I have never developed Wordpress website from scratch or from default template or from parent theme or from starter theme. I mean, I have maintained already created WP websites.
However, now I want to try to create WP from the beginning. I have mock up of website that is something liek booklet, this means, that it has many pages (about 40) and all pages differes with content - some has images, some has additional graphics, some has text etc. Website consists mainly of static pages with different layout.
What are your suggestions for newby... Previosly i have read much about underscore and thematic and I like both. Are tehre suitable for my purpsoes?
I always use undersores.me as a starter theme for the following reasons:
I don't have to dig trough the parent theme documentation for hooks and filters
It is not bloated with unnecessary functions
Download package is customized with your theme name and slug, meaning that functions have appropriate prefixes/names
Related
A client asked me to redesign her web site, built several years ago in WP by another developer. Although I've never worked with WP before, I'm pretty comfortable with html, css, and php, and I more or less understand how WP stores content and dynamically builds pages. But I'm wondering how to approach these challenges:
My client's site has about 75 pages. There are about 25 that are static (i.e. the content changes infrequently if at all; things like "about us" and "faqs") and there are about 50 pages that are more "blog-like", except that instead of posts, the content contains directory-type info (e.g. 12 DJs in the area) or event-related info (e.g. upcoming shows at local theaters). Both of these categories contain many sub (and sometimes sub-sub) categories (e.g. medical services > pediatric > kid allergy specialists) and the content updates fairly frequently.
I understand the difference in WP between "pages" and "posts". But I need to find out the best way to structure the static content. Should I just set up a parent/child hierarchy of pages, changing the permalinks to something that makes sense? Or is it better / easier to just build the static pages outside WP and somehow link to them from the common navigation?
As a web designer, I want to "wow" my client with a great design. While there are loads of wonderful WP themes available, I really need to create something unique. But I'm wary of breaking something, so what's the best way to take an existing theme and just tweak it enough to make it look a little different?
Finally, other than mounting a massive "copy and paste" effort when the new site is built, is there a way to transfer content from the original site to the new one?
I would create a Child Theme (https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/how-to-create-wordpress-child-theme). And just do your changes in this theme.
You can download the complete Website with a plugin like duplicator and install it local (xampp).
Is hard to give you the right way. There are so many ways a theme can look like. Different page builder plugins or Advanced Custom Fields.
Maybe the only thing you can do, is to update (Theme, Plugin)everything and lift the page. Especially if it is a purchased theme with any page builder. But don't change anything in the main theme. Create a child theme!
I understand the difference in WP between "pages" and "posts". But I
need to find out the best way to structure the static content. Should
I just set up a parent/child hierarchy of pages, changing the
permalinks to something that makes sense? Or is it better / easier to
just build the static pages outside WP and somehow link to them from
the common navigation?
It's not something like that. Consider the child theme as inherited (like a PHP class) from the parent theme. Imagine every .php file in a child theme is like overriding a function from parent class which is parent theme in this example.
For more information check the codex out or google "wordpress theme vs child theme" there are lots of articles explaining the difference.
I have been trying to develop my first WordPress theme. When I added a theme "primer" and started customizing it, it appears as an image.
The primer theme appearing as shown not as it is shown in demo
Can you give a little more detail. Normally themes are generally blank and often never look like the picture. Its up to you to use the themes composer, purchase a composer if your theme does not have one, or hand codde the site only using the theme for an overall look. For instance my theme I use a mix. I installed it and got a blank theme. I then used the composer to add elements and build out the page. Some themes even offer templates which is likely what you saw when you bought the theme. Your theme should have some sort of templates for free or premium templates for purchase you can add on top of your theme to get a prebuilt layout. I would highly enocourage watching a few youtube videos over themes and customizations and using envato.com to our advantage. Wordpress is a beast most people dont realize. Its not a change words and done. There are multiple other sites for that. I just finished my first one and its a bear. It take patience creativity and a basic understanding of Wordpress to operate, and some coding experience would greatly benefit to.
I had a Magento theme downloaded and i want to use it to my wordpress site. I searched wordpress version of the theme but no luck. Is there a way i can convert magento theme to wordpress theme?
