Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
I need to commemorate myself updating v2 of this website. One way of commemorating this milestone is to document my processes. I used Trello to document some parts of the processes to gauge time and effort taken in updating my website. As I looked through my processes through my Trello cards, I decided to split this up into three posts such as theme updates, UI customisation, and colour scheme & logo design. In this post, I will focus on theme updates.
Background
Initially, I did not want to update my WordPress theme to stretch my money. However, I changed my mind when I worked on one of the client’s work. They were using the Salient theme and it was very intuitive to update, especially for a non-technical person.
Before upgrading to the Salient, I was using Werkstatt. The Werkstatt theme was good because it was designed for designers and artists who needed to update their portfolios.
Although it was the best theme at that time, Werkstatt has its weaknesses. The functionality missing from the theme was the heading to display the month of the archives. For example, If I want to view all posts from June 2024, the heading should display ‘Month: June 2024’. That heading is usually generated by the WordPress themes even for the free versions. A good example is the Golovine site where the heading in the archive page shows the month.
Figure 1: Golovine archive for the month of June 2024. Note the ‘Month: June 2024’ heading that gives user indication of the page they are in.
However, the monthly heading did not display in the Werkstatt theme. The lack of this heading on the archive page bothered me because it was not a good user experience (UX). Without the heading, a user will not know which page they are in. As a result, they will take a few seconds to recall back. If a user has to do a double-take when they use an interface, this means that their experience in navigating an app or website is not intuitive enough. Unfortunately, the theme creator for Werkstatt could not solve the problem and stopped support for this theme.
Thankfully, I discovered this Salient theme from my client which solves the problem of the missing heading. Once I completed my project with this client, I bought this theme to update my website.
Why Salient
At this point, I am not just a graphic and UI/UX designer, but I am also building up my documentation skills through writing. I need a responsive website that incorporates an easy-to-update portfolio and blog.
Other than that, they have been around for ten years. They have maintained their theme with newer updates and still provide support. Currently, I do not find the need to use their support as the Salient theme is easier to work with.
Pros
Video uploads through WP Bakery
WP Bakery is a page builder for WordPress. This page builder helps users to create layouts with no or minimal experience with code. I say minimal experience because one needs to read the documentation to build them properly. This page builder have many elements such as videos, tabs, text animation, carousel etc to design a page layout.
I like that the video uploads are now part of WP Bakery. Despite WP Bakery was part of the Werkstatt theme, they do not have a proper video upload function. I have to download a separate plugin to upload my videos. Moreover, the plugin only allows embeds from YouTube or Vimeo. The other limitation of this plugin was that it was tedious if I uploaded it from my server. In the Salient theme, video uploads and embeds are part of the building blocks of WP Bakery.
Figure 2: Video upload element in WP Bakery in the Salient theme.
WP SEO Bakery
There are many SEO plugins for WordPress. I installed AIESEO and Monster Insights when I was using the Werkstatt. When I tried to disable the above plugin on my previous theme and my whole website went down. I had to enable it back so my website could go live.
There are many reasons why a plugin can cause a website to go down, but I did not have the expertise in WordPress development to pinpoint the exact problem.
Hence, I was happy that WP Bakery SEO was bundled together. Currently, my site is a small-scale website to upload my work and practise my skills. For now, I do not need a paid plugin to do my SEO.
Cons
Sortable Portfolio
While Salient has great functionalities and a myriad of templates for many use cases, the portfolio plugin did not work properly.
I wanted to display 8 images on the landing page, and my portfolio sortable based on four categories, which are AI-assisted, Graphic Design, Art and UI/UX. However, when I set the limit, the last category did not appear.
Figure 3: The selected categories to display on portfolio sections of the website.
Figure 4: Despite choosing to display all four categories (excluding all), but only three showed up.
I can ask for support from the theme creator to see if there is a solution to this problem. After thinking it through, I decided that a landing page is a highlight of my skills and aspirations. I do not need to dump all my work on the landing page.
I changed the section heading from Portfolio to ‘Recent Posts’. I set a limit to display eight posts in the section. Below the thumbnails, I added a ‘View a portfolio’ link. This link leads to a separate portfolio page that lists all my works with a sortable filter.
Vertical pagination in individual portfolio pages
The other issue with the portfolio plugin was no vertical pagination to scroll through my content. In the previous Werkstatt theme, I enabled vertical pagination so users could choose the sections that they wanted to read. I write lengthy descriptions in my portfolio as I believe that processes are as important as the end product. However, Salient did not have this integrated as of today.
Structure of portfolio pages
The other issue with the Salient theme portfolio plugin is the structure of the portfolio pages. The difference is how WordPress developers approach in creating the portfolio plugin. For example, Werkstatt theme developers created additional fields for users to enter client names, years, etc., but in Salient, I had to manually add a section for these details in WP Bakery which was tedious.
While my content did not go missing, recreating all the layouts through WP Bakery and copying all the content back with the new template was time-consuming.
Conclusion
Upgrading the theme of the website took up a huge bulk of my time, especially the portfolio. After checking my Pomodoro timer, I estimated that I took approximately 15 hours just to migrate my portfolio from the old site (v1) to this new site (v2).
In my next post, I will share briefly about my UI customisations of my website.
