RAJAVANYA SUBRAMANIYAN

Month: September 2019

  • Switching WordPress Themes? Avoid Breaking Your Site With This Checklist.

    Over the last few years, I’ve done numerous WordPress website redesigns.

    In every case so far, I’ve helped clients switch to a new WordPress theme. And when you switch to a new WordPress theme, so many parts of your website can break.

    Here is a “WordPress Theme Switch Checklist” you can use to reduce the risk of your WordPress website breaking when doing that.

    • Shortcodes that your existing theme provides.
      • Make a list of shortcodes that your old theme supports.
      • Search for it across your pages, posts and custom post types.
      • Remove or replace it with similar functionality.
    • Scripts
      • This includes everything like Facebook pixel, Google Analytics, Hubspot tracking code etc.
      • Usually it might be inserted inside your theme’s option panel.
      • Re-insert them after you switch to the new theme
      • A better way is to use Google Tag Manager for all your scripts so that there is only one script on your website.
    • Pages created with different page builders
      • Manually check pages created with page builders (like Elementor, Thrive Architect etc.) to see if they render properly in your new theme.
    • Custom CSS or JS from WordPress Customizer panel
      • This is an additional place where your developer(s) might have inserted codes.
      • This has to be done even if you are simply switching to a Child theme.
    • Are you switching from an old theme you bought from ThemeForest?
      • Check for revolution sliders embedded across your site.
      • If you were using Visual Composer (which I advice you to get rid of), you might have to recreate most of your pages
    • WooCommerce generated pages (cart, checkout, thank you etc.)
      • Check if your new theme provides the same WooCommerce template overrides.
    • Take a backup before switching. If your hosting doesn’t support it, use UpdraftPlus plugin. Its free.

    Frequently asked questions about this topic

    How to change WordPress theme on live site?

    Also in some cases, you might change WordPress theme on live site. I don’t recommend that. But you might have constraints where setting up a staging is not possible for you. Then this checklist will help you with damage-control only.

    How to change WordPress theme without losing content?

    The checklist above also helps you change WordPress theme without losing content. Remember that, even if your content disappears it is only temporary. Sometimes content might disappear if you deactivate some plugins. So beware of this. Always have backup and test on staging site before changing theme on a live site.

    I really hope that checklist helps you save some headache!

    Bookmark this page, or print this page so it comes handy when you switch to a new theme on your WordPress website.

  • The 1st Thing I Recommend You Do When Setting a New WordPress Website! (Esp. DIYers, Solopreneurs)

    Just wanted to share this, as I noticed by experience that this is the most common mistake most clients of mine do (and amateur web developers.. and less experienced web designers) …The mistake is that THEY USE LARGE IMAGES. (and this can kill their website’s potential)

    And by the way if you’re using Thrive themes’ themes, viz. – Rise, Minus, Ignition etc.) your chance of making this mistake is prevented in majority (not all) of cases as the theme takes care of resizing.

    But today, we use Thrive themes plugins with a lot of external themes. And no matter how much themes help you, it is not a fail safe.

    And honestly it hurts me to realize how much leads, subscribers, customers, clients and sales people lose out because of this.

    WHY? BECAUSE

    Using large images = using more internet bandwidth
    Using internet bandwidth = Slower load times
    Slower load times = Increased bounce-rate/drop-offs
    Increased drop-offs/bounce-rate = loss of subscribers, leads, sales, readers etc.

    HOW CAN YOU AVOID THIS?

    1. The first things I do immediately after setting up WordPress these days is to install one of the top image compression plugins – ShortPixel or Smush. These plugins take care of massive uploads and also compressing the image. Be careful as they might slightly reduce your image quality in some cases. But you can turn it off in plugin settings.
    2. Second, before uploading images, crop, resize them to the right size manually. Anything above 2048 pixels in width/height should be avoided as much as possible unless in special cases – for e.g. if you have a product zoom feature on your site.
    3. If you use (disclaimer: affiliate link ahead) Siteground to host your website like I do, install SG Optimizer plugin on your WordPress site and enable the image optimization options.

    Question to readers, what are you first steps / default plugin installations when you create your WordPress sites?