Support » Fixing WordPress » Is WordPress the way I should be going?

  • I’ve just signed up to wordpress.com and wordpress.org (though I haven’t actually downloaded the software). I’ve also completed a Lynda.com course on wordpress 2.7.

    I have a reasonable working knowledge of html and css. I’ve been asked to design and build a website that contains a blog. The initial question I had was should I build a conventional site using CSS that has a link to WordPress for the blog section or can I build the entire site using WordPress?

    The design requires a header, horizontal menu bar with drop down sub menus, 3 columns and a footer. Whereas it’s fine for the blog to have the left and right column having fixed widget content, this is not how I want the main body of the site to work. When publishing individual pages, I want to be able to vary the content in all three columns.

    So for example:

    Content page type 1: Column 1 has a quote, column two has a ul with li’s containing thumbnail pictures of books, and a short synopsis. Column three has the name of the publisher and ISBN number to the right of each item in the centre column.

    Content type 2: Column 1 has a different quote, column two has a full synopsis of the book and column 3 has a larger image of the book with the publishers details below it, a link to Amazon to buy and a number of other links to other relevant pages such as an interactive test.

    Content page type 3: Column 1 has a different quote, column 2 has an interactive test using forms and radio buttons. Column 3 has associated limks on the subjects relevant to the test.

    I’ve been messing around with wordpress.com themes, altering css, and had some promising results but found that effectively I’m limited to changing the central column alone. I’ve started browsing for themes that might do what I want but I get the impression that they are all prioritised to blog usage. There are thousands to choose from and I’m wondering if I’m wasting my time.

    It’s been suggested that I should be able to do pretty much anything with WordPress and I am impressed so far with the CMS and the access to updating CSS, so if it is possible, I would like to take this route. The question is, where do I go from here? I need someone to point me in the right direction rather than me spend days reading notes and tutorials that don’t answer my basic question, as ideally, this site needs to be up and working by the end of the first week in March.

    Thanking you in anticipation.

    Simon

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  • You could easily do the entire site as a WordPress site. WordPress Pages can have individual templates assigned to them, so their layouts can be independant of each other and the main body of the site (the posts.)

    Personally, I prefer to have a standard site that I can pretty much make do what I want and use WordPress for its strengths, which are its blog and backend.

    For example, I just built a small site for a small nutritional supplement store. Just a few pages (one to say “Hi” and another to say “We are located here” and another “Meet our friendly staff” etc. But they hold a lot of special events and needed a page to display this constantly changing list

    So I used WordPress, which the owner took to very easily. They make their posts there of the events. Then I built a simple admin panel with php to pull the data from the database WP put there. The owner adds a few details, and then it all gets displayed with some custom php, in the same style as the rest of the site.

    I have managed to build a WP plugin so I’m starting to learn my way around it but in many ways it is like learning a new programming language all in itself. That’s the way to look at it is my advice to you. Do you have the time, desire, etc to learn another “language”. WordPress is great once you do, but a lot of the return on your investment depends on how much you will use it in the future too.

    If you already have the html and css skills I think you put those to use in a conventional manner then transfer as many of those designs into your blog as you can.

    Thread Starter simonolley

    (@simonolley)

    Thanks guys,

    bungeebones,

    On this basis I’m going ahead with building a regular site which will link to a WordPress blog, styled to look like the rest of the site. I’m getting a reasonable set of html and css skills together and I’m confident to play with those types of files. I’d like to break out of these limitations though, as I want to be able to create more dynamic sites and offer more management to customers. But for the time being I’m going to have to do it the old way.

    mrmist,

    I would actually like to be able to build such a site using wordpress as I realise it is possible. Unfortunately telling someone it’s easy doesn’t tell them how to begin the process. So at the moment, for me, the holy grail is to pointed in the right direction to a good set of tutorials so I can learn the process. I’ve completed a great set of tutorials on Lynda.com that have explained in great detail the core of WordPress blog sites and I’d dearly like to find something as clear and comprehensive for developing the next layer of understanding for getting more out of WordPress.

    Cheers,

    Simon

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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