CMS websites are great for customization with an easy-to-use interface for management. WordPress, one of the most popular website builders/CMS’s, provides some of the most options in terms of themes and plugins. Due to its popularity, WordPress has the most support for different third-party options out of any other CMS. But what happens if there’s not a plugin that you can find which will suit your needs? Well, this is when you would want to consider finding another solution or hire a web developer to build out the feature for you. Both options can be time-consuming and expensive depending on exactly what you would need. This is when you may want to consider using web components.
You can significantly reduce both the cost and time to develop and add a new feature/component to your site than if you were to build it from scratch. There is a large market of web developers/designers out there who make a living by helping with such adjustments to websites. This is a viable option if you do not have any coding experience, and even if you want to modify the web component that you’re adding to the site since most web components are very customizable.
So what is a web component? You can think of the web component as a block of code that you can use on your website that will allow you to host a feature. This can be any feature that you see existing on multiple different websites/platforms today. An example of such a component could be commenting section, social sign on, donate button, etc.
Where could you get web components from?
Skhemata provides a library of web components that you can use for multiple different use cases. Some of the features that are included in the library are subscriptions, blog, faq, testimonials, etc. Those are just some of the many different components that you can add to your WordPress website.
How would you add such components to the site?
First, you will need to sign up for a Skhemata subscription plan. Once you have signed up, you will be provided access to the github repository which will contain code access to all of the components in the library (depending on the plan that you’ve chosen) so you can add it to your project.
To add these components to your WordPress site will require some coding experience. There is a couple of ways that you can add the component.
The first is installing the package on your platform/website. You can install the package via NPM. Another way to add the component is to use the widget feature. To do this, you will copy and paste the widget code for the component onto your site. It will be served by the Skhemata CDN. But how does it work exactly?
This means that you are copying/pasting the front end code onto a page and using that single component (which is fully encapsulated) in that section of the page. Be aware that each component shouldn’t affect any other parts of the website or application. This is because the component is fully encapsulated with its own UI and functionality, not to mention that it will also communicate with Skhemata’s universal API.
There are different kinds of components that you can choose from in Skhemata’s library. There are some components that will not require any data storing or computation, whereas, there are some that will. For the components that store data, they will use Skhemata’s universal API.
What access will I have to modify the component?
You will have access to the front end source code if you would like to modify both the look and functionality of the component. You will not, however, have access to modify the universal API. When you sign up for a new subscription plan, you will be provided with a new API instance for your components. If you want to modify the feature component, there are specific attributes that you can use to modify the user interface and the functionality of the component as well.
Skhemata sends updates to the components periodically. Depending on what method you are using to implement the component to your site, you may need to manually update them. If you decide to install the package, then you may require to update the component manually. If you are using the widget, then you will receive an automatic update to the component.
Try out Skhemata’s components today by going to the pricing page here. You can also ask questions about these components on the Discord chat here.