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How To Avoid Common Mistakes When Developing WordPress Themes
WordPress is quite a flexible platform to be on if you really want to build impressive websites. But that’s not all that defines WordPress because it offers a lot more than you expect. With WordPress you can develop themes, redesign themes, and more importantly, customize the whole look of your site. But sometimes developers are not able to carry out this task properly and make mistakes. So, we have decided to make you informed about common WordPress mistakes that webmasters usually make while developing WordPress themes.
But before you look at it, I would like you to pull your attention to our web design company in Los Angeles that is globally known for offering result-focused business expansion services. We do multiple things to drive new clients to your business setup such as build professional websites, create compelling content, place an enticing CTA, and optimize your site for search engines. So, if you want to benefit your online business through any service outlined above, make contact with SFWPExperts right away.
With that out of the way, now it’s time to sift through the main matter of this content: how to avoid common WordPress theme development mistakes.
Introduction
WordPress is a highly popular software across the world for building websites and managing content. Whether you are a pro or novice, you can easily find support for any problem you face within WordPress. It has a large network of users around the world who has formed various communities to discuss everything about WordPress. Not to mention that includes theme development methods, bugs fixing processes, and the right ways to use it. But let’s not discuss the other two things and focus on just theme development.
There are a sheer number of developers around the world who have a great expertise in theme development. Even if you ask them to implement certain features on their website, they will do it quickly. However the methods they will use to do it may differ in one or more ways. And accordingly, the results will also show the differences. Some of the features would be inefficient while the other could be harder to maintain. The point here to note is that if all the Wordpress developers will do the same thing in the right way, the results would be more user-friendly as well as developer-friendly.
Therefore, I have presented before you collecting top 5 common mistakes that a developer does while developing themes and the ways to avoid it.
So, let’s check out each of them one by one.
The Easy Ways To Avoid Mistakes During WordPress Theme Development
1. Putting Exact URLs In The Templates
If you would have closely noticed the HTML codes that a WordPress page or post generates, you would have seen that the image links as well as internal links comprises the complete URLs. But let me tell you it’s not the right method to do the job when you have to add code to your theme templates.
Let me explain this to you with an example: assume that you are building a website locally that has a temporary URL. Now if you want to shift that site to its permanent domain, you will need to make changes in the code manually considering it has a full URL. I’m not saying this is a quite tough job, but chances are you will forget the places where such codes would be existing. So, what’s the solution for it?
To fetch the correct URL in WordPress all you need to do is go to Settings > General in your WordPress dashboard. Remember that when you repeat esc_url( home_url() ), it will directly head to your homepage. So, the best thing you can do is just add a link back to your page instead of inserting the URL in your codes:
<a href="<?php echo esc_url( home_url() ); ?>" />Home</a>
In case your website is still in the initial development stage and you are not sure about registering it in a particular domain, consult with the experts of our Los Angeles web design company to get a solution. We will let you know where you should register your site for the best service and performance.
2. Embedding Third Party Scripts In A Template
It’s a completely different experience of adding third party scripts and styles in your WordPress. You might feel amazing to put <script> or <style> tags directly in the header of your theme during its development. And I’m not saying that’s the wrong way of doing things if you are building a static HTML site.
But as you know, there is always a way to do things in a better fashion and the same is true here as well. Leaving aside what you are used to, we recommend using wp_enqueue_script() and wp_enqueue_style() to add scripts and styles to the right places in WordPresss.
The fact of the matter is when you have a Theme Handbook provided by WordPress, ensure to go through the guide to grab information about how to add scripts and styles to your theme correctly.
Despite that if you find it difficult to add scripts and styles to your themes, you can always talk to seasoned developers of our Los Angeles web design company for help. We will make sure you get all the guidance and assistance to develop the kind of theme you want.
3. Installing jQuery For Implementing Different Elements
You might not know one secret of WordPress that it already has a copy of the JavaScript library which is popularly called jQuery. The interesting fact is that it already contains a lot of popular UI features, so you don’t have to install jQuery for further usage. Now the biggest advantage of having such a resource is that you can use the JavaScript library to implement elements like dialogs, datepickers, tabs, and many more.
