Feast Design Co.

WordPress Themes for Food & Lifestyle Bloggers

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The Feast Plugin

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The Feast Plugin completely replaces your theme setup with a rewritten modern standard, built not just around aesthetics, but also making giant leaps in:

  • SEO
  • pagespeed
  • user experience
  • accessibility

You can think of the plugin as a brand new theme (minus the styling) designed for 2022, but instead of falling behind on updates, your site is continually updated to meet modern best practices.

This lets you spend less time updating and maintaining your site, so that you can spend more time on creating content and giving your readers what they want.

Experienced bloggers will love...

Updates Without reinstalling

The Feast Plugin will make updating your site simpler, by providing theme-replacement functionality that can be kept up-to-date without having to reinstall your theme.

Save plugin customizations

Customizations made with the plugin settings are saved between theme changes and plugin updates.

Unlock next-gen features

We're building out next-generation features that are compatible with the block editor.

All new features will be built into the plugin moving forward, instead of the themes, so that we can update them as necessary over time.

Access all the themes

The Feast Plugin grants you access to our entire theme library so that you can refresh your site whenever you want, including:

  1. Foodie Pro v.4.4.4
  2. Brunch Pro v.4.4.4
  3. Cook'd Pro v.4.4.4
  4. Seasoned Pro v.4.4.4
  5. Cravings Pro v.4.4.4
  6. Genesis 3.3.5

Here's what you should know

  • The plugin lives alongside your current theme and enhances it, it does not replace the theme
  • Theme updates are still required for certain issues, but we've been able to deliver approximately 97% of updates via the plugin, instead of requiring a theme update
  • We do not support all site configurations or plugins (such as ecommerce), please see the plugin audit

The Feast Plugin is built in a yearly subscription model because this allows us to reinvest properly into maintaining functionality, updating to comply with rapidly changing SEO, pagespeed, user experience and accessibility best practices, and adapting to the major updates that WordPress is going through.

Everything that we maintain, is one less headache you have to deal with by hiring a developer for $150/hour (+) to do for you. Last year we invested over 650 hours into updates, the equivalent of $97,500 of development work.

Only a handful of sites are able to make similar levels of investment, which means that anyone not using the Feast Plugin is falling behind the industry at a rapid pace.

Priced at $249/year, you can cancel the subscription at any time to avoid being re-billed. Your currently installed copy will remain, but you will lose access to updates and support after that date.

$249.00 / yearSign Up Now

Jump to:

Updates

How often do you update your theme and site configuration based on ongoing changes in best practices, and plugin updates? How often are you aware that these are happening? How easily can you decide how and what to change?

Once a year? Once a month?

Since launching the Feast Plugin, we've averaged one update per day based on issues we see in support tickets, news from search engines, core updates in WordPress, and feedback from industry experts.

That's about 1,600 technical fixes, updates and optimizations that didn't stress you out and distract you from focusing on what you love: your recipes. (note: many fixes are often bundled into a single plugin version update)

Themes vs. Plugin

We recommend all sites start with the Feast Plugin from day 1.

However, classic themes setup is fine for new bloggers just starting out on a budget, for the first 12 months.

Anyone looking to optimize their site for search engines, pagespeed, user experience and accessibility will benefit from:

Having trouble figuring out what the plugin provides? For a breakdown, see the themes vs. Feast Plugin post.

$249.00 / yearSign Up Now

SEO

Traffic from search engines typically make up over half of all food blog traffic, and their requirements are constantly shifting. The Feast Plugin has rebuilt the themes setup to meet modern requirements, and made staying up to date with those requirements simpler.

Pagespeed

Improve pagespeed across all pages by eliminating slow javascript, and reducing DOM nodes.

With the Feast Plugin and WP Rocket, our demo sites are scoring:

Your results may vary depending on what third-party resources you've added.

User experience

Building on years of support tickets and feedback from users, experts, and testing, our new setup is more user friendly than ever. This helps users find what they're looking for, reducing bounce rates and complying with Googles recommendations.

Accessibility

Good accessibility often overlaps with good SEO, and makes your content available to a larger audience.

Modern Mobile Menu

The navbar for the modern mobile menu drastically improves above-the-fold content being displayed, improving pagespeed scores.

Old theme nav bar + logo
Modern Mobile Menu

This is a more user-friendly experience.

Modern Homepage

The Modern Homepage moves from a widget-based setup to building with the block editor, which is significantly simpler to customize and offers better SEO and accessibility compliance.

