Gigantic project gone mad

  • MonMidt

    (@monmidt)


    12 years, 8 months ago

    Hi there!

    I am the designer in charge of a pilot project creating a forum and networking website for a certain targetgroup.

    Initially this seemed as a feasable goal, but the further down the road we get, the greater the project becomes, and with no funding to hire a professional programmer I have to do the programming myself, whereas I’ve spent the last few weeks going through the entire Dreamweaver CS6 Training package book, only to find that DW alone as platform will not meet the requirements of the content of our site.

    So, then I switch to a ton of tutorials on WordPress, and feel I understand the huge potential WP represent for the creators of websites.

    That being said, it also opens up for a ton of questions I need answears to before I begin the huge task it is to make a demo of our website. We are a team of designers who have created a custom layout for our website, and we wish to apply our design in our custom site.

    This demo is crutial for us, as we need it in order to sell our idea to someone and get the funding we need to make this site a reality.

    So, I turn to you hoping you will be able to point me in the right direction in the jungle of plugins and features available in WP, and help me save som valuable time as our project is heavily delayed due to my lack of programming skills. (But I’m a fast learner)

    These are the features I need help to create/find/install in our WP site:(I’m norwegian so you’ll have to excuse my lack of terminology)

    100% responsive and device-friendly
    Apply our custom design
    (ex: containers for text or image or mediaplayer on the sides of the main content, apply custom icons and so on)
    Login and userprofile for our members
    Advanced search form
    (very detailed search linked to profiles and content in general)
    Mediaplayer for both image, movie and audio
    Rating-showcase
    (Ex. if we wanted to rate the best employee of the day/week, and show pic of the top ten employees on frontpage)
    Network/Forum features for our targetgroup(s)

    As you may see now, this is a project gone mad for a bunch of recently graduates, but quitting is NOT an option for me…
    So I just hope some of you might find the time to respond and by doing so help me create my future workplace 🙂

    I am forever greatfull for whatever help you might provide! 🙂

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • lettergrade

    (@lettergrade)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    That’s a long list! You obviously have the drive to get into it, so I’m sure that you’ll familiarize yourself with the WordPress environment quickly. My advice would be to start as simply as you can, and try to work up a demo without getting too far into functionality.

    Have you found this section of the site yet? WordPress Lessons

    The first thing you should understand is that all styling and layout (and some functionality, depending) is controlled by themes. This separates presentation from data (all your posts, pages, users, attachments, etcetera), which is great for experimenting and customizing. Themes can be applied to the site, replaced, switched, adjusted, etcetera, to display your data, but all your data remains unchanged.

    You can find free, reliable, recommended WordPress themes in the theme repository here. Take some time to browse: if there is a theme already built that bears any structural resemblance to the design that your team has put together, then you’re halfway there already!

    If you search the themes using the tag filter here, then you can narrow down to ONLY responsive themes by selecting ‘flexible-width.’

    The next step is to make a child theme, and apply any design changes you need to it. This way, you have the underlying reliability of the parent theme, which will benefit from future updates by the developer, while still controlling all the things you need to customize. You may have to edit template files (php), or you may be able to do most of it by adjusting the css – it all depends on how far your parent theme design is from your desired design.

    Login and user profiles (and user roles, from admin down to subscriber) are standard features in WordPress. If you need to do more than what is ‘in the box,’ you can browse the many, many plugins that deal with user accounts, roles, permissions, display, etc. There are also many plugins out there for advanced search and ratings and forums.

    There is new media player functionality in WP 3.6 AND there are many other players out there. I can’t comment on specifics without more details about what you want, where the media content is coming from, what services you may be using, etcetera.

    You’ll find there are tons of options and resources for you to do the things you want to do, so really don’t worry – but I’m sure it feels like a giant crazy list right now so I really recommend you start at the beginning and get a handle on the theme creation and styling itself, then add functionality in pieces, one at a time. Best of luck! Check back in when you need to.

