Retaining Legacy Widgets when changing Themes
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Our website has been using the same theme for several years now, and has started to show its limitations in what we want to do with the site. A wedding blog theme isn’t quite optimized for library use, so we’ve been discussing making a change… but at the moment, we’re using a legacy widget that is very useful for our purposes.
From my understanding, if we changed to a block theme, we would no longer be able to use the current widget without upgrading to a plan that allows for plugins. What I haven’t been able to find out is if changing to a classic or hybrid theme would allow us to retain use of them, or if the act of changing themes would lock us out entirely.
I’m fine with working within any of the three theme types, but I don’t want to lose functionality. We’re currently on a Premium plan, so the jump to Business would be a significant increase in cost, and I’d like to explore my options, first.
Does anyone know more about this?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi there,
I visited your site and I see that it has 3 image widgets at the moment, that is the only widgets you are using currently, yes?
If so I would say that the benefits of switching would outweigh the disadvantages. While it’s true that modern full site editing themes do not have “widgets” in the classical sense, you can edit page templates directly to add a sidebar layout that is populated with blocks. This can be done with any theme that allows “full site editing” and then following the steps here: https://wordpress.com/support/site-editor/add-a-sidebar/
As well you do have the option to try things that are difficult to do now like setting up a custom homepage where those sidebar widgets are incorporated in the layout instead. An example might be the section with three columns demonstrated in our most recent webinar on Compelling Homepages here:
You are welcome to check out any of our upcoming webinars if you would like to attend a live session as well: https://wordpress.com/learn/webinars/
I’m fine with working within any of the three theme types, but I don’t want to lose functionality. We’re currently on a Premium plan, so the jump to Business would be a significant increase in cost, and I’d like to explore my options, first.
If I can make a suggestion, one thing you can try is to set up a second site on your account (which you do not have to make public) and you can then export the contents of nottinghamlibrary.org and then import it into the new site you create. This will allow you to experiment with new themes using your existing content, but do it in a way that will not affect your main site.
You can start a new (empty) site here: https://wordpress.com/start/
You can follow the steps here to export from nottinghamlibrary.org: https://en.support.wordpress.com/export/
And here are the steps to import it into the new site so you can play around with theme changes safely: https://en.support.wordpress.com/import/import-a-sites-content/
I think that for what your needs are at the moment, the Premium plan will be more than sufficient, and 99% of the tools for customizing newer themes are available on our free sites, so it’s a good way to get a sense of how the change will affect you and how you can take advantage of the new tools.
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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I visited your site and I see that it has 3 image widgets at the moment, that is the only widgets you are using currently, yes?
I’ll confess, I didn’t realize we had image widgets in the sidebar until you mentioned this! Actually, the widget I was concerned about was the Facebook Feed in the sidebar, as it is a functionality I couldn’t find an option to replicate using blocks alone, and not plugins.
I do know there is an option to embed facebook posts with blocks; what I’m wondering if there’s a way to embed a specific feed.
However, I appreciate the advice about setting up a second website! I think that will help a lot with testing our options and seeing what we can retain, and I hadn’t considered it before now. Thank you for the information!
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I do know there is an option to embed facebook posts with blocks; what I’m wondering if there’s a way to embed a specific feed.
You can embed specific Facebook posts, yes. As far as I’m aware, there’s no current way to embed a full Facebook feed, though.
Does that help?
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That is a bit of a shame, but it does help very much, thank you. I’ll explore our options and choices going forward with that information in mind!
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