Lay Options

Lay Options contains site-wide settings for Lay Theme. Use it to turn larger features on or off, define global defaults and adjust editor behavior.

Open Lay Options from the WordPress admin sidebar. Many sections contain short help text inside the setting itself; this page explains what the important groups are for and links to the detailed feature pages where they already exist.

Extra Features

Extra Features is where you enable larger parts of Lay Theme. Turn on only the features you actually need, so the admin stays focused.

Extra Features turns major Lay Theme features on and off

Menu Amount controls how many menu locations Lay Theme exposes.
Custom Phone Layouts adds desktop/phone layout buttons to the Gridder. See Custom Phone Layouts.
Enable Page Templates creates a Page Templates area under Lay Options so Gridder layouts can be reused.
Projects Overlays Feature and Page Overlays (Desktop Burger Menu Feature) enable overlay workflows. See Overlays / Desktop Burger Menu.
Horizontal Scroll, Fixed Header, Cover Feature, Intro Feature, News Feature, Deck Feature, Project Arrows and Simple Parallax enable their matching features. Their detailed documentation lives on the matching pages in the sidebar.
Layout Cache can improve loading speed by caching generated layouts. It is one of the main settings mentioned in Speeding up your Website.
Smooth Scroll changes the global scrolling feel. Disable Smooth Scroll on Apple Devices keeps smooth scrolling off on macOS, iPhone and iPad when needed.

Other Settings

Other Settings collects smaller global behaviors that do not belong to one specific visual feature.

Title Separator changes the separator in browser-tab titles, for example Website – Page.
Next & previous project links navigate through decides whether project navigation uses projects from the same category or all projects. See Navigation between Projects.
Use custom link for projects lets projects point somewhere else instead of their normal project URL.
Hide Projects hides the Projects menu item in the WordPress admin.
Never change scrolling position when navigating is mainly useful for split-screen websites where the scroll position should stay where it is.
Show Edit Button and Show FPS Counter add small frontend helper tools for logged-in administrators.
Mouseover-show scroll-hidden menubar, site title, menu lets hidden navigation reappear when the mouse reaches the top or bottom of the page.
Disable rubber-band scrolling stops the page from bouncing past the top or bottom.
Enable "Ask AI" enables the Lay Theme AI help button in the admin.
Disable Simple Custom Post Order turns off the built-in drag-and-drop ordering plugin. Show all projects on one page in admin helps when you want to reorder many projects at once.

Loading and Performance

Several Lay Options settings affect how fast pages feel, when media loads and which compatibility scripts are used.

Lazy Loading delays images and mp4 videos until they are near the viewport. This is useful for image-heavy projects, long pages and portfolios with many videos.

Use Lazy Loading for Images is recommended for pages with many images.
Use Effect for Image Lazy Loading chooses how unloaded images appear while they come in.
Use Lazy Loading for .mp4 Videos delays HTML5 videos. Safari and Firefox each have their own toggles because browser behavior can differ.

Also check Lay Options → Images, Videos and Texts for related performance settings: image quality, resized image versions, custom video scripts and font-display: swap. These are documented in Lay Options → Images, Lay Options → Videos and Lay Options → Texts.

Color Palette

Color Palette stores reusable colors for Lay Theme controls. Add the colors you use often, then pick them again from color controls instead of typing the same hex values repeatedly.

Add reusable colors to keep the admin faster and more consistent

Breakpoints and Widths

The Layout & SEO group contains responsive breakpoints, maximum content width and meta information for sharing/search results.

Phone Layout Breakpoint decides below which browser width the phone layout is shown. Set it to 0 to disable the phone version.
Phone Menu Breakpoint decides when the phone menu replaces the desktop menu.
Tablet Breakpoint is used by elements that need tablet-specific behavior, like Thumbnail Grid, Element Grid and Project Index.

Max width of content limits how wide the page content can become on large screens. Set it to 0 to turn it off.
Apply max width of content to logo and menu keeps logo and menu aligned with grids that use the same frame values as the Gridder Defaults.
Apply max width of content to burger icon does the same for the Page Overlay / Desktop Burger Menu icon.

Website Description is used for search engines and social sharing. Facebook/Twitter Share Image sets a fallback image for shared links.

Gridder Settings

Lay Options → Gridder controls editor behavior and a few advanced save/output settings.

Gridder for WooCommerce Products enables the Gridder for WooCommerce product layouts.
Show Gridder above other Plugin User Interfaces keeps the Gridder visible before other plugin meta boxes.
Placefreely for Texts allows text elements to use Place Freely positioning.
"Lock Position" and "Lock Editing & Position" add lock options to the element right-click menu.
Undo / Redo enables the Gridder undo/redo buttons.
Use gzip for Gridder JSON when saving compresses saved Gridder data and can help on servers with strict request limits.
Scope for Page based CSS decides how page-specific CSS is scoped.

Gridder UI Colors and More

Gridder UI Colors & More changes the editor itself: frame color, gutter colors, selected outlines, row drag-and-drop colors and similar visual helpers.

Use this section when the default Gridder colors do not work well with the content you are editing, or when you want more or less visual guidance in the editor.

Sidebar UI decides which sections are shown in the Gridder sidebar. You can hide settings you never use so the sidebar stays shorter and easier to scan.

Sidebar UI can simplify the Element Sidebar, phone tab, Row Sidebar and related controls

The Gridder Buttons to show section works similarly for toolbar buttons. See Choose which "+" buttons to show.

Password Protection

The Password Protection section controls global behavior for password-protected pages and projects.

Expire Project/Page Password Login after controls how long password access stays valid.
Hide Site Title and Menu on password protected pages keeps password screens cleaner.
Thumbnailgrid and Projectindex options decide whether password-protected projects can appear in those overview elements.

For setting an actual page or project password, see Password Protection.

Compatibility

Compatibility contains fallbacks for plugin compatibility, Ajax loading and edge cases.

Disable Ajax / Compatibility Mode turns off Lay Theme Ajax navigation. Use it when another plugin or script does not work with Ajax page loading.
Enable Content Filter helps with plugin output that depends on the normal WordPress content filter.
Enable Smart Loading for HTML and Shortcode Elements helps scripts inside HTML and Shortcode elements initialize when pages load.
Disable qTranslate-XT Meta Translation is a multilingual compatibility setting.
Use row background image/video object fit CSS compatibility mode uses a fallback for row background media when sizing looks wrong on some devices.

Updates

Updates controls how Lay Theme updates are handled.

Disable Updates for Lay Theme hides/disables Lay Theme update checks.
Allow Automatic Updates for Lay Theme lets WordPress automatic theme updates run, unless updates are disabled above.

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