It has been two years since the kickoff of the project to redesign the Michelebattaglino.it website. The plan was to create a WordPress plugin implementing the main functionalities and a theme that would visually present the custom content with a flexible, responsive, and accessible layout. This goal has finally been achieved.

Actually, it didn’t take long to develop the plugin; it was ready after a few months.

As expected, the difficulties began with the development of the graphical part, because it is an activity I dislike and am not skilled at.

In recent months, taking advantage first of the period I had to stay home due to Covid and then the summer holidays, I was able to complete the graphical part by creating a simple theme based on Bootstrap 5.3.

In the future, I or others may create new alternative themes to associate with the plugin.

By following this link, you can see the final result and the first live site implemented with this theme and plugin [3].

Current Status

Currently, the following projects are available online in public repositories, distributed under an open-source license:

• wp-kkwriter-plugin [1]: a WordPress plugin that:
  • adds post types (book, review, excerpt, news, events, etc.) and custom taxonomies (section, author, publisher, etc.);
  • publishes a REST API to retrieve the created custom content,
  • adds a dedicated menu for managing the new content,
  • provides the ability to preload sample content.

• wp-kkwriter-theme [2]: a WordPress theme with the following features:
  • custom and responsive layout based on Bootstrap 5.3 for all site content;
  • configuration interface to customize the home page layout and manage system features;
  • modification of the Home Page layout and manual or automatic selection of section content;
  • Home Page carousel with manual or automatic selection of section content;
  • management of SEO tags for site indexing and OG tags for sharing pages on social media.

The complete list of features is available in the README file of each project.

Future Developments

I will personally maintain these projects, but I hope that sooner or later other developers will want to contribute to their advancement.

The CHANGELOG.md file of each project will list the changes made, while the TODO.md file will contain the list of features to be implemented in future versions.

Broadly speaking, in the near future, these will be the main activities I will work on:

• wp-kkwriter-plugin:
  • Bug fixing activities.
  • Refactoring of the REST API.
• wp-kkwriter-theme:
  • Bug fixing activities.
  • Documentation production.
  • Accessibility checks.
• wp-kkwriter-theme:
  • A new theme, alternative to wp-kkwriter-theme, to be paired with the wp-kkwriter-plugin plugin based on the Bootstrap Italia library [4].

Using the Plugin and Theme

The plugin and theme are released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and can therefore be freely used in compliance with the license terms.

Both the plugin and the theme use open-source libraries; the complete list is available in the CREDITS.txt file of each project.

To report bugs or request new features, you can already use the Issues section of the two projects on GitHub [1] [2].

For questions or clarification requests, you can contact me via the contact form on this site or through GitHub [1] [2].

 

Sources and References

• [1] Repository of the wp-kkwriter-plugin project on GitHub.
• [2] Repository of the wp-kkwriter-theme project on GitHub.
• [3] Michele Battaglino’s site: first site created with this plugin and theme.
• [4] Bootstrap Italia project and library.
• [5] Getting started with Bootstrap 5.3.

 

 

*** Note: This article was translated using an automated workflow created with n8n and OpenAI.