Great website design is just one of the factors that any successful website must consider. Let’s say you’re designing the website or a designer is doing it for you, so you don’t have to learn how to make a banner. You’re probably only thinking about the essentials, but other elements of the site must perfectly fit the overall aesthetics of your site as well.

Also, once you launch your website, you’ll want to make announcements and notify your visitors of any changes or events taking place shortly. However, you can easily create a custom landing page for that purpose. But a banner is probably the most effective and painless way of doing so.

More isn’t always better, and a great banner will do the job just fine. While there are many great options to choose from, sometimes they can get quite pricey.

Especially when you consider the number of premium plugins you already have, it’s for this purpose that we’ll be reviewing a free banner plugin today called Simple Banner.

What is a Simple Banner?

The aptly named Simple Banner plugin is a handy WordPress tool that can help you create a minimalist banner in a manner of seconds. Jot down what you want to say and go through a few customization steps if you want to, of course.

Soon enough, you’ll be able to see your custom banner adorning the top of your website. While the whole process might be as simple as one, two, three, there’s still a lot to edit and design to fit your aesthetic.

However, you can do as little or as much as you want. Although we do recommend you fiddle with it a little, as the default is a bit underwhelming. And if you’re going to tinker with your banner a bit more, you’re entirely free to do so. Especially if you have some pre-existing coding skills, as this plugin allows you to add custom CSS.

However, you should be aware that you’ll be left with the default options if you have no coding skills whatsoever, but those aren’t all that limited either.

How Does It Work?

After installation, to create a banner, navigate to “Simple Banner” on your WP dashboard located right below your “Settings.”

Immediately after clicking on the button, The tool will lead you to the settings, where most of the work on your banner will be done. The entire editor is one page, and it’s super straightforward. So, even those who don’t have much experience designing anything shouldn’t have too much of a problem creating a banner.

So let’s see the features of this plugin.

First, when it comes to text styles, they will be automatically fitted to match the chosen CSS style. However, you can disable this function if you desire to do so. The number one thing you’ll set in the editor is the close button time, aka. How long the close button action will be up for, the standard value is 30.

The following section is text and color customization. With this plugin, using color sliders, you will be able to change the background, text, link, and close button. There is also a Hex value text bubble next to all the color sliders to easily copy the color if you want some elements to be the same.

After that’s all done, the last thing you’ll want to do is write the text you want to be on your banner. This text can be as short or as long as you want it to, but it is usually not recommended to have overly long messages on your banners. So, do keep that in mind.

That’s all as far as the text itself is concerned, and all we have left to do is change the banner’s position.

The options are:

• Header
• Footer
• Static
• Sticky
• Relative
• Fixed
• Absolute
• Initial
• Inherit

Further, once that’s set up, you can also customize the margin and add top padding. The very last thing you can enable in the free version is wp_body_open. In essence, this will insert the banner into your site. So if you are, for example, using a translation plugin and further you enable this option, the banner text will also be translated automatically.

Lastly, once you feel all done, feel free to preview the banner and ensure everything’s right. You can preview the banner by scrolling back to the top of the editor and clicking the link. Also, if you don’t like it or wish to style everything a little more, go back and edit until you’re happy with it.

Costs, Caveats, Etc

Simple Banner is an entirely free plugin, and you can download it anytime you want. There is a premium version you can opt for if this isn’t enough for you. But if that’s the case, we recommend checking out some other plugins as well.

If you want more customization or just more room to work with, this one isn’t for you. Great for beginners and lovers of minimalism.