Parish Theme + Companion Plugin ⛪︎

📌 Project Overview

Many Catholic parish websites use WordPress but have these problems:

• Inconsistent design
• Poor content structure
• Excessive flexibility leading to clutter
• Lack of technical best practices
• Security vulnerabilities

Catholic Parish theme and core plugin were built to:

• Prioritise clarity over excessive flexibility
• Give structured, parish specific content types
• Follow WordPress architecture standards
• Help non-technical parish admins, secretaries and volunteers

The project consists of:

• 🎨 A classic WordPress theme built from scratch (presentation layer)
• 🔌 A companion plugin (core functionality layer)

Originally the plugin features were registered in the theme. I later separated it out for content portability if the user decides to switch themes. The plugin GitHub repository is here: https://github.com/jamiewilliamsxyz/catholic-parish-core

🎨 Theme Features

Front Page

• Hero section (customisable via Customizer)
• Latest announcements (pulls from Announcement CPT)
• Content section (editable via the page editor)
• Services section (pulls from Service CPT)

Menus

• Primary navigation menu
• Footer general links menu
• Footer social links menu

Custom JavaScript

• Mobile hamburger menu with a toggle
• Scroll triggered card animations for the front page

Customizer Options

• 🎨 Accent colour
• 🔤 Typography controls
• 🖼 Hero title, text and background image
• 🗺 Google Maps embed (for the Contact Page template)
• 📝 Footer title, description and copyright text

Contact Page Template

• Content section
• Parish details card (data pulled from the plugin)
• Custom contact form
• Google Map embed

Custom Post Type Features

• Custom content for each CPT
• Pagination template part for CPT archives
• Taxonomy term filtering for relevant CPT archives

Admin Experience

• Parish Setup Guide admin page (onboarding for non-technical users)
• Conditional admin notice if the companion plugin is missing

Security

• Input sanitisation and output escaping
• Capability checks

Other

• Fully responsive design (mobile-first)
• Fully translatable with .pot file, textdomain and i18n functions
• Reusable template parts

🔌 Plugin Features

Custom Post Types

• Announcement
• Service
• Newsletter
• Parish Staff
• Church Group

Custom Taxonomies

• Parish Staff Type taxonomy
• Church Group taxonomy

Meta Boxes

• Custom meta box fields for each CPT
• Dynamic “Add post” placeholder text modifications depending on CPT

Content Enhancements

• Contact form handling (secure with nonce verification)
• Shortcodes:
  • [parish_phone]
  • [parish_email]
  • [parish_church_address]
  • [parish_office_address]
  • [parish_office_hours]
  • [parish_details]

Parish Details Settings Page

Built using the WordPress Settings and Options APIs:

• Phone
• Email
• Church Address
• Office Address
• Office Opening Hours

Security

• Input sanitisation
• Output escaping
• Nonce verification (for Meta Boxes and contact form)
• Capability checks

Other

• Conditional admin notice if the theme is missing
• Fully translatable with .pot file, textdomain and i18n functions

🧰 Tech Stack

• WordPress
• PHP
• HTML5
• CSS

Development Tools

• Figma (designing and prototyping)
• Local (local WordPress development environment)
• Git & GitHub (version control and repository management)
• VS Code (code editor)

📚 What I Learned

This was my first complete WordPress theme + plugin project with the goal being to deepen my understanding of WordPress development.

🔐 Contact Form & Meta Box Input Handling

• Security & Data Handling: Developing the contact form handling and custom metaboxes meant I had to properly sanitise, validate and escape user input. I learned how to use nonces for verification and handle data securely.

🔌 Extracting Functionality Into Companion Plugin

• Architectural Thinking: Originally I had CPTs, shortcodes, taxonomies, Meta Boxes and contact form logic inside the theme. Refactoring them into the plugin helped me to understand content portability and separation of concerns.

🖥 Creating a Setup Guide Page & Admin Notices

• Practical UX Thinking: I had to think about my target audience and their level of technical knowledge to create a theme and plugin that could be implemented and set up smoothly. That’s why I created admin notices to warn the user if the theme or plugin is not active and why I created a detailed parish setup guide admin page. This forced me to think like a user which improved my practical UX thinking.

⚙️ Using WordPress APIs

• System-Level Understanding: Working with the different WordPress APIs like the Settings API, Options API and the Customizer API taught me how WordPress structures data internally. I learned how to handle these APIs to create a functional theme and plugin.

🔮 Future Improvements

• Refactor CSS Into Scalable Architecture: Implement a more structured system such as BEM to improve maintainability.
• Improve Contact Form: Allow users to choose an email to send the form submissions instead of it only being sent to the site admin.
• Expand Shortcodes: Add more shortcodes and turn some components such as the Google Map embed into one.
• Add More Site Customisation Options: Add primary and secondary colour options as well as options for layout.

📸 Screenshots

Front page – desktop view

Church group archive – CPT archive with taxonomy terms filter

Announcement archive – CPT archive with pagination

Announcement post – CPT post

Contact page template – map embed & secure contact form

Add parish staff – custom post type admin UI

Parish details – custom settings page

Parish setup guide – custom admin onboarding page

Customizer – custom sections

Front page – mobile view