Is my site wordpressable?

guiggster
(@guiggster)

18 years, 4 months ago

This question will undoubtedly betray the fact that I am an absolute newbie to both wordpress and the wordpress forums…so, I apologize. I know questions like this arise somewhat frequently in the discussion, and I have searched the archives a bit, but I’m hoping that some helpful posters will be able to show me in the right direction.

I would like to start using WP as it has been recommended to me a number of times. However, I am intent on maintaining the basic layout of my current site (an html blog). I am half looking for someone to tell me whether it is even possible for me to convert to wordpress with the almost severe limitations of my site design, and half looking for someone to give me relevant keywords or links that will help me educate myself on where the hell to begin with something like this.

My site: http://thejinx.org/

I would really love to stay away from the column type themes with header and footer if I can help it. I am looking to update, so I am somewhat flexible, but in reality I would like to keep my site looking as similar to its current design as possible. Am I asking too much?

Thanks.

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)

Michael Bishop
(@miklb)

18 years, 4 months ago

Your current site is already designed in CSS, so anything’s possible in styling your WP theme, it’s just a matter of how ‘under the hood” you want to get with customizing the code.

Blog_Design_and_Layout is a good place to start inregards to designing your own theme. There will be numerous users here in the forums to help with specific questions when they arise.

Moderator James Huff
(@macmanx)

Volunteer Moderator

18 years, 4 months ago

All you would really have to do is add the Loop to your pre-existing HTML design.

http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop
http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop_in_Action

For more info, please do a search here for “integrate” or “the loop”.

Here are a few more resources:

http://www.transycan.net/blogtest/2005/07/05/integrate/

http://www.jonathanwold.com/tutorials/wordpress_integration/

http://mattread.com/archives/2005/04/wordpress-is-not-php/

Thread Starter guiggster
(@guiggster)

18 years, 3 months ago

Thanks for that. I actually worked it to fit directly into my layout. First specific question:

Is there a way that I can make the post go to a ‘next page’ when it gets to a certain length (bottom of the text box). I have a fixed layout and want to see if I can blog without any scrolling. Is this possible? Is there a way to set a value that would cut it and keep putting it onto another page when it gets to a certain length (pixels or text lines?) I think http://www.transycan.net/blogtest/2005/07/05/integrate/ does something like this. Buuut I’d want the comments to follow the same rules. Is this possible? Thanks.

moshu
(@moshu)

18 years, 3 months ago

On the page you linked above (integrate) I put manually the  template tag where I wanted to break the text into “pages”.

I don’t know of any “automated” way to do it.

Kassad
(@kassad)

18 years, 3 months ago

This is not yet ported, ain’t it ?
I like your design.
As to automating the “next page” perhaps you can use this:

http://ashwinbihari.com/archives/2005/01/14/plugin-auto-more/

I suppose, if you take the trouble to define the number of characters to fill your post area and change this value in the plugin then it will serve your purpose.

There are some other possibilities to tinker with:

http://www.thunderguy.com/semicolon/wordpress/evermore-wordpress-plugin/

moshu
(@moshu)

18 years, 3 months ago

Except… the  and the  quicktags are two different things and they do different things 🙂

Kassad
(@kassad)

18 years, 3 months ago

Oops!
You are right, Moshu 🙂
Perhaps, it would be enough to replace the <!–more–> with <!–nextpage–> in the script.

Thread Starter guiggster
(@guiggster)

18 years, 3 months ago

Actually the <!–nextpage–> tag does exactly what I need. Now the big problem I’m having is figuring out my options for commenting. Obviously I have restricted myself heavily with my layout…it is anything but conducive to blogging. However, I want my site to work for me as much as I can before I make any ‘artistic’ compromises.

Any ideas on how I can fit commenting to my site without it busting through or stretching my layout? I’m open to a wide scope of suggestions. I’ve wracked my brain and I can’t seem to come up with a great solution that would allow me to maintain my current layout. I’d even consider commenting that would start underneath my site in the gray area. How could I detach the commenting to do that though? I really appreciate the help so far. I’ve read about 20 of the lessons in the DOCS section so I hope you don’t think I’m taking advantage of the forum, here.

moshu
(@moshu)

18 years, 3 months ago

Your layout is already… hmmm… “killed” a bit here:
http://thejinx.org/forum/guestbook.php

There was somewhere (probably for earlier WP versions) a “paginated comments” plugin; however you’ll never know how long a comment will be, so they will never stay in a fixed height layout as you would like. See the guestbook above 🙂

As a “desperate” suggestion: WP has a built-in popup comment system.

Thread Starter guiggster
(@guiggster)

18 years, 3 months ago

Yup. Just decided on that. Thanks for rubbing sand in the wound though…my “Guestbook” is the incarcerated little brother of the family that we visit every once in a while but never talk about in public. Can you give me a quick idea of how to turn off the part that links to non pop up commenting when you click on the post title? I’ll look for docmentation on it now.

moshu
(@moshu)

18 years, 3 months ago

It has tobe something like this in the template:
<a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a>
Remove the anchor from around the_title.

Thread Starter guiggster
(@guiggster)

18 years, 3 months ago

Well, I seem to have more luck on this thread. And I accidentally put the following in Installation questions and can’t figure out how to change it, so I’ll justask the question here:

I am using popup commenting for my posts and break each post up into multiple pages with the <!–nextpage–> tag when necessary. I have removed the ability to write comments in the post page. Now when I click the page number that I would like to jump to, or the title of the post, there is no option to leave a comment. How do I show the “Comments (#)” link, for popup commenting, on each of these pages?