Site Themes And Plugins

Site Themes And Plugins

by | Building a Blog, WP-Plugins, WP-Themes

What Do They Do?

Why should you care about your website theme or plugins? And I’m not just talking about WordPress, but those for any platform, including Joomla. At any point when a plugin or a new theme is called for, they all do just one thing:

They Solve A Problem

The gist of it is that when you want a type of layout, or certain functions in your website, or ease of custom features, you will (eventually)  look for a theme that will give you what you are looking for…

Some of these themes will include the plugins built-in (sliders, anyone?) More and more, these problem solvers will simply be plugins.

Do you wish to have a recipe that can be indexed and printed? There are plugins for that,

Would you like to reduce the size of your photos automatically? Plugins will accomplish that task.

Need help with the mysteries of SEO? Plugins can solve this problem.

In fact, this is why there are so very many of them available, and they are both free and premium in just about every blogging platform: they do all sorts of coding and create answers to your need for everything from an ecommerce site to adding easy ways to post to social media.

Just.About. Everything.

The difficulty is choosing the best ones to add style or function to your own blog.

Quickly, what to look for?

  • Ratings.  See what users think about the themes and plugins you are considering.
  • Updates. Plugins can have vulnerabilities, and need to be kept updated if at all possible.
  • Support. If there is good support from a community or developer, it can help trouble shoot when not working right with your site. What good is a plugin that doesn’t work or causes problems… or becomes unusable after platform updates?
  • Function. It does what you need without unnecessary bloat. Plugins, too big or too many, can slow your site.

So basically that is what your theme, with its built-in plugins and setup, and the plugins themselves will do… they are meant to solve your problems and meet your needs. Blogwise, anyway.

 

Post Formats In WordPress

Post Formats In WordPress

by | WP-Plugins, WP-Themes

I have had a devil of a time trying to use post formats in themes that don’t have them automatically included. I have a number of uses for the formats in mind for one of my sites, but am committed to a theme that doesn’t include them. As post formats have come and gone from the core of WordPress, they are now supposed to be included through plugins (or in the case of themes, written into the functions.php) So if you would like to use post formats, one plugin to try is WCK which adds the post type and new taxonomies. I’m am working with that to solve my problem of getting the formats without hacking my theme’s functions (which is hard work for someone like me).

My Premium Themes

I have been using Elegant Themes for a number of years, and their newer themes have custom post types that are often included in only one theme. I hacked the functions to transfer my post-types and get them to show in another theme change. In the meantime they developed their Divi theme which, once you are used to it, is fantastic. I love its look, and feel I can finally have a theme that is truly customized to the needs of my site. I think part of the challenge is the fact that WordPress has evolved so radically. It can do so much more, more easily, than in years (versions) past. If you are wishing to include post types in your theme, and have little to no coding skill, get one of the post type plugins that are being developed. I expect to see more come online in the near future. OR… you could go with a theme that has them built-in (like the native 2014 theme for WordPress). There are times you need all the bells and whistles, and that is when to go for a premium theme. There are ‘lite’ versions of premium themes that are quite good which might be adequate for your needs; but they usually have limited support if you need custom solutions or are trying to troubleshoot something that has gone awry. More about starting with wordpress

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