Well, I don’t know your comfort level with CSS and you’ll need that to move away from a table-based layout. Your current site doesn’t look to be too complicated.
It’s just a matter of possibly being unfamiliar with WordPress. Study the Classic template (DO NOT look at the Default template, that’s Kubrick and it’s just not a good model to learn from).
Make your layout in your favorite HTML editor (I use EditPlus 2 combined with TopStyle Pro (the best $80 you’ll ever spend).
Once your layout is the way you want it, you can look at the existing WP theme templates, header.php, index.php, footer.php and sidebar.php to figure out where to put the guts of WP.
You’ll just have to start playing with it to see what I mean, but here are some links that should help you on your way:
From my buddy, Shelly:
http://anekostudios.com/2006/09/21/how-to-create-a-wordpress-template-or-theme/
http://jonathanwold.com/tutorials/wordpress_theme/
From the Codex:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development
Thank you for the reply. I understand all of the concepts and can de-construct the code, but I’m not good at writing code at all.
So I plan to look, tweak, and cut and paste.
I will definitely look at the Classic template, but do you have a suggestion for another theme to learn from where the navigation menu is on the left?
I guess I would have the header with the banner and all of the roll-over images and a couple of high-priority links to pages (and an RSS feed symbol – that’s so cool).
Then the left sidebar would have the navigation – tied to the pages in the site I assume.
Content in the center and then a footer.
Any ideas about a simple template to look at that is similar to that?
Now using Revolution WordPress Themes by Brian as a base for the site. Then I tweak from there. Works okay, but would like an option with a left navigation at some point.
http://www.revolutiontheme.com/
