WordPress Themes

5 Minutes With Charles #47 – WordPress Themes.  I admit it, I love using WordPress for a lot of different reasons.  It is a great Content Management System (or simply CMS) that I have been using since the early 2000s.  There are hundreds of plug-ins, small additions that add more abilities and there are thousands of WordPress Themes.  Since there are 16 million some odd website using WordPress, there is a growing community to support it too.

But not everything is all rainbows and unicorns with WordPress.  I have found that the platform or core programing is solid and stable.  However some plugins and more specifically, a number of WordPress Themes are the cause of many headaches.  Particularly in this case where I was playing the role of consultant and is the topic of this video.

So let’s get right down to the main issue here.  I won’t bore you with lots of technical jargon, the problems that most people have comes down to performance.  In other words, there are a lot of great looking themes, many with cool customization features.  The problems lurk below the surface and out of view of the typical website visitor.

Basically, I can break those problems down into 2 categories, developer errors and user errors.  Developer errors consists of a wide variety from coding to lack of web standards compliance.  User errors come in a variety too, but most often involve either too much and/or too little of something.  So let’s take a quick, wide-angled view of both for a little more clarity.

Issues with WordPress Themes

Developer errors can break a website; enough said.  Lack of standards compliance leads to several problems, not the least of which is page loading speeds.  The causes of which are many and are beyond the scope of my article and video here.

User errors tend to be either too many plugins, incompatible plugins, a lack of updates and large images.  So believe me when I tell you that those problems can cause slow performing websites too.

In conclusion, slow performance means losing website visitors and it hurts you in search engine ranking.  Be careful in your choices for plugins and themes; keep everything updated.  But most important of all, make sure that your images and videos are optimized for the web!