[wp-hackers] What goes in a theme and what goes in a plugin

[Jamie Currie]

Good question. I've got a few big projects that involve a lot of custom 
data -- from meta fields to multiple custom tables. The main 
functionality is used by a number of different clients, all with 
different themes and different needs for how the data is displayed.

I've opted to go with a hybrid approach. Some data is accessible via 
shortcodes with parameters. A list of accounts that is pulling data from 
a custom table can be used in a page or template via something like 
[LIST-ACCOUNTS type=' ' order=' '] etc. For parameters I try to follow 
WP conventions for functions like get_posts().

Where possible, data is made accessible to the standard WP system. An 
orders system that is using custom tables ultimately triggers 
wp_insert_post() and adds a new instance of a custom post type. Some 
filters allow any action taken on that order in the Dashboard to update 
the custom tables as well. So then a designer can work with them just 
like any other post.


You can ensure that a plugin (or multiple plugins) are active via your 
theme's functions.php file. Check out the TGM Plugin Activation class: 
https://github.com/thomasgriffin/TGM-Plugin-Activation


Jamie Currie
Founder / CEO
wunderdojo
wunderdojo.com
tel: 949-734-0758
1840 Park Newport, #409
Newport Beach, CA 92660
Master web & app developers




------ Original Message ------
From: "Nikola Nikolov" <nikolov.tmw at gmail.com>
To: wp-hackers at lists.automattic.com
Sent: 1/23/2014 11:34:44 AM
Subject: [wp-hackers] What goes in a theme and what goes in a plugin
>When I started working in web development, the work process of the 
>company
>I worked at was to put all of the code for a specific website in it's
>theme. That means post types, custom fields, theme option interfaces,
>shortcodes, etc.
>
>I was recently introduced to the idea that this is definitely not a 
>good
>way of creating websites, simply because when the client decides to 
>freshen
>up the design of their website, they would either have to rewrite the
>templates of the theme, or painfully extract all of the vital parts of 
>the
>code out of the theme(or create a child theme, but the themes we were
>making were not really meant for using as parent themes).
>
>Instead you should try to leave only the styling to the theme and have
>everything else in one(or multiple?) plugins.
>
>I agree with that idea, but my biggest question is how much do you put 
>in
>the plugin and how much you leave in the theme. For instance if you 
>want to
>display some custom data in the theme(in places different than with
>the_content()), but still have templates(so that appearance can be 
>tweaked
>from the theme) - do you define some of the functions in the theme, do 
>you
>just rely on the plugin being active.
>
>Let me give you an example. You have custom fields(maybe the plugin you
>created for the theme is creating them, or it's a third plugin that 
>does
>that). You want to display the information from those fields in the 
>theme
>and you want to make them easy to access, so you have a function that
>returns an array with all of the data. Do I create a function in the 
>theme,
>that would pull the data(possibly relying on the plugin by using
>function_exists() to prevent fatal errors), do I just use the plugin's
>function in the theme?
>
>I would appreciate personal experience, as well as references to 
>articles
>on the topic(or a link to a message on the list if it's been discussed
>before).
>
>Thanks,
>Nikola
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