Description
Header Footer Builder is a lightweight yet powerful plugin that lets you design fully custom headers and footers for your WordPress site — and precisely control where each one appears using flexible display conditions.
Unlike other header footer plugins, every template comes with a built-in include/exclude rule system. You can show a unique header on your homepage, a different one on WooCommerce shop pages, and hide the footer entirely on landing pages — all without writing a single line of code.
Key Features
- Unlimited templates — Create as many header and footer templates as you need.
- Display conditions — Show or hide templates based on:
- Entire site
- Front page, blog index page
- Specific pages or posts (search and select by name)
- All posts, all pages, all custom post types
- Category archives, tag archives, all archive pages
- Author archive pages
- Search results pages
- 404 pages
- WooCommerce shop, product, cart, checkout, my account pages
- Include & exclude rules — Include a template sitewide and exclude it from specific pages, or vice versa.
- Priority-based matching — More specific rules always win. A rule targeting a specific page beats a rule targeting all pages, which beats a sitewide rule.
- Works with any page builder — Use the native WordPress block editor (Gutenberg), Elementor, or any other builder to design your templates.
- Theme compatibility — Works with popular themes including Astra, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Kadence, Hello Elementor, and more.
- Zero bloat — No external dependencies or heavy frameworks. Fast and standards-compliant.
- Developer friendly — Clean OOP PHP, PSR-style autoloading, React-based admin UI, REST API-powered.
How Display Conditions Work
- Create a header or footer template in the builder.
- Click Conditions next to any template.
- Add Include Rules to define where the template should appear.
- Add Exclude Rules to carve out exceptions.
- Save — the template is now live with smart targeting.
Rules are priority-scored: specific page/post targets score highest, followed by post-type rules, then archive rules, then the sitewide catch-all. The highest-scoring matching template wins.
Perfect For
- Landing pages that need no header or footer
- WooCommerce stores with checkout-specific headers
- Blogs with a different header for category archive pages
- Membership sites with role-specific navigation
- Multipage sites that need per-section branding
Installation
- Upload the plugin files to the
/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-header-footerdirectory, or install the plugin directly through the WordPress Plugins dashboard. - Activate the plugin through the Plugins menu in WordPress.
- Navigate to Header Footer in your WordPress admin sidebar to start creating templates.
- Click Add New to create your first header or footer template.
- Once the template is designed, click Conditions to configure where it should appear.
FAQ
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Does this plugin work with Elementor?
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Yes. You can use Elementor (or any page builder) to design the content of your header and footer templates. The plugin handles the display logic.
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Does it work with the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg)?
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Yes. Templates are standard WordPress custom posts, so Gutenberg works out of the box.
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Can I create different headers for different pages?
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Absolutely. Create multiple header templates and assign each one a different set of display conditions. The plugin automatically picks the best-matching template for each page load.
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What happens if two templates match the same page?
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The plugin uses a priority scoring system. More specific rules win: a rule targeting a specific page beats a rule targeting all pages, which beats a sitewide rule. If two templates have equal priority, the most recently published one is used.
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Can I exclude a template from certain pages?
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Yes. Each template supports both include and exclude rules. Exclude rules always override include rules, so you can include a template sitewide and then exclude it from specific pages.
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Does it support WooCommerce pages?
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Yes. You can target the WooCommerce shop page, single product pages, cart, checkout, and my account pages using dedicated display condition rules.
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Will it slow down my site?
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No. Template matching is done efficiently in PHP with a single database query per page load. There are no external API calls or heavy scripts on the frontend.
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Which themes are supported?
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The plugin is designed to work with themes that support custom header/footer regions. Tested with Astra, GeneratePress, OceanWP, Kadence, and Hello Elementor.
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Can developers hook into the template selection logic?
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Yes. The selection logic is fully OOP and hookable. See the source code for the ConditionsMatcher class.
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Is there multisite/network support?
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The plugin works on individual WordPress sites. Multisite/network-wide configuration is not yet supported.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“Header Footer Builder – Custom Header and Footer for WordPress” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
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Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
1.0.2
- Added display conditions system with include/exclude rules
- Priority-based template matching engine
- Smart specifics search for pages, posts, categories, and tags
- Conditions badge in dashboard showing rule counts
- Improved dashboard UI with type badges and publish/unpublish controls
- Fixed sanitization of condition rules in REST API
1.0.1
- Submission feedback fix
1.0.0
- Initial release
- Basic header/footer template builder