The FSRI block allows you to build the Modern Homepage and Modern Recipe Index using the block editor instead of widgets.

Modern Recipe Index

The Modern Recipe Index leverages the FSCI block (Simple Category Index) to visually display categories.

FSCI block

This helps to:

  • improve site structure and reducing the click depth of categories and posts
  • visually see how your page looks in the editor as well as the front end

The Modern Footer moves from a widget-based setup to building with the block editor, which is significantly simpler to customize.

Modern Sidebar

The Modern Sidebar moves from a widget-based setup to building with the block editor, which is significantly simpler to customize.

Light weight

The Feast Plugin is optimized for pagespeed and performance, removing unnecessary elements that distract users or are simply not useful. We've used feedback from industry experts over the last 7 years to refine every part of the site that the Feast Plugin touches.

This means that we're optimized for:

With the exception of structured data, which comes from Yoast.

Non food blogs

Yes, the Feast Plugin and themes works for other niches!

While our recommendations are geared specifically towards food blogs, the overall structure and configuration will work for any type content site.

The layouts and site structure we've developed allows for the creation of multiple indexes to support travel, crafts, knitting, parenting, fashion, DIY and more.

By grouping your categories into a topic-specific index you can help readers better navigate your site, and provide search engines with better context about related topics. See the other indexes section of the Modern Recipe Index.

Additional Styling

You can customize the Modern Homepage in any way you want to match your brand, without needing to change your theme. Check out the Modern Homepage Styling Guide:

Advanced Jump To

The Advanced Jump to block helps you to write better headings on your page and generates additional links in Google to entice readers to click on:

search engine result with jump to links

$249.00 / yearSign Up Now

Pricing

The Feast Plugin is a subscription service:

  • $249/year - the Feast Plugin, plus all 5 Feast Design Co. themes, and switch at your heart's content
  • There are no refunds (or money back guarantee) due to theme files being non-refundable

You are purchasing a yearly license subscription which grants you access to plugin updates and priority support.

$249.00 / yearSign Up Now

Requirements

  • Genesis Framework + theme from FeastDesignCo (for some of the features, but not all)
    • The Genesis Framework + Feast theme are included for free with the Feast Plugin
  • Hosting with:
  • Not hosted on WordPress.com, and Jetpack not enabled

As of December 2020, the majority of functionality works without Genesis or our themes, including the Modern Homepage, FSRI, Category Featured Images, Modern Mobile Menu and Modern Sidebar.

Support

The Feast Plugin is designed to work as-is, with a DIY setup, and does not include anything not explicitly outlined above.

This means that we're here to get you set up like the demo sites, which are optimized for SEO, pagespeed, user experience and accessibility. We don't offer support for customizations (see below).

If you'd like to skip the technical part and have us convert your site for you, you can hire us for the Full Site Conversion White Glove service. Please review the migration guide first.

We also provide white glove services for individual components (such as the Modern Homepage).

Customizations

We don't offer support for customizations, such as coding changes and CSS styling changes, which requires guidance from technically savvy experts with experience in these areas. Anything that doesn't involve matching the demo sites is a customization.

The cost for properly customizing sites that comply with these requirements typically runs $150/hr with a minimum $5000 investment. This is not what Feast does, and is not necessary to run a fully functional and compliant food blog.

Refunds

This is a digital product, so there are no refunds for any reason.

Who is the Feast Plugin not for?

Our target customer are people focused on building a food blogging business and want to focus on creating content.

In the software industry, our setup is what's known as "opinionated", which means that we've chosen a certain way to do things (for maximum compliance) that can technically done many different ways, but we only support our own setup. This is based on our experience supporting thousands of sites and years of feedback from industry experts.

This means that we offer you the most technically correct setup, so that you don't need to waste time researching the nuances of the infinite technical issues, which in turn lets you focus on content.

Before signing up for the Feast Plugin, you must:

  • be committed to a multi-year process of growth by learning and re-learning all aspects of running a recipe-focused content site
  • understand that the Feast Plugin makes your life much simpler, but does a very small fraction of what's required to run a food blog, and is not an all-in-one solution
  • be willing to accept that our setup will not give you everything you want and that you can - and should - hire professionals to customize your site if/when you feel the need

One demographic we've found does not work well with us are argumentative males who are overconfident in their technical knowledge. We're not a good fit.

If you're at all unsure about the Feast Plugin, please email us before signing up.