There is no automatic way to do that, you will need to migrate your theme manually, with that I mean, you will need to code the theme in WordPress.
There's no way of magically rewriting a Magento theme into a Wordpress theme.
Like Enrique said, you will need to recode the entire thing.. well, almost, at least. This really depends on whether or not you simply want them to look the same or to actually be structured identically. The former is easier.
You can most likely salvage the majority of the skin folder, especially css and js. Then it's a matter of matching up Magento element names to corresponding Wordpress element names. An example might be .button and .btn.
As far as the structure, you may want to simply view source on the theme as it renders on the actual site, grab the source and do some heavy analysis. Figure out which portions render in the header, content and footer and try to piece them into the corresponding Wordpress files. It's a daunting task but believe it or not, I've done similar things before.
Note that Wordpress is nowhere near as complex in terms of application structure as Magento, so you'd really be dumbing down the Magento theme to accomplish this.
To convert your theme unfortunately you will have to manually rebuild it line by line for Wordpress. You said that you could not find the wordpress version of the theme but if possible the theme vendors might have HTML or PSD versions of the theme which would be a much closer starting point than Magento to Wordpress conversion.
first approach to CMS and wordpress I'm wondering if there's any predefined html structure and classes/IDs "must-be" reference that I can refer for making my own theme willing to change in the future for another wordpress theme
thanks
Luca
There are a few other 'template' themes that could get you started - if Starkers isn't quite your thing, you might find WP Framework a good alternative. Or - just start stripping down the Twenty Eleven theme to give you a base (which is just what the Starkers theme does, using the Twenty Ten theme as a base).
There's also quite a handy first-time guide on the WordPress Codex around theme development if you'd prefer to start from scratch.
Wordpress doesn't require you to have any specific classes or IDs in your theme in terms of the HTML and CSS, the only things WP needs are things like the wp_head function inside your element on every page. Having said that themes such as Starkers were created to enable developers to have a starting point instead of starting from scratch.
Now the above applies only to whatever code you write, there are however some functions in WP that will return standard code, for instance if you don't specifically create the comment thread code, WP will generate it for you, and that is really the only code that many themes will share.
I would say that if you are intending on making a number of blogging themes for instance, having a set of standard code might be a good idea, for the article pages for example, so that you don't have to re-write code over and over. Aside from that the only code I ever reuse when making themes is the CSS to style comments if I don't hand-code the comments section, this is a good idea as it will save you a lot of time.
Wordpress provide some functions which add CSS classes depending of page type, templete, conditional tags . . .etc.
These functions are body_class() and post_class().
For more info check:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/post_class
http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/body_class
I got the design (PSD) from client. Which should i choose to make custom Wordpress themes.
I should use any Wordpress theme
Framework?
or Any WordpressBlank theme?
or I should find similar free theme
to my design then edit to it
I can't say for sure without knowing your PSD. It depends.
If the layout from your PSD is too specific, I would go for a blank theme.
If it's a well known 3 column pattern for example that you don't need to create any customization whatsover, I would use a Wordpress Theme Framework.
I would never try to find a free theme and edit it, mainly because:
you need to read it's licenses and usually attribute properly with a link in your project (bad option when you're doing something for a client);
usually it's more work to adapt a theme instead of creating from scratch. I would adapt a theme only if 80% of it would be already equal to my PSD requirements.
I agree with the other comment. I've used all 3 methods: framework, pre-made, and blank themes, and I've found that using a blank theme is the easiest when starting from a PSD file. I've used Chris Coyier's blank theme (http://digwp.com/2010/02/blank-wordpress-theme/), which is a bare bones theme with the basic functionality of a WordPress theme, but no CSS styling, making it easier to add your own markup. I wrote a blog post about this, comparing the differences among blank themes, frameworks, and pre-made themes (http://www.sinawiwebdesign.com/blog/topics/wordpress/use-wordpress-framework-or-blank-theme/).
When I build themes starting from a PSD file, I first write the HTML, CSS, and Javascript code to get a working prototype, and then I convert it to WordPress using a blank theme. I copy and paste most of my code directly into the blank theme with little modification, then add some code for custom menus, widget areas, support for post thumbnails, etc.