14 awesome drag-n-drop customization options with Backbone

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

If you’re like most bloggers, you probably aren’t interested in learning how to code just so you can make the theme customizations you’d like for your blog.

ColorLabs is bringing bloggers an exciting new feature with their newest WordPress theme framework, called Backbone.

That feature’s called drag and drop customization.

Let’s take a sneak peak behind the scenes and see what a blogger can do with a Backbone child theme.

1. Simplicity is the ultimate understanding of complexity

The new drag and drop features bring bloggers both the ultimate power in editing and beauty, because it combines not only a brilliant design but also access to just about anything you might want to customize on your blog.

2. Subscribe Settings

Bloggers now have the option to quickly update everything they need to control their subscription settings, including a the feedburner widget, the text that appears encouraging people to subscribe, the email subscription option, and even a mailchimp option.

I don’t know about you, but having all this in one area is definitely going to help me stay organized and on top of how my readers will connect … which, to be honest, can sometimes get lost in all the noise.

3. Analytics Settings

If you’ve been blogging for a while, or at least tracking some form of analytics, then you’re probably comfortable with working with a snippet of script from Google … but for some this is still way beyond their level of comfort. Backbone addresses this by enabling bloggers the option to control their Google Analtics statistics from their drag and drop admin panel. In addition, you also have the option to control your GoSquared and Feedburner analytics, which I’m sure is only the beginning.

This is truly one of the most powerful features, as it enables you to quickly and efficiently begin tracking your analytics.

4. Blog title and logo options

Another are a lot of bloggers have trouble is with the customization of their logo. While the title has been pretty easy to tackle using the WordPress options built in, the logo’s always been more tricky. For some, it means hacking into the header and manually inserting the html. For others, it means finding a plugin to do this for them.

Now, you can control this right from your drag and drop admin panel, which makes it easy not only to opt whether you want to use a logo for your title or the actual blog title for your title.

5. Add a favicon and look really cool

Let’s admit it, we’ve all looked up how to customize or add a favicon to our blog. The favicon was created to visual the favorites option in your browser, but since then has become more of a status symbol setting apart the cool bloggers from everyone else. With the framework and themes from ColorLabs, you have this option built right in so you can join the cool kids club.

6. Social Settings

Keep all your social information in one place, and pull from it when you need to. This area is an awesome way to save you time and keep you focused.

7. Customize the header styling

If you’d like to make a little change to the color, margin, or border in your header, now you can swiftly.

8. Customize the widget styling

Same goes for the widgets in your sidebar and footer … control the borders, titles, text, and other stylistic aspects in your widgets.

9. Optimize your blog title and description

Use this area to customize your blog title, separators, and even the default layout you’d like to use for pages and posts.

10. Control Indexing

Let search engines know what you want indexed and what you don’t want indexed, such as tag archives, author pages, or search result pages. This can help keep the search engines bot focused on what matters … like your latest post.

11. Tap the Open Graph

If you’re a facebook developer, you’ll find this little addition handy … for the rest of us … time to do some research of buddy up with savvy developers.

12. Customize your footer

Control your ColorLabs affiliate link and logo that appears in footer of your theme. This is a nice gesture from ColorLabs, as some companies include this into the code of your theme, which makes it a bit more difficult to remove it if you wish to do so.

14. Optimize your blog for search engines

We’ll definnitely talk about this aspect more, as it’s one of the leading reasons why you should invest in a theme framework, but for now just take a look at some of the options Backbone and the child themes give you through the seo settings tab. Not only can you control the homepage keywords, your page/post keyowrds, and global keywords, but you’re also given the option to work with plugins, such as All in One SEO or Yoast.

There’s so much at your fingertips!

I’m going to breaking each section down piece by piece, giving you a closer look at some of the features and how they impact your blog. Overall, I’m super-excited to start using Backbone for a few projects and look forward to more awesome work from ColorLabs.

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