinctive image in the Left Area and your company contact details showing in the Header Right Area.

If the Header Right Area is activated, the content for it can be easily included in a Catalyst Custom Widget Area or within a Custom Hook Box which can then can be hooked into the Header Right Area (as seen below using a Custom Widget Area).

Creating a Custom Widget Area for the Header Right Area

As shown in a previous Feature of the Week post on Custom Page Layouts, Catalyst’s Custom Widget Areas and Hook Boxes can be specified for inclusion on individual Page Layouts.

This means that you can effectively include or exclude the content for the Header Right Area for different page layouts so that it only appears on those pages you want it to (or all of them too of course!).

The final option in the Catalyst Core settings for the Header Area is to allow you to specify where the Header content links to when it is clicked on – including to nowhere at all!

Normally, this would be left as pointing to the site’s Homepage, but as with most things Catalyst – the choice is yours!!

The Catalyst Core options for the Header are very versatile and cater for a great deal of design flexibility when forming the Header area content.

Have fun.

David.

David Pritchard is the author of the Catalyst Theme Cheat Sheet – the 250+ page guide that helps users make the most of Catalyst Theme. Licenced Catalyst Theme users can get their FREE copy in the downloads section of the Catalyst Theme forum. David also has a site that with guides to using Catalyst Theme, WordPress, SEO, internet marketing techniques and other topics at http://www.FastStepInternetMarketing.com