Canceling

You can cancel your subscription at any time and you'll retain access until your year is complete. Canceling the subscription does not initiate a refund.

Canceled subscriptions lose access to the grandfathered subscription price. If you originally sign up at $99/year or $149/year or $199/year price and cancel, you'll need to sign up at the current price of $249/year.

FAQ

We'll answer questions as they arise via the Feast Plugin FAQ.

Features and functionality may change as they're developed. Some statements are forward-looking plans, and not guaranteed to be implemented or maintained long-term.

The plugin is developed under the "release early, release often" software philosophy. This enables us to quickly release a new feature, and iterate on it over time based on requests.

Releases

  • 7.9.5 - TBD
    • Reduce DOM nodes on the FSRI block recipe rating + recipe time
    • Prevent rating recipes in the FSRI block
    • Prepend post count to the Modern Categories
  • 7.9.0 - November 29, 2022
    • Fix: only output the "Replace recipe card heading" on recipe schema cards, not how-to schema cards
    • Add option to include recipe time in the FSRI block
    • Add option to include recipe ratings in the FSRI block (this could be good for the "trending recipes" section of the homepage)
    • Add padding to headings to prevent the Modern Menu from overlapping the heading (thanks to Kelly at SmellsLikeDelish for the tip!)
  • 7.8.8 - November 18, 2022
    • The "Add Recipe Index" to Yoast breadcrumbs has been updated to add the recipe index only if a recipe card is present so that you can now use it on sites that aren't 100% dedicated to recipes (eg. travel, crafts, restaurant reviews)
    • Resolve issue with FSRI ingredient feature missing 1 post
  • 7.8.5 - November 13, 2022
    • Add " OR " and " AND " options for the FSRI ingredient display
  • 7.8.0 - November 10, 2022
  • 7.7.2 - November 2, 2022
  • 7.7.0 - October 17, 2022
    • Release for the Intelligent Post Edits which prevents the modified date from changing unless the post title or post content is actually edited - see the post for details and everyone should enable this
    • The FSCI block and Modern Recipe Index has had a big UI update: the process of adding an image to a category has been simplified
    • Fix: resolve issue with Modern Prev + Next missing links on some posts
  • 7.6.0 - September 28, 2022
  • 7.5.1 - September 25, 2022
    • Bug fix: cookie consent
    • Bug fix: search icon for homepage style #1
  • 7.5.0 - September 22, 2022
    • Allow moving the comments form from below the comments, to above the comments
    • Correct Modern Previous + Next to use the archive headline by default
    • Add .feast-modern-prev-next wrapper around heading and FSRI block to support styling
    • Update cookie consent checkbox on comment form to remove reference to website being stored (if removed via Feast Plugin)
    • Update the Recipe Post Template to move the Yoast FAQ above the recipe card per Casey Markee
  • 7.4.4 - August 11, 2022
    • Modern Sidebar accessibility fix: force all h2 to be converted to h3 on the front-end
    • Modern Footer accessibility fix: force all h2 to be converted to h3 on the front-end
    • Add Holidays reminder to the Recipe Update Checklist
    • Update posts per page from 24 to 32
  • 7.4.0 - July 25, 2022
  • 7.3.5 - July 16, 2022
  • 7.3.1 - July 11, 2022
    • Remove hardcoded "Recipes" from Modern Previous + Next heading
  • 7.3.0 - July 10, 2022
  • 7.2.5 - July 7, 2022
    • Resolve emoji image issue introduced by WP 6.0
  • 7.2.1 - June 22, 2022
  • 7.2.0 - June 18, 2022
  • 7.1.2 - May 26, 2022
    • Remove prefixes from other archive titles
    • Bug fix: show proper archive title + description on categories
  • 7.1.1 - May 20, 2022
    • Bug fix: category page admin warning if archive description isn't set
  • 7.1.0 - May 19, 2022
    • Add auto-configuration to set category posts per page to 24
      • this will reduce overall pagination, and improve content indexing
    • Add setting to auto-redirect all ?cat=-1 URLs to the homepage
      • this is an intermittent issue that causes errors in Google Search Console
  • 7.0.0 - May 13, 2022
    • Added support for JPEG extension for featured images
      • Note: this is the same as JPG but is just a less common file extension - use JPG if possible
    • Update the FSCI block with nicer defaults when an image hasn't been set
    • Removed configurations for classic theme setup (retina logo, sticky classic menu) as these are no longer recommended or supported

Past updates can be found on the Feast Plugin changelog page.

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