Since the release of the WordPress Theme Customizer, my team and I have been more and more interested in using it as a way for users to make changes to the appearance of their theme without the use of the dashboard.
As powerful as the dashboard is, the “Appearance” section creates a disconnect between what the user toggles (or selects, or inputs, etc), and what they see on the front end.
The Theme Customizer mitigates that issue.
The thing is, there are a few nuances that come with implementing it in your theme. Though I’m not trying to cover everything here, the point of this post is show how you can introduce a new setting into an existing section.