I 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
Latest posts by Len (see all)
- What Happened to ChicagoNow.com? - August 30, 2022
- The December 2021 Google Local Pack Algorithm Update - December 17, 2021
- Map Displaying to the Right of the Local Pack in Google Test in July 2021 - July 30, 2021
Leave a Reply