How To Customize Your WordPress Themes

Feast Design Co. isn't just about clean, minimal themes. It's about setting you up for success, with tutorials, guides, docs and how-tos that get you from WordPress zero to foodie hero.

The Feast Plugin replaces most of the theme setup requirements, and we recommend jumping straight to the Feast Plugin Setup after installing (uploading) the theme.

• FAQ for All Themes
• Foodie Pro Classic Tutorials
• Brunch Pro Classic Tutorials
• Cook'd Pro Classic Tutorials
• Cravings Pro Classic Tutorials
• Seasoned Pro Classic Tutorials

How do I write a recipe post?

One of the most frustrating things we hear from bloggers is that their content doesn't rank well. There's a lot of reasons for this, but the most prominent is that their content is simply not high enough quality.

We've detailed how to write a high quality recipe post in the how to write a recipe post.

The Feast Plugin contains the Recipe Post Template, which gives you a preformatted recipe post that you can build off.

We highly recommend reviewing the quality rater guidelines for recipe pages.

Similarly, we recommend not worrying about posting timing or post frequency, see: how often should I post?

How do I install/update my theme?

See: this tutorial.

How do I edit my child theme files?

See: this tutorial.

Block Editor (Gutenberg)

Our themes are being tested with the most recent releases of the block editor, and we have not found any conflicts.

However, we consider the block editor to be a third party plugin (developed by WordPress/Automattic) and do not offer support for any issues with the block editor. Any issues relating to the block editor will require support from the block editor developer.

​Our themes have not ever, and will not ever affect the block editor.

We believe that long-term, it will be a more user-friendly experience and we're looking forward to development better stabilized and more developer-friendly.

 Troubleshoot

• The #1 reason that some of the theme features do not work is due to plugin conflicts. Your #1 and #2 steps for troubleshooting should be ruling out a plugin conflict. Here's a helpful guide for how to rule out a plugin conflict with our themes.
• Another common problem is changes in the admin not being shown on the front end. 90% of the time, this is because you need to clear your cache.
• Problem: The parent theme could not be found. You will need to install the parent theme, genesis, before you can use this child theme
• Problem: Post Title / Date / Excerpt is missing - this is usually means you have unchecked something in your "Featured Post" widget
• Problem: post editor - our themes don't affect the classic post editor, any issues with editing posts is a hosting or plugin conflict and unrelated to our themes.
• Why is troubleshooting so complex?

General

• How to use "Inspect Element" to troubleshoot whitespaces (padding + margin)
• How to Add Google Analytics Tracking Code to Your Genesis Child Theme
• You can find the translation and language support for our themes here.
• Why we don't support pagebuilders
• Why we don't support pop ups (interstitials)
• Why we don't support the read more tag
• How to create a secondary navigation menu
• Need customization help?  See our referrals here.
• Get started with an overview of the Genesis classic child themes including how to install the Genesis framework and activate your child theme.
• How to edit the footer credits and copyright in the classic theme
  • As of Genesis 3.1.0, the footer is edited in the "Customizer". Only theme versions 4.2.0 and newer are compatible with Genesis 3.1.0.
• The How to Write Your Perfect "About Me" Page covers what's commonly in "About Me" pages, and how to get that first version out. Remember, it's a work in progress, and doesn't need to be perfect the first time. We'll help you set the tone of your blog and how to relate to your target audience.
• Ever wondered how to price sponsored content? You're not the only one. Even the best food blogs have difficulty establishing a price and even more difficult sticking to it. Not all brands will value your content the same as you, and not every brand is a good fit. Use our guidelines to discover what your price points are, and how brands value your services different.
• How to Customize the Genesis Simple Share Icons (external)
• The theme's PHP version compatibility is determined by your WordPress and Genesis version, our themes have no compatibility issues with PHP directly
• Our themes do not support "site taglines", and we don't recommend using them. They're an outdated part of "hobby blogging" and offer zero benefit to site visitors. See: https://feastdesignco.com/why-we-dont-support-taglines/
• Our themes do not support sliders. See: why sliders suck
• Featured images should not be automatically displayed in posts
• Contact forms
• How to Create Multiple Recipe Index Pages
• Lazyloading comments

Fonts & Text

• Our themes have been designed for optimal readability, and we've outlined this in our Principles and Best Practices - if you're not a typographer or web design expert, don't touch the font sizes and styling
• We HIGHLY recommend using "Inspect Element" to find the elements you want to change, and then changing them using CSS in the "Additional CSS" screen, rather than relying on the "customizer"

Images

• All About Featured Images
• Troubleshooting Featured Images
• Why do my images look different in edit post and live versions?
• Creating consistent square or rectangle thumbnail sizes (Homepage + Categories + Tags)
• Adjusting whitespace around images
• How to Correct Duplicate Images Showing on the (Homepage + Categories + Tags)
• How to Set the LinkedIn Featured Image
• Pinterest for Food Blogs
• How to set a Favicon
• Image Alt Tags
• How to create a logo
• More than you ever cared to know about image optimisation
• We don't support displaying the featured image in a post

All themes later than 3.3.0 use a content width of 720px for desktop, and 360px for mobile.

We recommend uploading images at 1200px width minimum, as WordPress will generate the appropriate thumbnail sizes.

We also recommend using an image optimization plugin like ShortPixel to optimize those thumbnails.

For most food bloggers, over 90% of their traffic goes directly to their recipe posts. That means that image optimization efforts should focus around posts, with category / index pages and the home page taking lower priority.

It's also important to keep in mind that about 80% of traffic to food blogs is on mobile devices, mostly on screens between 320px and 375px wide. This means that vast majority of your images will be viewed at 360px or smaller.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

We have a page dedicated to SEO for food bloggers.

Enabling image lazyloading significantly improves page loads times, which directly affects SEO.

• What is lazyloading: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/lazy-loading-guidance/images-and-video/
• We recommend WPRocket (paid) for this
• Free lazyload for WordPress (unsupported): https://wordpress.org/plugins/a3-lazy-load/

Security

It's time to enable SSL for HTTPS on your food blog.

Mixed content warning: This is typically due to you writing in "http://domain.com" in your URLs manually. Usually these are images, but sometimes they're stylesheets and javascript files. We recommend omitting the protocol entirely and simply using "//domain.com"

Analytics

• Thomas @ MashMetrics.com

Updates

The latest version can be found by logging into your account on FeastDesignCo.com if you purchased from us, or from the Studiopress website if you purchased there.

Notes about the updates are found on each individual theme's page.

Customization Library

A collection of tutorials for unsupported customizations.