Themes (vs) Plugins: The Future of WordPress
Tables of Content:
- WordPress Path
- Theme Path
- Plugin Path
- Themes (vs) Plugins in Future
- Why are plugins powerful?
- Is it right for WordPress?
- The Proof
- Conclusion
WordPress Path:
On May 27, 2003, WordPress’s first version released. At first, it is initially started for blogging purposes. But year after year with the significant updates, it’s quickly become to produce a different type of web content. Like, eCommerce, Membership Sites, Learning Management System, so and so on. Later, it quickly becomes one of the most popular Content Management System.
At 2019 WordPress CMS(Content Management System) covers 34% of total websites in the world. The real statistic details are promising of how WordPress comes along the path of past years and also proving the upcoming years of growth.
Themes Path:
While back in 2004 to 2005, WordPress updates of 1.2 to 1.5 become one of the most powerful core features get in the race. That feature still stands even after 15 years of use. That is the feature of introducing themes and plugins in the WordPress CMS. That changed everything in WordPress usage since then.
The themes of WordPress take care of frontend look and functionality. But after some time, most of the developers are recommended and advised by the WordPress core team to move major features from themes to plugins.
Like the shortcode creation, custom post types, widgets, custom taxonomies, and more functions.
Plugins Path:
Plugins allow users to extend the features and functionality of their WordPress websites. Without the frontend styling of WordPress websites, everything made in control of the plugin’s hand.
After years of Expanding plugins library, developers are more comfortable with it to release the most powerful functionalities.
Plugins did the job correctly, even with the basic WordPress free themes — some of the best examples of plugins that’ll work correctly even with free basic themes.
The above examples are showing plugins are going in the right way.
Themes (vs) Plugins in Future:
Likewise, Husband and Wife in a Family. Theme and Plugin are in WordPress. Without a correct coordinate with each other, either family or WordPress will not run correctly.
But, that phrase is changing slowly now. Because plugins are getting more powerful and even it works perfectly with any free basic themes. Without any loss while changing a theme – It’s a big role here.
As we saw clearly, plugins are getting more and more potent than a theme in the past year of WordPress path. The process of it is already going on. One of the best examples we see is theme builders in page builder and website builder plugins.
These functionalities are reflecting the theme structure and coding knowledge in themes area. Any users can able to create theme frontend styling with templates using this functionality from the page builder plugin.
Plugins are slowly getting in the area of WordPress themes.
Why are plugins powerful?
By default, WordPress, Core API system itself prove that plugins API’s are most functional than theme APIs. On the side, the developer’s mastermind is more comfortable with the plugins API’s. To be creative in a technical side.
These particular reasons are proving that the future of WordPress is in plugin’s hands. And plugins are slowly stepping into the themes area. This transformation is one of the most significant moves we feel in a wide of WordPress community.
Is it right for WordPress?
This slowest hidden move on WordPress community area, clearly explains to us the plugins are getting more powerful and into the theme area.
In a typical user perspective, we feel this change is good because each time, users want to change a theme – They’ll lose most of the structured page design and some other theme-specific functionalities.
With these plugins’ most advanced features, even with the changes of theme updates or new theme change, they’ll not lose the necessary elements of it.
The Proof:
One of the best proof of moving frontend functionalities to the plugin’s hand is, Theme Builders seen in most popular Page/Website Builder plugins.
Here are the following best examples:
Conclusion:
By explaining this bold statement – No one will feel uncomfortable with it. At least we hope!
This change is not something like Classic editor to Gutenberg editor. That everyone is against at least at that time of WordPress core team’s decisions.
So, we can’t wait to see what these types of plugins will do in the future of WordPress. These are improving WordPress User Experiences better than the core of WordPress UX.
