wordpressI am a big WordPress fan. Isn’t everyone? But… There are few things on this Earth more frustrating than a WordPress site that is broken.

Each time I discover a problem with a custom theme I will add it to the list below.

Why are WordPress Sites Broken?

I have discovered 3 main reasons why custom themes go wrong:

  1. A designer concentrates on design and doesn’t understand or simply thinks little components are irrelevant. Well, they are wrong. Broken tags, missing doctype commands, and other issues are a big problem.
  2. Oversights. A lot goes into a theme. Major themes are updated once monthly and uesd by 100,000 people. A single custom theme developed once is not going to be updated ever again. Jquery incompatibility? Too bad.
  3. Greedy web design companies. I discovered a law firm marketing website recently that actually strips away the blogging functionality of WordPress and then tries to sell it to you as a feature! That is like buying a new Lexus, then going to pick it up and the salesman is standing there telling you that it will be an extra $700/mo to borrow a motor. Ahh!

Problems with custom themes

Well, here it is. My evergreen list of problems with custom themes. Every time I see a problem with a custom theme I will add it to this list.

  • No time or date stamp on blog posts.
  • Built in Jquery which conflicts with ALL major plugins rendering the theme unusable.
  • No “doctype” on RSS feed.
  • No “rel=author” functionality in blog posts.
  • Themes which are not responsive.
  • Themes with functionality intentionally stripped out.
  • Themes which create 2 URLs for single blog entries.
  • Unable to click on “page 2” of the blog without a 404 error screen.
  • Genesis themes with no “blog page” style page.
  • Any theme with no “blog page” style page.
  • Themes that use a custom “home” page.
  • Themes which break when WordPress is updated.
  • Overpriced themes. I know a Raleigh based WordPress designer that asks, with a straight face, for $30,000+ for a WordPress site (I can build something which outperforms it for free in 5 minutes).
  • Themes which automatically put a featured image at the top of a blog post.

Well thanks for listening. Hopefully this helps some designer out there. If not, oh well. Sometimes I like to complain and rant- mine as well create content out of it!

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On October 28, 2015   /   Wordpess   /   Leave a comment

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