Hi, i have just installed my very first wordpress site… i have been using my own custom CMS site for the last few years and i have finally got around to testing out wordpress properly… i have been using it for the last 2 days now and i am very happy with it… i wanted to use all the standard functions on it and building a few questions on wordpress instead of posting several questions…
I have a few simple questions that i hope someone can help me with…
1 - are themes and templates the same thing
2 - are widgets and plugins the same thing
3 - when you install a theme / template do they come with their own additional plugins / widgets also
4 - i designed my own CMS site a few years ago and i build a strong base structure / template that allowed me to use each time i started a new project… are there custom blank templates out there that allow you to easily adapt them and create your own base template / theme
5 - when you customise wordpress (cms settings, theme settings, image files, code changes etc…) is there a way to back it all up as a package and then use it as a starting template for other sites
thanks in advance to anyone that can help with any of the above questions, much appreciated…
It’s been quite a while since I last used WordPress (migrated from PHP to Ruby) but let me try and answer these anyway.
Pretty much, yes. Technically I’d say templates are the structure while themes are the complete package with stylesheets, JavaScript and so on. But the terms are often used to describe the same thing—a theme, a look and feel.
No. A widget would be a visual gadget you install (just like a plugin) that can be placed in the sidebar, footer or other areas of the site, through your admin panel. A plugin on the other hand could be anything—it could be just a simple piece of code that inserts Google Analytics tracking code, or it could be a huge ecommerce add-on, or anything in-between.
Sometimes, maybe, depending on the theme. They often come with a bunch of settings so that you can customize it.
Yes, there are indeed those kinds of “base” themes. Starkers is a theme by the great developer Elliot Jay Stocks for just this purpose, and I’ve used it successfully in the past. If you Google “wordpress base themes” or similar, you’ll find more.
As a web developer, my answer is yes, you can do that, for example by backing up the files and a dump of the database. The database has almost all the settings so it’s important you back that up if you want it all. Not sure if there’s a way to do this through the admin panel with a WordPress plugin. Maybe you could Google and find out.
I’ve switched to Ruby now but WordPress wasn’t bad after all. Have fun with it!
