Problems with Changing Themes

  • hikingyogi

    (@hikingyogi)


    4 months, 1 week ago

    I am nearly finished developing our website. Our theme is Bluehost Blueprint (which was chosen by AI) and it has presented some problems, mostly with how products are displayed. We have a page called “Our Products” and everything is listed there. It isn’t a true ecommerce page – more like a photo album, if you will. After a lot of help from members of this forum, I was able to set it up so that the page loads with product categories (we had to use shortcode to do that). However, my theme is preventing me from easily setting up the “Our Products” page so that it will load categories and then sub-categories. Right now, you click on a category and everything loads alphabetically by product name. I want it to load as Category > Sub-category > Sub-sub-category (if there is one), but I was advised that i would probably need someone to help me do that. Due to budget restrictions, I have to be able to develop and maintain the site myself.

    I’m seriously considering changing themes so that I can easily control how I want products to display, but I’m afraid that changing themes will cause me to lose a lot of the work I’ve done. I can’t tell you the number of hours I have put into this. I know ZERO about website design so it has been very frustrating. So my questions are:

    1. Can I change themes relatively easily without having to reconstruct the entire site?
    2. Is there a theme that will work better with Woocommerce but look fairly similar to the theme I have now?

    Thanks.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
  • Moderator threadi

    (@threadi)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    There are countless themes that look similar to the one you have chosen or could look similar if you customize them a little. The Storefront theme is (still) considered the standard theme for WooCommerce, but it offers few design options without direct intervention via CSS. With the help of page builders such as the Site Editor included in WordPress or Elementor, you can customize your site just as much. With these page builders, you edit the templates in the backend and usually don’t need any knowledge of HTML, CSS, or even PHP.

    However, if you want to customize a theme directly, i.e., edit its template files, I would strongly recommend making such changes not to the theme itself but via a child theme: https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/

    However, if you decide on a completely different theme as described above, this may not be necessary.

    Thread Starter hikingyogi

    (@hikingyogi)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    I have worked in IT for 30 years but I know NOTHING about website design, so most of what you just said meant nothing to me. So back to my first question: if I change themes, am I going to lose everything I have already done? I have neither the time nor the sanity to do this site again. If I do change themes, I need all of the features that are in Bluehost Blueprint PLUS I need to be able to easily change the way the products display. That is the thing that is holding me up from publishing my site right now. I want everything to be easy to navigate in Products but this theme apparently doesn’t allow that because it’s a block theme (which means nothing to me). So, yes, I am that stupid person that all coders probably hate.

    Moderator threadi

    (@threadi)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    if I change themes, am I going to lose everything I have already done?

    Simply changing a theme does not result in any loss of data. You will then have a different design on the front end of your website. However, your content will remain intact. And always remember: make backups.

    The challenge here, however, is how this content is displayed. If the previous theme stored it in its own format, the new theme may not be able to display it correctly or at all. However, the content is still in the database and has not been lost.

    Tip: If you’re unsure about the procedure, you can also create a copy of the project and test everything on it. This can be done, for example, with the plugin https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-staging/, which simply creates a copy in which you can test.

    I need all of the features that are in Bluehost Blueprint PLUS

    I don’t know what “Bluehost Blueprint PLUS” is. To me, it sounds like a commercial theme, not a free one. If that’s the case, I would recommend contacting their support team (i.e., Bluehost Support) with your request. Only they can tell you more about it.

    I need to be able to easily change the way the products display

    As I mentioned above, there are countless options for this in WordPress. However, since you are with Bluehost, use their generated theme, and apparently also use their commercial plugins for your website, you are limited to their options. Please contact their support team for clarification. However, you are free to create a completely new website at any time with a different, free theme and the options you are looking for.

    So, yes, I am that stupid person that all coders probably hate.

    This forum is for WordPress users to help each other. There are fewer “coders” here than you might realize. If you have further questions, you might also want to check out the learning videos: https://learn.wordpress.org – and always remember: make backups.

    • This reply was modified 4 months, 1 week ago by threadi.
    Thread Starter hikingyogi

    (@hikingyogi)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Sorry, the PLUS was just me emphasizing that I need the features offered by Bluehost Blueprint in addition to…

    I guess I will contact Bluehost next and then try out other themes with the staging plugin which I already have installed. Thanks for your help.

    bvbaked

    (@bvbaked)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Just to chime in here, unfortunately I can tell you that ordering posts by category is not quite as simple a task as it would seem. As a feature that introduces new functionality, this is also more likely to be found in a plugin rather than a theme – themes are intended to modify how a site is displayed without changing, adding, or removing features.

    That isn’t always the case, but it will likely be difficult to find a theme that does this. I’d say you are better off keeping your theme and looking for a plugin that may help. I don’t know any off-hand, but perhaps someone in the community knows of one?

    Thread Starter hikingyogi

    (@hikingyogi)

    4 months, 1 week ago

    Thank you @bvbaked for your input. I am looking at plugins as opposed to changing themes and I definitely appreciate your explanation.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

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