Coding my design. Help. (Also, rant.)

  • I’ve done quite a bit of theme hacking, to the point where I felt like I could call my most recent design my own, even though I started with an existing theme.

    I have a new design now, and am already going crazy trying to code it. I have too many questions to even know where to begin. I’ve been trying to work with my existing theme, but it is so different, and besides, there is a lot of extra stuff in there I have no idea what it’s for and I’d really like to have a clean-on-the-inside theme.

    I’ve browsed through some of themes, trying to find one that sort of matches the layout I want, but after downloading and trying to work my way through them, I get so confused.

    Here is my design- https://carolynchappellhome.com/wp-content/themes/Something%20New/images/designing.jpg

    Does anyone know of a good, simple, clean theme that might help me get this design coded?

    I’ve started taking a part my existing theme at simplymother.com, but I’m getting stuck at the very beginning. You can see my non-progress at https://carolynchappellhome.com. I’m trying to code that little RSS space up there–I tried making a new DIV for it, but I can’t get it to be styled by the CSS.

    I thought I knew quite a bit about this coding stuff by now, but man, I am so frustrated by how much I don’t know!

    I’m not sure what else I’m looking for, unless you know of a good theme I could start with. Support? Encouragement? An extra thousand dollars so I could pay someone else to hold my hand and walk me through it? Thanks for listening.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • I hear ya and honestly, as a designer and one that comes from the Joomla cms platform, I’ve started working with wordpress themes as well and I can easily say wordpress is very simple to install and very simple for bloggers who just use premade themes and then begin blogging….however, to really get something custom and well designed, wordpress is very complicated.

    However, that doesn’t really help you at the moment but perhaps this might. I am not sure how much css skill you have or html but I would say the best method to start any theme is to first sketch it out on paper along with what features you need (and wishful features) and when you have what you want, then it’s time to make a mock-up in photoshop (or whatever graphic software you use). When you are happy with the page design, you then slice it up into it’s separate elements and optimize them as png’s or jpg images. Then you can begin writing your css based on your mockup layout and start making an HTML version of your theme (not php). Put some sample text and other elements in it and when you are happy with how it looks as a standard HTML site, then begin converting it to a WordPress format…things like header, footer, index, etc, and use the www.ads-software.com site’s documents for creating your own themes as your guide.

    This is of course if you still want to do your own theme and to start from the foundation. The best advantage of this is that you can control what goes into it step-by-step because trying to reverse engineer an existing theme can be very complicated and frustrating. I find it easier to begin from the start if a current attempt is becoming frustrating and time-consuming and no sign of completion.

    However, if you are in a big rush, you may have to keep looking for a theme to use or hire a designer to make you one to your specifications.

    Hope I didn’t scare you away….lol ??

    That’s a really nice design. ?? Typically what I do is to slice and code the design and then use a framework theme to integrate WordPress (I’ve been using Whiteboard, but it has several problems that I have to clean up when doing so.)

    You may want to try googling “PSD to WordPress” for some options. There are developers who will create a WP theme from your PSD for a reasonable price.

    Cleaker from https://pomomusings.com/design/ is a 3 column that could be molded to your design. It is quite clean but the header is different

    Thread Starter simplymother

    (@simplymother)

    Thank you guys!

    Well last night I found this tutorial https://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/02/19/so-you-want-to-create-wordpress-themes-huh/ and went through it and even though it’s a couple years old and I’m pretty sure some of the tags may be outdated, I created a working them with it and it was SO HELPFUL! I went through it pretty fast since I was already familiar with everything from previous theme-hacking attempts, but this just really broke it down and explained things so now I understand what is actually going on. It will make things so much easier, whereas before my learning process has mostly been trial and error.

    I think I’ll give it a shot, starting from scratch now. I’m sure I’ll be back, but at least now I’ll know what questions to ask.

    Simply,

    I answered one of your questions on another post and after reading this one, I now have a better idea of where you’re coming from. I am on the same road that you are. I am making my own theme from scratch after the theme I was using became obsolete when the designer abandoned it to move onto bigger and better things, leaving me standing there wondering what to do.

    I too started with the WPDesigner.com tutorial and found it to be amazingly simple to create a simple bare bones theme. I am now the proud owner of a custom theme with my own name on it. It is a foundation or theme framework that I built. I do have some style issues to remedy and tweak, but the results are actually pretty damn good:

    https://bestofnj.com/

    Yes, I am posting this to brag, but also to encourage you that you can do this! It will take time to make your own theme work, but It’s Worth It.

    BNJ

    Hi there,

    I understand where your coming from. I found that most of the themes out there had a lot of code that was hard to understand and unnecessary. As a result, I created a series of themes that are devoid of extra code and design. They are ideal for people wishing to start with something simple and clean.

    You can check the 4 themes that I’ve created so far at framework-templates.com. I’m hoping to add more soon.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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