    Thread Starter MonMidt

    (@monmidt)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    Hi, and thx for your reply 🙂
    I thought I posted a reply for you the same day this your answear was posted, but my reply is gone, so I’ll try again 🙂

    I’m now about to finish a great tutorial by ThemeShaper creating a “blank” theme for future re-use (http://themeshaper.com/2012/10/22/the-themeshaper-wordpress-theme-tutorial-2nd-edition/)

    The turorial is very well written and explained and I learn a lot in no time. But this covers only the basics for me, as the custom design is yet to be built. And this is where I will need help. And probably a lot of it. (It was Kathryn P. at ThemeShapers who reffered me to this forum, and I hope I’ll find my answears here.)

    I forgot to say in my initial posting that I’ve played a little with WP before, but this project is too big to “just” alter/customize an excisting theme, and that is why I thought ThemeShapers tutorial was so great.

    I’m able to find my way in html and css as I’ve done a little bit of both before, so I will understand solutions or suggestions that envolves some skills in either one of them.

    It may certanly seem as too big a task for a rooky like me, but it needs to be done, so I have no other choice but to make i!It is the functions themselves that makes this website, and therefore I cannot give in and go for anything less than what we’ve created. It is the functions that will bring us funding, and it is essential for this demo to provide them.

    So, any advice is greatly appreciated by this norwegian novise 🙂

    lettergrade

    (@lettergrade)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    If you definitely want to create the theme from scratch, then I recommend that you build it as static pages first, using only html and css. Once you have all of the styling working properly, then you can move on and break it up into php files, replace body content with loop code, and header tags with template tags, etcetera. I always do it this way so that I can make sure my html and css is error-free before I introduce new elements, so I know that any problems need to be fixed for the WordPress output rather than the original layout, etcetera.

    If you want plugin or functionality suggestions, I think you’ll have to be more specific about what each functionality piece needs to DO. I suggest browsing the plugin directory first, though, so you have a sense of what is out there.

    Thread Starter MonMidt

    (@monmidt)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    Thx a lot. I’ve done the tutorial now and understand a lot more of WP.
    I’m currently struggeling with my frontpage.
    I went to adminpanel, created new page called “home”, linked it to a custom template page file (named frontpage.php) where I pasted my html. The “home”-page is static, the link is sort of functioning, but not all of my html is showing…
    So I tried to add a custom css-file for the template page file (named frontpage.css) and I’m struggeling to trying to apply this into header.php (as I’ve learned is the right place to “toggle” css-files…

    <?php if (is_template('frontpage.php')){ //load special css for "frontpage" ?>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo( 'template_url' ); ?> /frontpage.css" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<?php else (is_template('index.php')) //load regular "style.css" ?>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo( 'stylesheet_url' ); ?> type="text/css" media="screen" />

    Am I placing it in the wrong place or what? (Been doing this all day now, so I might be just a little bit cross-eyed 😛 )

    I put it in header.php directly after:

    ?><!DOCTYPE html>
<html <?php language_attributes(); ?>>
<head>

<meta charset="<?php bloginfo( 'charset' ); ?>">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title><?php wp_title( '|', true, 'right' ); ?></title>
<link rel="profile" href="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo( 'pingback_url' ); ?>">

    [Moderator Note: Please post code & markup between backticks or use the code button. Your posted code may now have been permanently damaged by the forum’s parser.]

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    Please post a new topic.

    Thread Starter MonMidt

    (@monmidt)

    12 years, 8 months ago

    Sry esmi, I’m new to this… hope this isn’t “off topic” in this thread though:

    If you definitely want to create the theme from scratch, then I recommend that you build it as static pages first, using only html and css.

    THAT is exactly what I’ve been trying to figure out how to do! As I understood from others I spoke to, WP was the best option for me to create the website we initially wanted to create in Dreamweaver.
    But I never figured out how to make the design complete in DW and transfer/apply it in WP, therfore I sat down with the tutorial on building a “blank” theme. It is the search engine-function in WP that is the most valuable for us, as we will create a great deal of info for our end-users to search through.

    Now: am I on the right track now when I paste my html into a custom template page.php (as “frontpage” mentioned above) or am I doing it more difficult than I have to?

    lettergrade

    (@lettergrade)

    12 years, 7 months ago

    For me, those are two different steps: I make the html and css work, but I also have a blank theme of my own that I use as the starting point for integrating the two.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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