Note: if you run into issues or have questions that aren't answered here (or in the linked tutorials) then use the support ticket page in the Feast Plugin.
The Feast Plugin gets implemented in two stages, in easy-to-manage steps:
- fixing the site involves enabling settings to remove outdated, worthless options WordPress has in place
- rebuilding the site involves replacing the site layout with their modern equivalent, without having to reinstall the theme
We've named theme-replacements "Modern X" to indicate that this the Modern setup. These do require some work to get configured properly for your site.
Once complete, you shouldn't have to worry about these during any future theme update - they're not affected by theme updates, or theme changes, and we release small bug fixes automatically as needed via plugin updates.
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Theme
While most of the Feast Plugin will work on any framework, we recommend installing Genesis and one of our child themes (both included for free with the Feast Plugin) for the best possible integration.
Simply install Genesis and the child theme, then come back here, and skip importing demo content or any other steps.
Fix the site
The default WordPress setup comes with some very outdated settings, and is missing some basic integrations. Enabling the following will:
- improve pagespeed by removing unnecessary DOM nodes
- improve SEO by removing unnecessary internal links
- improve accessibility by eliminating unnecessary, confusing and cumbersome links
- improve accessibility by making your content more legible
We recommend everyone enable these settings:
- Remove comment author link
- Remove website field from comments form
- Remove comment date link
- Add Yoast breadcrumbs
- Enable previous+next on posts
- Remove entry-meta from posts
- Edit the body font size (18px)
- Enable: Process Shortcodes on "Custom HTML" widgets
- Enable: Remove WordPress "Smart Quotes"
- Enable: System Fonts
Image optimization
Enable the Modern Thumbnails by following the tutorial, remove the theme thumbnails, and run the regenerate thumbnails plugin on the images. This will be used for the Modern Homepage below.
You'll then need to update your "featured posts" widgets and archive grid settings, and set the thumbnail to one of the options from the Feast Plugin.
The most common thumbnail will be the feast-portrait-3x4-360x480.
Review the image optimization page for up-to-date best practices.
Mobile optimization
Homepage
Set up the Modern Homepage, which:
- improves SEO with proper heading structure
- improves SEO with unique on-page content
- improves SEO with proper site structure support author E-A-T
- fixes key accessibility issues with all themes "Featured Posts" widgets
- provides additional styling options
This takes the homepage to a whole new level and requires some work on your part, deciding which post and categories to feature on the homepage, as well as writing unique content for each section.
Additional reading:
Footer
Set up the Modern Footer, which replaces the theme's outdated widget-based footer with one built using the block editor.
- improves user experience, thanks to updated content guidelines
- simpler to customize, using the block editor
- improves SEO by moving administrative links away from the header and sidebar
- improves accessibility with better heading structure
Sidebar
Set up the Modern Sidebar, which replaces the theme's outdated widget-based sidebar with one built using the block editor.
- customize the sidebar more easily with the block editor
- improves SEO by linking to 4 trending recipes, and 4 seasonal recipes
- improves SEO by replacing "featured post" widgets
- improves accessibility by replacing "featured post" widgets
- improves user experience with better guidelines for sidebar content
Menu
The Modern Menu replaces the theme's javascript-based menu with a sleeker, more user-centric menu that's better for pagespeed.
- improves user experience by increasing above-the-fold content
- improves user experience with a subscribe button
- improves SEO by supporting good site structure
- improves pagespeed by removing CLS issues
- improves pagespeed by removing slow-loading javascript
Category optimization
You can now assign images to categories for use in the Simple Category Index shortcode, which gets used on the homepage. We recommend starting with at least 4 so that you can embed it into the Modern Homepage next:
White glove services
If you'd rather have us handle the Homepage, Footer, Sidebar and Menu conversion, we have white glove services available to convert these for you:
Post optimization
Most of the post optimizations fall under the "Recommended" section. These are designed to optimize your content (with the automatic fraction conversions), reduce DOM nodes (with the comment tweaks) and support better site structure with breadcrumbs.
The only setting remaining on posts is to:
The Advanced Jump To links is manually inserted into posts that you've updated to follow the Modern Guidelines for Headings.
This is not part of the setup process - it's something you'll do over time as you're naturally updating content.
Cleanup
We recommend removing all widgets from the "inactive widgets" section after implement the Modern Homepage, Modern Sidebar, Modern Footer and Modern Recipe Index. This will prevent potential future issues with widgets re-inserting themselves where they don't belong.
BETA
Ignore anything in the BETA section. These are live features that are still in development (buggy!) and may change before final release.
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Modern setups
The Feast Plugin entirely replaces the outdated functionality that the themes provided, including the homepage, sidebar, footer, recipe index and menu.
This means that the only thing that the theme contributes is the CSS - no functionality.
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