Something interesting happened today when I was on Twitter. I came across a tweet from WPTavern which posted an article introducing a new plugin that disabled most of the blogging features of WordPress. Technically it doesn’t remove them from WordPress, but rather it hides them from the website administrator (you). I read the post and immediately went to download this plugin because I wanted to try it out on a new installation of WordPress. So why does this interest me? Keep reading…
WordPress Without Blogging
First, if you want to read more about this new plugin, you can check out the post titled as “Easily Hide WordPress’ Blogging Features With the Disable Blogging Plugin“. This plugin WordPress offers users the ability to create websites that do not require a blog by taking advantage of WordPress’s content management system to breakaway from the assumption that WordPress is only used for blogging. I have to say that this plugin called Disable Blogging is an interesting concept that is developed by Fact Maven Corp. and Ethan Jinks O’Sullivan has some great potential.
I’m not here to recreate the article verbatim, but to bring an idea that could open the door to a whole other market involving WordPress themes….perhaps something that Shaped Pixels could add to our theme portfolio. Right now, all my WordPress themes have blog elements. Think about themes in general, they are all made with blogging features as the core function followed by additional options for other uses like e-commerce, business information based websites, etc. The problem here is that if you are someone who does not want a blog and never will have a blog, why get themes that have all these added features and functions for blogging? Don’t forget that WordPress itself is built around blogging, so much of the admin area includes several elements relating to this within the dashboard.
What if You Change Your Mind?
That is the beauty of this plugin, you can disable it, and in doing so, you get all your WordPress blogging functions back. So if you later decide you want to add a blog to your website, you have that option. Of course, you will want to make sure you are using a theme that has blog styling built into it.
Themes Designed for Websites, not Blogs
This got me thinking because there are many users who want a website, but do not want anything to do with blogging. Why log into your dashboard and be faced with blog features and settings when you don’t want to blog? This is why a plugin like this is a great concept that hides the blogging functions of WordPress so that you are not distracted and can focus strictly on building and managing a dynamic website for your business. It definitely helps to clean up the admin area as well.
The possibility of designing and developing WordPress themes without blogging features came to mind. It would certainly provide non-bloggers an option of having a theme built only for websites without blogging elements. Themes would also be lightweight with less code and more flexible. Actually, it would take less time to design and develop a website theme. Think of it like building static HTML websites that are dynamic using a popular cms platform called WordPress!
If I were to embark on this concept, there are a few ways of doing it:
- I can create website themes without blog features, functions, and styling, as standalone themes.
- I can create themes with all the blogging goodies added, but have them turned off by default.
- I can just keep things going as-is…designing popular WordPress themes
Of course this would require some additional research to find out if there really would be a market for the non-blogging theme. The fact that WordPress themes always appear to built for blogging seems to keep the mentality that WordPress is only a blogging platform. Over the years, it seems to be growing for more than just blogs.