Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › Is it best to manage widgets under Customizer or Appearance?
Tagged: Appearance, customizer, widgets
- This topic has 9 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 6 months ago by
MoodyRiviera.
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AuthorPosts
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July 15, 2015 at 9:57 am #159480
Noah Darco
MemberI recently encountered an issue where my newly installed Genesis theme placed copies of all the sidebar widgets on the right hand side of the header. I originally could not turn them off, since they did not appear in the widgets menu under Appearance. I found them enabled in the Customizer widgets menu and was able to disable them there.
I've installed some plugins (Simple Social Icons, Facebook), and want to enable some of the widgets they provide. With the long-term maintenance of my site in mind, is it best to enable them under Appearance or Customizer?
Based on my experience detailed above, the two different widget menus are not the same, and changes made to one don't necessarily become available for further modification under the other.
http://permacultureark.comJuly 15, 2015 at 11:44 am #159488MoodyRiviera
MemberYou've opened up something here that is a big surprise to me. Of course I'm not anything close to being a WordPress expert, but I'm probably not the only person who was surprised to hear of anything like this happening...what you said...that "changes made to one don't necessarily become available for further modification under the other."
I'm really surprised.
I was also very surprised when I read this on the smashingmagazine.com web site:
"The Customizer doesn’t save any changes in the actual theme files, either the template files or the stylesheet. When the website is rendered in a browser, WordPress outputs inline CSS generated by the Theme Customizer to the <head>, which overrides the stylesheet. This means users can easily revert to the standard theme and nothing is lost, but it also means that any changes made using the Customizer aren’t as long-lasting as if you used a child theme, for example."
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2013/03/05/the-wordpress-theme-customizer-a-developers-guide/Is that really true???
I don't have an answer for your problem, but just wanted to say that I've never heard of anything like the problem you're having, and I hope you get a good solution from someone.
*MoodyRiviera*
July 15, 2015 at 12:01 pm #159492Susan
ModeratorI hate the customizer 🙂
July 15, 2015 at 2:57 pm #159504MoodyRiviera
Member@Susan: I started out hating the Customizer, but I have to say that I was working on a web site the other night, and inadvertently got into the Customizer widgets area, and have to say that I might change my mind. It actually was nice to add something to a widget and/or make some changes, and see those changes showing up in the preview without having to do a bunch of extra clicks.
I'm still totally against the idea of having menus in the Customizer area, but I don't know...guess I'll just have to wait and see how that actually works.
*MoodyRiviera*
July 15, 2015 at 8:45 pm #159520coralseait
MemberWe'll have to see what the core team does; all signs say customizer is the path forward. This also makes complete sense when you couple REST API and WP becoming a foundation for web applications and portals vs just sites with themes. If you read the forums and between the lines the core team is pushing to move to a day when we have a foundation wp backend and a way more enhanced front end with the glue being REST API and we're all probably going to have to become much better at js / jquery front end / ui / ux things for developing the front end of our 'wp sites' and more importantly the same wp backend may have many front end entry points.
July 16, 2015 at 9:13 am #159577MoodyRiviera
MemberI understand what you're saying, and it looks that way to me too...even though I don't understand the technical things you've said there.
What bothers me, and lots of others who use WordPress but are not developers, is that there are still many, many things they could do to make WordPress work better...things they could do to make things easier for the average user, but they never seem to fix those problems...it's as if they would rather add built-in functionality for emojis (ridiculous) and make arbitrary changes to the way the Dashboard works rather than fix real problems.
*MoodyRiviera*
July 16, 2015 at 6:34 pm #159611coralseait
MemberUnderstood, and yeah things like emojis etc are a bit fluff.
The core team is signaling they really want to take it back to a true core. Sorry for the too techy stuff, but what the indications are; is the core team would like WP core to return to a true back end and back end only. The WP Rest API will then be how we communicate with that back end, which gives us the data store, users, permissions, etc. They want to decouple themes and plugins much more from the core and so our jobs as site designers and developers will be to write front ends (either for the public facing side of our sites, or the closed admin side for maintenance i.e. what we call the dashboard now) using the Rest API. They may well replicate the dashboard as an install able or along with WP install 'front end' plugin to manage WP.
As developers we'll get a lot from this, but we'll have to grow up as well. We'll no longer just be doing actions and filters in child themes, but will probably have to write much more rich client side interfaces with javascript / jquery etc. Of course people will probably port the old stuff back for the less techy folks but you'll be talking to WP via the Rest API instead of directly; in 5 years we may well not see dealing with functions.php or snippets -- but who knows, it'll evolve over time and that's why we have to watch the core team.
Customizer is a bit of an experiment with this notion of talking to a true WP Core and doing customisation and changes outside of the theme / plugin / core. If WP Core moves to a true core, there's nothing stopping us as devs from writing very thin weby type front ends like we do with themes now AND very rich more application like front ends all speaking to the same back end core.
July 16, 2015 at 6:42 pm #159614MoodyRiviera
MemberThanks @coralseait.
I'm not a developer (and never will be)...I'm just a designer who likes to use WordPress to put web sites together...so of course most of what you said goes right over my head, but I'll take your word for it...I'm sure you know what you're talking about.
I still wish they would fix some of the annoyances before getting carried away with all this other stuff.
*MoodyRiviera*
July 16, 2015 at 7:02 pm #159615coralseait
MemberTake what I'm saying with a grain of salt though, there's a lot of reading between the lines and trying to understand their intentions. That said, they are also signaling what they want to do.
This is actually a path to fixing a lot of those things you'd like fixed. If they are able to de-couple themes, plugins, etc more from the core they don't have as much backward compatibility, legacy and making sure things work for massive sites that have huge footprints and force decision compromises; many of the fixes they know exactly what to do, but they'll break some sites and force pain for others so we're in a situation where it takes forever to handle the pain. By giving us a standard, clean core and solid API to communicate with the core site devs, designers, etc are more free to do what they like elsewhere. It'll take time though, and they may well change their mind as often happens.
July 16, 2015 at 7:25 pm #159618MoodyRiviera
Member@coralseait...thanks again for the info...I appreciate it.
*MoodyRiviera*
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