Lock-in effect in WordPress –

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Have you ever used a theme that, when you deactivated it because you wanted to change the design of your website, you lost some of the content you had entered?

If this has happened to you, welcome to the lock-in effectyour theme is forcing you to keep using it if you don’t want to enter some of your content again.

It is not very intuitive to think that if you want to change the design you have to lose content, yes, it is a somewhat extreme example, but it helps to understand the consequences that the Lock-in effect can have on . Let’s see them below!

So what is the lock-in effect in WordPress?

The Lock-in effect (translated as permanence effect), can be understood as the problem that users have when they are forced to continue using a theme or plugin, since if they try to change them, they will lose their content.

Some examples of lock-in effect They would be the ones mentioned below:

In the following image we see that we have a visual layout to build content. This builder uses its own shortcodes and replaces the native WordPress editor.

If we deactivate the layout, we may lose part of the content and design:

As shown in the following picture, after deactivating the visual editor we will see a series of shortcodes and attributes, but only part of the content. The rest of the content will be lost:

In the following image we see that after activating a theme, it has created two menu items or Custom Post Type as part of its functionality: one for portfolio and testimonials:

If we enter content in these items we will lose that content if we decide to change the theme, since the menu items created by the theme will have disappeared, as shown in the following image:

How to know if a plugin or theme generates a Lock-in effect in WordPress?

The simplest way to know if a theme or plugin is causing you to lock-in in WordPress is to simply try deactivating or uninstalling the theme or plugin.

If you do this and still see that all the content, even if it is poorly laid out, can be seen on the front-end of your site, then there is no Lock-in effect; however if you see a series of shortcodes or the content does not appear at all, then if WordPress Lock-in effect is generated:

In the following image we see that after deactivating the plugin it has left us only a shortcode. If we decide to change this plugin we will have to re-enter the content in the new plugin.

Does the Gutenberg editor generate Lock-in effect?

(you can find out more in our ) is the new editor that comes by default from versions 5.x of WordPress, if for some reason you don’t want to use this editor you have the option to continue using the classic editor:

If you disable Gutenberg you will see that your content is not lost; this is because Gutenberg uses HTML comments to identify its blocks at the code level, as seen in the following image:

The content remains intact and you will only have the HTML comments delimiting and specifying the attributes of each block, but these comments will not be executed or have any effect in the browser if you do not have Gutenberg active.

Therefore, we can say that Gutenberg with the default blocks does not generate a Lock-in effect, since if we see this content in the front-end of the site it will be displayed in a similar way to the following image:

It must be said that there are also plugins that create blocks in Gutenberg.

If you are using any of these blocks generated by external plugins, I still recommend you try to temporarily disable the plugin and check if your content is still displayed on the front-end of your site.

Can I avoid the lock-in effect in WordPress?

Currently it is very difficult for you to avoid this effect since many of the themes, especially the paid ones, will always have a degree of functionality included or in the case of plugins, some shortcode included.

However, you can reduce the impact of the lock-in effect on your WordPress website.

How can I reduce the impact of the lock-in effect in WordPress?

Please note the following points to reduce the impact of the Lock-in effect in WordPress for both plugins and themes.

Reduce lock-in effect on themes

The main idea is to look for the theme to only take care of the design and avoid the functionality that is included; if you want your site to have certain functionality it is better to have it separated in a plugin and not as part of the theme.

Some commercial themes understand this and little by little they are taking out their functionality and creating plugins that complement the theme, this is the best thing because if you decide to change the design, change the theme, you will still keep the functionality separated in a separate plugin.

Reduce lock-in effect in plugins

The main idea in plugins is to evaluate if they at least have an option to export/import data, for example in the case of WooCommerce, it is a store plugin but it allows you to export the content.

Same for an SEO plugin like SEO Yoast, at least that way you won’t have to copy and paste all the content into a new plugin from scratch.

If the plugin does not have an export option, for example some visual content builders or some plugins that create forms, at least avoid using them for everything.

Do not use a visual makeup in all your entries, it is better to use it on specific pages such as the home page, contact page, etc.

In this way, if you decide to change the layout designer, at least you will not have as much problem when creating the content again since you have only used it on specific pages.

conclusion

In conclusion, we see that we cannot get rid of the Lock-in effect in WordPress since most plugins and themes generate this effect to a certain extent.

However, we can reduce its impact by avoiding the use of themes with included functionality and making use of plugins that have import/export options or using them in specific places on our site that do not imply much change in the future if you decide to change the plugin. .

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