You want to change one small thing at the top of your website. A new phone number, a different logo, a menu item that should say “Services” instead of “What We Do”. You open the dashboard, click Appearance, and the screen you land on looks nothing like the tutorial you found. The tutorial talks about a Customizer. You see something called Editor. Or the other way round.
This mix-up catches almost every owner at some point, and it is not your fault. The WordPress header and footer can be built in three different ways, and each one is edited in a different place. Once you know which one your site uses, almost every change in this part of the site becomes a matter of finding the right screen. This guide shows you how to tell, where each piece lives, and which of our step-by-step posts covers each job. It is one section of our WordPress guide for business owners, which runs from basic settings through to user accounts.
First, work out which kind of site you have
Log in, hover over Appearance in the left-hand menu and read the items underneath. That list tells you more than any setting.
- You see “Editor”. Your site uses a block theme, such as Twenty Twenty-Four or Twenty Twenty-Five. WordPress only shows the Editor item for block themes. Headers and footers are built from blocks in the Site Editor.
- You see “Customize”, “Menus” and usually “Widgets”. You have a classic theme. The theme’s own code draws the header and footer, and you change their contents through those three screens. Some classic themes also show a “Design” or “Patterns” item; that does not make them block themes.
- Either of the above, but your edits change nothing on the live site. A page builder may be supplying the header and footer instead. Elementor Pro’s Theme Builder does this, and themes such as Astra and Kadence have their own header and footer builders inside the Customizer.
If you inherited the site and have no idea what it was built with, our free WordPress theme detector will name the theme from the front end. Then search that theme’s name with “header builder” and you will quickly know whether it has one.
| What you want to change | Block theme | Classic theme | Builder header |
|---|---|---|---|
| Header layout | Appearance → Editor, header template part | Appearance → Customize, theme’s header options | The builder’s header template |
| Menu links | Navigation block in the header | Appearance → Menus | Menu widget inside the template, usually pulling a menu from Appearance → Menus |
| Logo | Site Logo block | Customize → Site Identity | Logo or image widget in the template |
| Footer text and columns | Footer template part | Widgets screen and theme footer options | The builder’s footer template |
Block themes: header and footer are template parts
In a block theme, the header is a template part: a saved group of blocks that every template on the site pulls in. The footer works the same way. Edit the header once and the change appears on every page that uses it.
To find them, go to Appearance → Editor, open Patterns and look under the template parts section for Header and Footer. You can also open any template, click on the header area and choose to edit it. Inside you will find ordinary blocks: Site Logo, Site Title, Navigation, perhaps a Buttons block or a Social Icons block. You change them the way you would change blocks on a page.
Two things trip people up. Some themes ship more than one header (a plain one and one with a call-to-action button, for example) and different templates may use different ones. And the Site Editor saves your changes to the database, not the theme’s files, so a theme update does not wipe them, but switching to another theme leaves them behind. Our walkthrough of templates and template parts in the Site Editor covers editing safely and resetting a part to the theme’s original.
Classic themes: three screens share the work
A classic theme draws the frame of the header and footer from its own PHP files. You do not edit those files. Instead, the theme gives you three places to fill in:
- Appearance → Customize. Logo, site title, colours, and whatever header and footer options the theme’s author added. Menu names here vary a lot from theme to theme, so look for sections called Header, Footer, Layout or Site Identity.
- Appearance → Menus. The links in your navigation. The theme decides where a menu can appear by offering named locations, such as Primary or Footer.
- Appearance → Widgets. The contents of footer columns and sidebars. Since WordPress 5.8 this screen uses blocks too, which is why it can look surprisingly like the page editor.
If you need something the theme does not offer, such as moving the menu to a different side, that is a theme customisation job rather than a setting. Our post on customising a theme without breaking it explains why changes belong in a child theme or the Additional CSS box, never in the theme’s own files.
Page builder headers and footers
When a builder supplies the header, the theme’s normal header is either hidden or replaced. You edit the builder’s header template, and the builder’s display conditions decide which pages show it. This is why someone can spend an hour changing the Customizer with no visible effect: the Customizer is setting up a header that nobody sees.
