In most cases, themes from developers are often filled with a ton of plugins that are coded directly into the theme. Although great and convenient, there is a major caveat of doing this…several actually: The theme gets bloated with code Your theme might have plugins you will never use or want to use The plugins and scripts coded in the theme may not play nice with other third party plugins The plugins and scripts may not be compatible with upcoming versions of WordPress The more scripts and code, the more chances bugs and other problems will show up Benefits of Keeping Plugins out of Themes The user can choose what they want to use You get a much lighter theme (less code) More stable theme Much easier to update plugins than if they were coded into the theme Updates are left to the developers of the plugins If you change… read more