Intent of Themes vs. Plugins

I use the word “intent” a lot, as I want you to think about and select what you are doing based upon the intent. In this episode, you will learn about the intent of a theme and plugin. Their intent is very different. Both of them are used to customize WordPress, which means in all websites that you build, you will build and configure solutions using both themes and plugins.

A theme is a skin. It is used for presentational purposes. Its intent is to provide the HTML structural markup and styling. Themes give a website its personality and uniqueness. It is the look and layout that you notice when you come to a site.

A plugin is for a feature or functionality. The intent of plugins is to customize WordPress by adding, changing, or removing some functionality as well as adding a feature. Features are things like a portfolio, FAQ, testimonials, team bios, membership, forum, forms, etc. These do not go in a theme. Nope, features belong in a plugin. Functionality is changing or adding a behavior such as redirecting after logging in.

Styles belong to a theme. Why? Because the intent of the theme is the styling. While you can provide the styles for a theme author to incorporate, styles do not belong in a plugin. Why? Because of the following reasons:

1. Bloat

Styles will not jive with a theme. How could they as the plugin author does not know the unique styling of a theme. Therefore, the theme author is left to override the styles from the plugin’s styles. That leads to bloat as now you have double styles loaded into the browser.

2. Slows down Web Page loading.

The browser has to go and request an additional stylesheet from the plugin. That extra request slows down the web page load cycle and adds memory onto the device.

3. Frustrating to theme author

It is so frustrating to have to override styles from plugins because they clash with the styles in the theme.