In Elementor, look for the Theme Builder under Templates. In a theme with its own header builder, open Appearance → Customize and look for a Header Builder or similar panel. Menus are usually still created under Appearance → Menus, and the builder’s menu widget just chooses which one to show.
Which post covers each WordPress header and footer job
Most owners come to this part of the site for the same handful of jobs. Here is where to go for each one.
- Building or reordering the main navigation. Start with creating a menu in WordPress, which covers both Appearance → Menus and the Navigation block, and menu locations.
- Grouping pages under one heading. Adding a dropdown menu explains submenus and how far to nest them.
- Swapping the logo. See how to change your logo, including sizes and why the old one sometimes hangs around.
- Putting your number at the top. Adding a phone number to the header covers top bars and tap-to-call links.
Other header jobs in this section of the guide include making the header stay on screen as visitors scroll, adding a short announcement bar above it, and checking how the menu collapses on a phone. Each has its own post.
The footer: text, columns and credits
The footer gets less attention than the header, and it shows. Old copyright years, a dead email address, a “Proudly powered by WordPress” line nobody chose. Fixing it is usually quick once you know where it lives, and our guide to editing the footer in WordPress goes through each kind of site.
If what bothers you is the theme’s credit line, there is a separate post on removing the “powered by” text properly, rather than hiding it with CSS. Footer columns in classic themes are widget areas, so the guide to WordPress widgets is the place to understand what can go in them. Social media icons can sit in the header or the footer, and they have their own post too.
How to edit the header in WordPress without losing your way back
Header and footer changes affect every page at once, so a mistake is visible everywhere. A few habits keep that low-risk.
- Take a backup first, or at least know when the last one ran.
- Change one thing, then look. Check the live site in a private browser window, on a phone as well as a laptop.
- Know your undo. In the Site Editor, template parts can be reset to the theme’s version, and recent versions let you look back through earlier revisions. In the Customizer, nothing goes live until you press Publish, so you can close it to throw changes away. Widgets and menus have no history, so note what was there before you start.
- Clear caches if an edit does not appear. Caching plugins usually serve stored copies only to visitors, not to you while you are logged in, so the new header can be live for you and missing for everyone else.
If a menu disappears altogether after a change, our troubleshooting post on a WordPress menu not showing works through the usual causes.
Frequently asked questions
Can I have a different header on one page?
Yes, in most setups. In a block theme you can create a second header template part and use it in a custom template assigned to that page. Many classic themes offer a per-page option to hide or change the header, and page builders handle it with display conditions on the header template.
Can I edit the header from my phone?
You can open the Site Editor or the Customizer in a phone browser, and a quick text fix is possible. The screens are cramped, though, and it is easy to drag a block into the wrong place without noticing. For anything beyond a typo, wait until you are at a laptop, where you can see the whole header and check the result properly.
Why does my header look different on my phone?
Themes rearrange the header on small screens. The menu usually collapses behind a button, some elements are hidden, and the logo may shrink. Check the theme’s mobile or responsive header settings, or the Navigation block’s overlay setting in a block theme, and always test on a real phone.
Is it safe to switch from a classic theme to a block theme to get the Site Editor?
It can be done, but your header, footer, menus and widgets will not carry over as they are. You rebuild them as template parts and Navigation blocks. Try the switch on a staging copy first and list every element in the current header and footer before you start.
If your header is held together by a builder nobody remembers setting up, or you would simply rather not touch something every visitor sees, our WordPress support team can make the change and tell you afterwards where it lives, so the next one is yours to do.
All guides in this section
- How to Create a Menu in WordPress (Classic and Block)
- How to Add a Dropdown Menu in WordPress
- How to Edit the Footer in WordPress
- How to Remove Powered by WordPress From Your Footer
- How to Change the Logo in WordPress (and Keep It Sharp)
- WordPress Widgets: What They Are and How to Use Them
- How to Add Social Media Icons in WordPress
- How to Add a Phone Number to Your WordPress Header
- WordPress Site Editor: Templates and Template Parts
- How to Add a Sticky Header in WordPress
- How to Add a Custom Link to a WordPress Menu
- WordPress Mobile Menu: How It Works and How to Set It
- How to Remove the Sidebar in WordPress (or Add One)
- How to Add an Announcement Bar in WordPress
Next in this series: How to Create a Menu in WordPress (Classic and Block)
