With the rush of fantastic-looking new WordPress themes available, I've been spending some time changing the themes on some of my sites.
After spending time getting things to look just right, I notice that when I use some themes, certain plugins no longer function.
Since I'm an early adapter/adopter of the latests versions of WP, I thought that might have something to do with it. Then I began to notice that some people using the same version of WP, and the same plugins didn't have any problems.
I also noticed that they hadn't changed their themes.
After spending some time going through the various bits of codes, I found two missing bits of code in many new themes: the call for
wp_head(); before the closing head tag in header.php, and a call for wp_footer(); before the closing body tag in footer.php.
Once I added the codes to the respective files, most of the "non-functioning" plugins functioned again.
So, before you head over to a plugin developer's site to find out why his/her plugin suddenly stopped working after you changed your site's theme, you'll probably want to make sure that the theme designer added the necessary code to header.php and footer.php.