Replacing images with normal links

Hello everyone,

in order to get a better understanding of the problem i am currently facing, you might wanna take a look at this page:

https://dgs2010.de/

In the top row you will notice a menau containing the items “start” “programm” and so on. (I know I know the page is in german, but this does not have to concern us here)

When you are klicking through the top menu, you will notice that the menu on the left side changes.

So far so good. I am currently working on a site with a similar menu structure, which uses a slightliy modified version of the theme you are seeing on the page I have linked above.

The menu in the top row however, does not react to changes made to the stylesheet (colors etc.)

The reason for this is that the links in the toprow are pictures, and the changes you see when you hover over them are made by exchanging them with pictures in a different colors. This mimics the behaviour of the left side menu.

As long as you do not have to change anything live is good. But once you try to do that, pandoras box is open, since you have to design new picutres for every change in the stylesheet and apply a new spacing in case the text in those pictures changes.

You may already guess where I am heading with this.

Is there a possibility to replace thoses pics with normal links, which a ruled by the stylesheet?

Or even better is there a theme, which can be configured, to look more or less (preferably more) identical to the one you are seeing on the linked page. The next problem I can think of, might be that this theme one day becomes incompatible to the newest wordpress version … and I really do not know what happens than.

From my explanation you may have already guessed, that my skills in coding php myself are next to nonexistant – so if someone is so kind, to take the time to help me, it really has to be step by step, otherwise I am completly at a loss.

Thanks in advance
-Ganzir