WoodMart Header Not Showing: Find the Setting That Outranked Your Header

Where the header vanished says who removed it

Before opening any settings, note exactly where the header is missing. WoodMart has several places that can assign or remove a header, and each one has a different reach. The pattern of the failure tells you which to open first.

• One page only. That page's own settings are the prime suspect: a header switched off, or a different header picked for it.
• Every product, or every product in one category. A content-type setting or a Theme Settings preset with a product condition.
• The whole site, right after a change. The default header was swapped, or a new header was never saved.
• Only on phones or tablets. The mobile layout of that header is empty or its rows are hidden on mobile.
• Only on pages with a light top section. An overlapping, transparent header with light text is drawing on a light background.
• Present but unstyled or collapsed. Not a missing header at all. A cached page is pointing at an old header stylesheet.

Other themes run this chain differently. The general guide to missing headers compares them; this page sticks to WoodMart's own controls.

WoodMart's order of command for headers

The vendor's docs state the hierarchy directly: an individual content setting has the highest priority, then the applicable preset or content-type setting, and the default header is the final fallback. Here is where each level lives.

Presets add a wrinkle. Their conditions use OR logic, so one matching rule is enough to switch a preset on, and when two presets apply, the one with the higher priority number is applied later and wins. A preset meant for one category can reach further than intended if someone added a broad condition and forgot it.

Layouts Builder templates do not choose headers

WoodMart's Layouts Builder, under Dashboard > Layouts, builds templates for single products, product archives, cart, checkout, account pages, blog and portfolio. Its conditions use Include and Exclude, and the docs say more specific conditions beat broad ones such as All products. What a layout does not do is pick a header. It shapes the content area beneath it.

That catches owners who build a custom product layout and then look for the header selector that every page has. A layout is not a page, so there is no Page Setting box on it. The vendor's support forum gives the workaround: create a Theme Settings preset with the same conditions as the layout and choose the header inside the preset. If a header disappeared on exactly the products a layout covers, look for a preset someone made that way, possibly pointing at a header that was later emptied.

The transparent header that never left

Many WoodMart demos use a header that floats over a hero image. That is the Make it overlap option, found by opening the header in the Header Builder, clicking Settings in the editor toolbar and looking in the General tab. The docs explain that a transparent result comes from leaving the row background unset and choosing a Light or Dark text color scheme to suit what sits behind it.

Put that same header on a page without a dark hero and the light logo and menu sit on a white background. To the eye the header is gone. Drag your cursor across the top of the page; if hidden text highlights, the header is fine. Content can also slide up underneath an overlapping header, hiding the first heading.

Saved, previewed, assigned: three different things

New headers start from the Empty example, one of WoodMart's predefined example headers, or a copy of one you already have. None of it reaches the site until you press Save header. The docs also say a header becomes the site-wide one only through Set as default; saving alone does not assign it anywhere.

The frontend editor adds one more trap. Its Select preview page option shows the header on another page, but the docs are explicit that this changes only the preview context and does not assign the header to that content. Owners preview a header on the shop page, like it, close the editor and wonder why the shop still shows the old one.

Finally, WoodMart writes each saved header's styles to a file in the uploads folder. A cached page that still points at an older file can show a header with no styling, squashed into a list of links. That is a cache problem, covered in WoodMart CSS not updating. If headers went wrong straight after a demo import, WoodMart demo import failed covers that route.

Putting the WoodMart header back

1. 1

   Check the page's own settings

   Open the page and find the Page Setting metabox, or Elementor Page Settings. Turn off Disable header and clear Custom header for this page unless you meant to set it.

2. 2

   Check the content-type setting

   For posts, projects and products, look in Theme Settings under Blog, Portfolio and Single product for a custom header chosen for all of them.

3. 3

   List every Theme Settings preset

   Open WoodMart > Theme settings presets and read the conditions of each. Find any that match the broken page and see which header they choose and what priority number they carry.

4. 4

   Confirm the default

   In Theme Settings > General > Layout > Header, or in the header manager, make sure the default is a saved header with content in both its desktop and mobile layouts.

5. 5

   Check overlap and color scheme

   If the header should be solid on this page, assign a header without Make it overlap, or give its rows a background.

6. 6

   Save and clear caches

   Press Save header or Save options, then purge the caching plugin, host cache and CDN. Load the page in a private window to confirm.

A header register for a store with many hands

• Name headers by job. Call them Default, Overlap for landing pages or Checkout minimal, not Header copy 3.
• Keep a one-line record of every override. Which pages, products and presets choose a non-default header, and why.
• Give presets unique priority numbers. The docs recommend this when presets can apply to the same page at once.
• Retest after theme and WoodMart Core updates. A version mismatch between them can make elements vanish, which WoodMart update problems covers.
• Check the mobile layout of every header you add. It is a separate layout, and the menu inside it has its own guide: WoodMart mobile menu not working.

The WoodMart review explains why the Header Builder is worth this care, and the WoodMart repair hub collects the other common faults.

Six places to decide one strip of pixels

Count the places that can decide what sits at the top of a single WoodMart page: the page itself, the product, the content type, every preset, the default, and the header's own overlap setting. Each is reasonable alone. Together they are a puzzle that only the person who set them up can solve quickly, and that person may have left.

A Next.js storefront puts the header in code: one component, one rule for which pages get which variant, reviewed and tested before it ships. Changing it needs a developer, which is the cost, and it cannot be switched off by accident, which is the benefit. Compare the two in WoodMart vs Next.js, see what moving involves in WoodMart to Next.js, and check WoodMart speed for the header's cost in load time. To have it fixed instead, our theme repair team works on a staging copy, and the troubleshooting section covers every theme.