I have started tinkering with creating my own site specific plugin to capture things like improved search to include custom fields and stripping out emojis from the slug. This was somewhat inspired by Chris Aldrich and his changes to the Post Kinds plugin. I am also assuming that it is required to add additional kinds. Where I am stumped is the actual difference between dumping these changes in a child theme versus a site specific plugin. Aldrich talks about adding this information to wp-config.php. I am therefore wondering if I need to make a wp-config.php file in my site specific plugin and if this is all that is required? At the moment, I have just created a functions.php file and have placed my snippets there.
I am sure I just need to spend some more time down this rabbit hole, but right now I have hit the limit to my knowledge.