What does the future hold for WordPress Theme development?

For the last 10 years since the introduction of WordPress, this CMS platform has been gaining all the more popularity as well as importance. In fact, as per the experts who are regularly dealing with WordPress, its future looks extremely promising in spite of the challenges that lie ahead. When it comes to discussing the future development of WordPress, it is likely to mainly focus on the following two areas – Refatoring and Usability.

Refatoring

That WordPress comes up with a too many codes does not need to be mentioned. However, a considerable proportion of the codes are not optimal. This goes particularly true for the codes that are original. Hence, this needs to be improved and it is likely that the future generations of WordPress will come up with considerable improvement, and thus get rid of this limitation. Truly, the future generations of WP will come up with a lot of value added features – scope of rewriting admin interface in Jscript along with improved as well as enhanced legacy elements. Also, the backwards compatibility issue is going to enjoy a considerable extent of attention from the developers.

Usability

Developers have put more emphasis on usability than on features while developing the version 3.6 of WP. Traditionally, WordPress has got a lot of hidden power and surprisingly, much of that power was hitherto left unused. That has been somewhat rectified in the new version. Also, the fact that the next generation WPs are likely to come up with new features will make them more user-friendly from the end-users’ point of view. Also, while the language has already been simple, it is likely to get even simpler for the users with lesser technical prowess.

Let us look into the other aspects of the future of WP.

Blogging

Blogging is the core functionality of WordPress. This is mainly because WP is simple, fantastic and most importantly, extremely easy to use. Hence it allows everyone to share their thoughts as well as their view points, ideas and experiences with others. As the future generation WPs are likely to come up with more value added features and in a much simpler form, blogging will get easier and more acceptable to people, even those without any technical expertise whatsoever.

Mobile

It is going to get more mobile. Internet can be accessed now with virtually all types of mobile devices and this, undoubtedly, is going to change WordPress, by making it more mobile. It is likely to go on changing, and adapting to the way people will access and use it, especially through mobile devices and this is a significant change that WordPress is going to see in the future.

Identity

WordPress has always suffered from a kind of identity crisis ever since it was introduced some 10 years back. Though it gained a huge amount of popularity over these 10 years, and people accepted it as the best and the most user-friendly blogging tool, one very basic question that has plagued the end users as well as the developers is – what actually CMS is? While according to one school of thought, it is a blogging software platform, for others it is a comprehensive CMS or Content Management System. Again, another group of people calls it a framework that can be used for blogging. Thus, in future, WP is likely to get a profound identity that will only underline its existence and importance.

Since WP after all, is extremely powerful as well as extendable, its future prospects depend upon how it manages to retain its simplicity, stay as a beautiful software that helps people to share thoughts with others and socialize in a different way.

Security

This is another aspect that is going to determine the future prospect of WordPress application development. Each and every software platform has to encounter various types of attacks as well as challenges from various quarters and WP is no exception. Thus, the security aspects need to be strengthened by a considerable extent if it is to prosper as a reliable CMS platform in the future. Considering the amount of work that is going on for enhancing the security aspect, the future of WordPress looks considerably promising.

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Smart ways to customize WordPress themes

Those who are new to WordPress think that code tinkering in this platform is a tough as well as daunting task. However, the reality is that the feel and look of the site along with themes in WordPress may be customized by incorporating some truly simple changes. But these changes should not be introduced in the themes directly. First of all, child themes should be created, and this should be followed by dealing with the offline files so that the changes can be seamlessly introduced. When working in this way, it can ensured that while tweaking the code, if any issue crops up inadvertently, the original files can always be accessed. They can then be re-uploaded quickly so that the changes can be overwritten.

Creating child theme- Themes inheriting another theme's functionality as well as style are known as child themes while the themes they inherit are called parent themes. You do not need to alter the parent theme files when you add new style changes and functionality through child themes. While parent themes are being updated, child themes should never be touched. Child theme creation is quite simple- just create one file along with one folder on the local computer. Name the folder with the child theme's name. A unique identifier can also be added to the name. Now create another file within that folder, adding .css suffix to it. Specific information should be inserted as well through a code. Mostly generic information is contained by the code; the child theme should also have styling information. After incorporating all the changes as well as saving them, the child theme should be added to the WordPress installation by connecting the web host with FTP program. Browse to the required folder to upload the child theme folder that contains the new file. Activate the theme to edit it. This is the most commonly accepted method.

Theme customization API- The admin screen of WordPress Theme Customization can be customized by developers by allowing the site admins to change settings of the themes to see preview of the changes in real time. The theme can have more interactive as well as powerful options for customization through this. Your very own options can be added with the use of two hooks - wp_head which allows your output of custom-generated CSS and customize_register which allows defining new customizer controls, sections as well as settings.

Using custom code instead of plugins- The wonderful aspect of plugin allows the transformation of websites, enabling you to do almost anything that you want. Plugins often need a lot of code; they are also accompanied by management issues since they have to be updated and potential security issues handled. Adding too many plugins can make a website bloated and slow the loading time. So custom codes are the best option. You will just have to add some code lines to the proper file. Taht will reduce the load on the website and keep everything tidy.

Addition of new functions to theme with PHP codes- Another good way of adding changes is using PHP codes. If you want to improve functions of a theme, the location of the function can easily be found through the use of custom-functions.php. Through this you can easily change layouts, add new functions, integrate with plugins, etc. Just find out the correct file and the section or part that has to be remove, replaced, changed or duplicated so that the customizing can be done. The codes have to be checked carefully so that those available in the template can be used to change the layout.

Although using child theme code is the commonly accepted method, there are other methods which may be used as well for this end. In fact, if your requirements are small and include some minor coding, then you can use custom CSS by adding CSS editor to the backend. Just install custom CSS editor to edit it and you will be done with your job. You can get in touch with a Wordpress website development company who can help you customize WordPress themes and build websites within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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