The only thing you need to leverage them is enable the items that you want to use through functions.php file of your theme. While it needs you to learn the process, that will be advantageous for you in the long term.
To be absolutely frank, it’s not a tough job to implement a jQuery UI element that you want. Let’s say you want to enable the use of jQuery UI Tabs, then all you need to make it happen is add the code underneath to your functions.php:
function my_jquery_elements() {
wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery-ui-tabs', array('jquery'));
add_action( 'template_redirect', my_jquery_elements ', 10 );
The main purpose of doing this is that it tells WordPress to use the elements from the JavaScript library that it has.
In case you want to implement some additional elements but having trouble doing that, you can get in touch with the design and development team of our reputed Wordpress website design company. We will listen to your request and help you do what you want in the most effective way.
4. Going Overboard With Customization
There is no taking away from the fact that customization makes our website look different in the crowd of many. It’s good for both developers and site content editors to be able to add custom fields and custom post types to their website. Doing this helps them to organize the content in a better way and also offer a simplified user interface to visitors. But to be perfectly frank, sometimes we do it just too much that’s not good at all.
Custom fields are quite useful to add various types of information to your posts and pages - it’s spot on. It comes in handy when we plan where to put what type of content. But the layout could get out of hand when the type of content you want to add is not consistent. It will make your layout look absurd and that will deliver a poor viewing experience.
See the thing is there is no specific rule for carrying out customization on a website. So, you will have to use your intellect to reach a decision about what should be customized and what to be left. Keep in mind that it’s easy to add custom fields or post types right now the way you want but your opinion or standpoint may change in the future, so what will you do then. Therefore, ensure whatever you do, it is done with full accountability and flexibility in mind.
5. Ignoring To Comment Code
The importance of commenting code is huge and you don’t realize this until you are stuck. A comment is nothing but a readable description for the developers in the source code of computer programs. The main goal of adding this is to make it easy for them to understand the source codes and the purpose for which it has been inserted there. But the thing is many programmers overlook it and so they are caught in helpless situations sometimes. However this is also true that some people don’t use it just because the comments aren’t expressed clearly.
But the most powerful point is, it turns out to be very useful when you have to look through PHP or JS files having multiple things. You can easily find a particular item among a bunch of files. And even if you are thinking that you don’t need to consider it because you are the only who will edit the codes down the road, let me tell you it is not going to be as easy as you are thinking. Because just in case if you will want to edit that code in the future, it would be hard for you to remember where you placed a particular snippet of the code.
So, the whole discussion boils down to a point that comments are highly recommended in a computer program. This little effort now will make future maintenance of your WordPress website a lot easy.
Theme Development Skills Gets Better With A Lot of Practice
The whole discussion concludes at a point that building WordPress themes can be a great experience if you do it nicely. The term “nicely” here means avoiding all the mistakes explained above. No doubt, it will take time to perfect your skills to develop a well-coded theme but rest assured your efforts will pay off in the long term. Make sure that you develop the theme in such a way that it is easy to maintain, no matter if it is done by you or your colleague.
Do you have any questions about WordPress theme development? Let the comments section display that!
Beyond that if you need any kind of help related to website development, theme design, or homepage design, get into conversation with our Los Angeles web design company. Being a dedicated team of SFWPExperts, we guarantee to provide you promising results if you take services from us including WordPress web design, web development, website optimization, SEO, content marketing or online marketing.
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How To Avoid Common Mistakes When Developing WordPress Themes
By mikedavistech
How To Avoid Common Mistakes When Developing WordPress Themes
WordPress is quite a flexible platform to be on if you really want to build impressive websites. But that’s not all that defines WordPress because it offers a lot more than you expect. With WordPress you can develop themes, redesign themes, and more importantly, customize the whole look of your site. But sometimes developers are not able to carry out this task properly and make mistakes. Read more on https://bit.ly/34lkcFd
