# When to use a plugin vs theme component?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-to-use-a-plugin-vs-theme-component/297052>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** css\
**Created:** [February 28, 2024, 11:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-to-use-a-plugin-vs-theme-component/297052 "2024-02-28T11:22:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![pfaffman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/pfaffman/32/120154_2.png) [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2024, 5:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/when-to-use-a-plugin-vs-theme-component/297052/5 "2024-02-28T17:28:43Z")

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And a gray area (which doesn’t apply here, I think) is if you need data that is not available (like user custom fields) you could either use AJAX to pull that data with javascript when you need it, or have a plugin that adds the data to the serializer.

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