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 theme 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:
- Foodie Pro v.4.4.1
- Brunch Pro v.4.4.2
- Cook'd Pro v.4.4.1
- Seasoned Pro v.4.4.2
- Cravings Pro v.4.4.2
- 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 95% 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
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.
$249.00 / yearSign Up Now
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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 1,400 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.
Anyone looking to optimize their site for search engines, user experience and accessibility will benefit from:
- Features
- Classic Themes
- Feast Plugin
- Access to all 5 themes
- x
- ✔
- Access to the Feast Plugin
- x
- ✔
- Designed to look great
- ✔
- ✔
- Designed to for SEO
- ½
- ✔
- Designed with accessibility in mind
- x
- ✔
- Designed with pagespeed in mind
- x
- ✔
- Designed with Core Web Vitals in mind (eg. CLS)
- x
- ✔
- One-click updates
- x
- ✔
- Pagespeed-friendly mobile menu
- x
- ✔
- Featured images for categories
- x
- ✔
- Modern Homepage built with blocks
- x
- ✔
- Modern Footer built with blocks
- x
- ✔
- Modern Sidebar built with blocks
- x
- ✔
- Modern Recipe index built with blocks
- x
- ✔
- One-click fixes for common WordPress issues
- x
- ✔
- Subscribe button for Modern Menu
- x
- ✔
Having trouble figuring out what the plugin provides? For a breakdown, see the themes vs. Feast Plugin post.
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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.
- Automatically incorporate Yoast breadcrumbs to comply with Googles "Using breadcrumbs list", and disable Yoast breadcrumbs on a page-by-page basis where necessary
- Better comply with Google's "Plan your navigation based on your homepage" by linking to your top posts, as well as top categories, with the Modern Homepage
- Better comply with Googles "create a simple navigation page" by using the Modern Recipe Index to allow users to drill-down to more specific categories.
- Improve homepage SEO by adding unique content via the Modern Homepage, and grouping links by topical relevance, instead of arbitrarily by date.
- Support good site structure by adding featured images for categories, then link to them from any page using the FSCI block.
- Improve search engines understand of your page by incorporating the Advanced "Jump To" Links into your recipe posts, helping you earn extra links in the search engines.
- Enhance internal linking with the Prev+Next after the recipe content.
- Edit your post info to link to your author bio, complying with the Google Quality Rater Guidelines for E-A-T.
- Remove the entry-meta from below posts, focusing search engine crawlers on more important pages.
Pagespeed
Improve pagespeed across all pages by eliminating slow javascript, and reducing DOM nodes.
- Improve the homepage and recipe index pagespeed through reduced DOM nodes by replacing the theme's outdated "Featured Posts" widgets with the Modern Homepage and Modern Recipe Index using the FSRI block
- The subscribe button in the Modern Menu lets you eliminate javascript from third-party newsletter providers, which can severely slow down a site
- Remove unnecessary DOM nodes by removing comment date links, removing the links to unrelated websites in the comments,
- Reduce the time the browser spends download then rendering external fonts with the system font stack.
- Add pagespeed-friendly retina logos to keep your site fast, and crisp.
- Update to the Modern Thumbnails and Modern Post Images to serve appropriately sized images.
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.
- Automatically incorporate Yoast breadcrumbs for improved user experience and internal linking, and disable Yoast breadcrumbs on a page-by-page basis where necessary
- Improve user experience on the homepage by grouping posts by topical relevance instead of chronologically, helping users find the content their looking for
- Improve the user experience of your recipe index by using the Modern Recipe Index to create a simple navigation page through which users can navigate your site
- Improve the user experience of the comments section by removing links to unrelated websites
- Improve the user experience on your posts by using the Edit Post Info to provide published and last modified dates, as well as a link to the comment section
- Make your content easier to read by increasing the body font size and enabling the system font stack.
- Make your categories easier to navigate to by adding featured images for categories, then link to them from any page using the FSCI block.
- Help your readers navigate your recipes more easily with the Advanced "Jump To" Links.
- Discourage spam by removing the “website” field from the comments form.
- Remove the entry-meta from below posts, keeping readers away from low-value pages.
- Make it easier for readers to follow you with a sticky Subscribe button for the Modern Menu.
Accessibility
Good accessibility often overlaps with good SEO, and makes your content available to a larger audience.
- Improve the homepage and recipe index accessibility by replacing the theme's outdated "Featured Posts" widgets with the FSRI block (used in the Modern Homepage, Modern Sidebar and Modern Recipe Index), which eliminates improper headings and redundant links
- The subscribe button in the Modern Menu lets you eliminate javascript from third-party newsletter providers, which can severely slow down a site
- Remove unnecessary DOM nodes by removing comment date links, removing the links to unrelated websites in the comments, and
- Move beyond the minimum font size for mobile devices and make your site more accessible by increasing the body font size and enabling the easy-to-read system fonts.
Modern Mobile Menu
The navbar for the modern mobile menu drastically improves above-the-fold content being displayed, improving pagespeed scores.
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.
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
Modern Footer
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:
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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:
- Valid version of PHP (7.4 and later)
- SSL active
- 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.
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).
Refunds
This is a digital product, so there are no refunds for any reason.
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
- 7.4.4 - 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
- Add warning to Modern Previous + Next if the Yoast Primary Category is "uncategorized" or "recipes" because they're not properly categorized
- Add Yoast FAQ section to the Recipe Post Template
- Add option to remove "Tags" interface from the WordPress admin + block editor, because they shouldn't be used and are just clutter
- Disable the retina logo output for the theme header as this is no longer supported (and was removed months ago)
- 7.3.5 - July 16, 2022
- Add a setting for custom headings on the Modern Previous + Next
- Restrict Modern Previous + Next to post types only
- Add setting to remove outdated admin dashboard widgets
- 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
- Compatibility: update Modern Categories to comply with WP 6.0
- Add 'feast_filter_subcategories_output' filter for modifying the Modern Categories Subcategory listings
- 7.2.0 - June 18, 2022
- Skip lazyloading logo (general pagespeed increase)
- Set a max height for the Advanced Jump To
- Set a custom h1 font size
- 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
- Add auto-configuration to set category posts per page to 24
- 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
- Added support for JPEG extension for featured images
Past updates can be found on the Feast Plugin changelog page.
