Theme ideas needed please…

  • sioy

    (@sioy)


    10 years, 11 months ago

    Next project will be a 300 page+ website for a school any ideas for a suitable theme would be most gratefully received…

    The theme should be clean and stylish, but it must be capable of having the following 4 characteristics…

    • 8 or 9 categories or ‘chapters’ in the main horizontal nav bar

    • Each ‘chapter’ page will have its own left side menu bar (accordian style with fine color rules between lines leading to between 12 and 50 pages)

    • Each chapter page will also have its own similar r/hand side sub-menu (accordian style)

    • Each chapter must have its own solid header colour (that is the area above the main horizontal nav bar).

Viewing 12 replies - 1 through 12 (of 12 total)
  • Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Use the Tag Filters at the theme repository here as criteria for your perfect theme.

    Then try searching the plugin repository for additional functionality.

    Chip Bennett

    (@chipbennett)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    With that degree of specificity for your design, you will probably want to look at modifying an existing Theme (either by forking, or via Child Theme), or else hire a designer/developer to design and develop a custom Theme for your purposes.

    Thread Starter sioy

    (@sioy)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Thanks guys, the css/graphics I’m fine with, I’m struggling with the idea of 8/9 categories each with its own sub menus.

    As WP back-end having only one Appearance > Available Widgets section, how could could the side menus unique to each category be managed and updated easily?

    It is almost as if I need 8 or 9 copies of the same theme, each to cover one of the categories/chapters. I suppose I could do that if I have enough hosting (!).

    Or… a separate ‘Available Widgets’ area for each template… is that possible with WP?

    Chip Bennett

    (@chipbennett)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    You can use the Menu Widget to output a specific menu in the right sidebar, and you can use a Plugin to control the context in which certain Widgets display.

    You could also create custom category template files for each of your 8 or 9 categories, to modify the markup for each category, and output a different page or other menu for each category.

    And you can use CSS, in combination with the body_class() template tag, to change styles (header color, etc.) on a per-category-term basis.

    Thread Starter sioy

    (@sioy)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Chip that sounds very interesting, thank you.

    So, there might be a Widget/Plugin combination that would allow me to specify particular menus to appear on certain templates, am I understanding correctly?

    The side menus on my design will always appear in the same place on the 8 or 9 different categories/chapters but it is their content that would need to change.

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Have a look at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Another approach – use the is_page_template() conditional to tie a given custom menu location to a specific page template.

    Thread Starter sioy

    (@sioy)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Esmi, thanks very much, definite food for thought.

    Thread Starter sioy

    (@sioy)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    I wonder, as this site would have 8-9 quite big categories/chapters, would it be ridiculous to host as 8-9 ‘sites’ to give us nice manageable client control over the widget menus etc and very little extra coding?

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    That depends. Do you want to have to log in & out of 8-9 different admin areas?

    Thread Starter sioy

    (@sioy)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    Many thanks Esmi

    It’s not ideal, though if it made the site otherwise easy to administer it could be bearable. I guess it sounds a bit silly to you?

    esmi

    (@esmi)

    10 years, 11 months ago

    It does sound like overkill to me. 🙂 I’d have thought that custom page or category templates could deal with the different menus etc without any problem. You also mentioned “chapters”. Have you had a look at plugins like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/organize-series/

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