Hey! I usually create custom themes with ACF and am now transitioning to using Cwicly and block themes. As I delve into the process of building a custom website using the Cwicly plugin, I’m considering the best approach to take.
I’ve been following tutorials on crafting custom block themes and am curious about the community’s recommendations. Is there a significant advantage to using the Cwicly theme and creating a child theme from it? Or does starting from a blank slate and developing a theme independently offer more flexibility or any other benefits?
Specifically, I’m interested in understanding if the Cwicly theme serves as a means to future-proof the website, ensuring compatibility and smooth functioning between the plugin and theme over time. Basically, is the Cwicly theme primarily intended to provide an easy transition for those moving from classic themes to the Cwicly plugin?
When using any block theme, it is a good idea to use a child theme because it enables you to update the parent theme without affecting any customisations you’ve made to the child.
The Cwicly theme “blank slate” approach is the one we use for our sites because in the past with other themes, we’ve found ourselves regularly needing to override opinionated styles/templates from the theme and being held back by their limitations.
Of course, starting clean may not be ideal if you are putting together a quick demo or prototype if you haven’t used Cwicly before, but for customised themes working from a design it works very well as you have full control and creative freedom.
When you build multiple websites, using Cwicly is great because it enables you to share resources and styles between sites easily, so you can very soon gain a lot of momentum and speed up the initial development workflow.
Does the query and filter block only work with the Cwicly theme/themer ? I am asking because I have no luck when switching from Cwicly theme to - say, kadence. Filters are not rendering.
Are extra steps required ? To what extend is Cwicly theme-agnostic ?
It’s great to hear that you’re exploring Cwicly and considering your approach for building.
Your question is a good one, which often depends on your specific needs and preferences.
Essentially, the Cwicly theme is meant to be a “blank slate” for you to build your own theme from scratch with all the flexibility and customisation you could possibly need, within the Full Site Editing experience.
As mentioned by @StrangeTech, this allows for possibly the cleanest build as there aren’t any styles or limited customisations to override.
If you are looking for a blank slate, then using the Cwicly theme or a custom theme boils down to the same thing.
The Cwicly plugin can be used with the Cwicly theme or any other third party theme.
The intention is to offer a way for users to build their own block theme.
Please don’t hesitate to share any other questions you may have.
Sorry to hear you’re experiencing trouble with filters with third party themes, @JacobDK.
To clarify, all Cwicly blocks work independently from the Cwicly theme.
Could you possibly share a screenshot of your console log?
Thank you in advance.
Hi @StrangeTech, Please could you clarify what you mean when you say you use the Cwicly Theme “blank slate” for your sites.
Do you customize the theme, by changing the name screenshot etc, so it has the name of your client and branded for them etc?
If i want to do this, how do I stop the theme from updating and do you think the cwicly theme gets updates such that I will fill left out, okay get my site broken if i don’t get updates since I have changed the entire theme name etc.
My goal is to have a theme that i can customize the name, screenshot etc to the name of my client for any client work i do. How do you suggest i go about this?
You or any other community member’s insights on this will be much appreciated.
I mean that the Cwicly theme itself is barebones and doesn’t add lots of styles or templates that you have to overwrite, so it is great as a “blank slate” to create custom themes from.
