Web design using wordpress?

@jaredlonghurstJun 02.2012

I am an old school website developer and would like to learn how to build websites using WP. It seems that many of the themes offered by WP are decked out and set up for blogging. I assume that a developer would start with a clean and simple theme. Which theme is the best for website developing?

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16 Comments(s) _↴

@dgPehrsonJun 02.2012 — #Ditto to you. I'm old school and would like to learn what to go from as well. In the mean time, I sure love to buy a clean theme and deface it to something I like. ?

@ixoraJun 09.2012 — #WP is easy to use for building a static site [a blog can be attached if you need it.] I would recommend the Weaver theme [2010 or 2011], it has a great deal of flexibility and it's free. There are MANY [thousands?] good free themes although they do not always have adequate documentation.

Get a good book that concentrates on the web site aspect not the blog. I used to love to hand code but it seems foolish when platforms like WP [Joomla etc..] allow you to build sites so very quickly with all the functionality you could ever want. And WP support is phenominal.

I find it out of the question to ever build a site by hand ever again. Somewhat sad. Progress.

@ixoraJun 09.2012 — #PS I tuned into this forum to see how things were going. I always got support here in the past. But I am surprised that there is so little here about the CMS platforms. Really! Still hand coding? Really?

@Eye_for_VideoJun 09.2012 — #I'd tread lightly on "hand coding" if I were you.

Even the best CMS needs at least "CSS styling" if you want any kind of unique or customized look to your site.

I think you'll find that the best "customizers" are folks that have a very good understanding of both HTML and CSS stemmng from doing lots of "hand coding".

Of course if all you want is to bang out a quick rubber stamp (common theme) Web site... go for it!

... but my clients expect more...and better yet, pay more.

Best wishes,

Eye for Video

@opnsorsdsgnJun 09.2012 — #You need to create a page in your WordPress admin, and set is as your homepage in Setting > Reading. Create a other page as children of this page.

Create a WP template called front-page.php. This need to generate both the navigation links and the selection of pages, best way of doing that is get_page_children().

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@ixoraJun 09.2012 — #I agree with Eye 100%. I did not mean that one should use any WP theme right out of the box. Of couse you create a custom header and tweek the theme in the css or in the back end [Weaver Theme allows for this extensively along with a variety of layouts.] You add plugins, widgets as needed for your purpose...and you can create a unique site EASILY. And of course, a thorough knowledge of html, css, and php really is a must to produce a great product. I'm not saying just anyone can do it. But using WP, Joomla or other CMS platforms gives you so many function choices that would be difficult and time-consuming to do by hand.

@ixoraJun 09.2012 — #You need to create a page in your WordPress admin, and set is as your homepage in Setting > Reading. Create a other page as children of this page.

[COLOR="Red"] You don't have to create other pages as children of the home page. Other pages take their place in the menu or in the pulldown as you designate. [/COLOR]

Create a WP template called front-page.php. This need to generate both the navigation links and the selection of pages, best way of doing that is get_page_children().

[COLOR="Red"]No, no, you don't have to create any templates whatsoever. There is no reason to delve into the php. The whole web site, pages, [blog if you want], links, menus, forms, images... all created in the back end. What are you talking about??? These guys just want to see how WP can build a simple site.

Install WP in a folder on your server - if you use a host with CPanel, there is a one minute install. If you download WP and do it yourself, it's a little tricky but follow instructions [WP is well documented.] Start with the Weaver theme. It's simple but allows a lot of personal choice.

Good Luck. It was a real adventure for me.[/COLOR]

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@perfectionsuJun 11.2012 — #I am a website designer professional and working since five years as a website designers in MNC company .website designing using the WordPress is very simple and the easiest way to design a user friendly website.There are many themes available in WordPress that helps in designing attractive websites.

@adumpaulJun 14.2012 — #Design a website using WordPress is very easy.Just show the youtube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8355qaOKXC8

@faithlessJun 14.2012 — #I for one stick to hand coding my sites and rolling out my own versions of CMS based on customer specs. I stay away from WP. WP is meant to be used as "do it your self" software not by professionals looking for performance and total flexibility. Same thing can be said for all these JavaScript libraries like JQuery.

In my experience people outgrow wordpress rather quickly especially in business scenarios. Don't get suckered into creating a wordpress site because everyone else is doing it. It is perfect for blogs, news and galleries. However, for any type of business presence I would advise against it.

@aj_nscJun 14.2012 — #I for one stick to hand coding my sites and rolling out my own versions of CMS based on customer specs. I stay away from WP. WP is meant to be used as "do it your self" software not by professionals looking for performance and total flexibility. Same thing can be said for all these JavaScript libraries like JQuery.

In my experience people outgrow wordpress rather quickly especially in business scenarios. Don't get suckered into creating a wordpress site because everyone else is doing it. It is perfect for blogs, news and galleries. However, for any type of business presence I would advise against it.[/QUOTE]

You've never tried it. We've done some really nice sites with WordPress. We don't just 'install themes' and modify CSS either. We use the API to it's fullest to give clients exactly what they want.

http://johnatkins.ca

@faithlessJun 14.2012 — #You've never tried it. We've done some really nice sites with WordPress. We don't just 'install themes' and modify CSS either. We use the API to it's fullest to give clients exactly what they want.

http://johnatkins.ca[/QUOTE]

I have tried it on numerous occasions since everyone asks about it. However, if I create a wordpress site for someone then down the road they ask me how can they sell t-shirts on their website or have a support forum what do you do then? Get e-commerce plugin which you have to hack to death because the functionality is not what the client wants. Also get a pressBB plugin and hack that too so it looks like the theme you created because it spits out HTML from PHP variables. Guess what after all of that new wordpress versions comes out. You can't update because your plugins don't support the new version AND when they finally do, you have modified them so much they won't upgrade properly anyways. You see where I am going with this...

Any professional web developer should have their own set of tools which allows them to create and recreate functionality very quickly while not relying on 3rd party code developed by numerous teams. Everything in the open source word doesn't get updated at the same time and stuff breaks eventually.

I have a different approach to designing software. Let's not get pre-build software and patch it until it slows down to a crawl. Let's build it from the ground up to exact spec with minimal code and scalability in mind.

Just my opinion of course.

@aj_nscJun 14.2012 — #I had several counter arguments written out, but I thought, 'what's the point?'.

You're just wrong. If you wanted to come and work with me for a month you'll see that I'll be able to easily turn around sites - built to spec - weeks, if not months, faster than you can.

It's also pretty presumptuous of you to believe that your singular knowledge is better than the tens of thousands (at least) of developer hours that went into building WordPress.

Finally, you must think the following companies are pretty stupid:

CNN

The New York Times

Forbes

GM

Sony

TechCrunch

etc.

etc.

etc.

As their websites (or portions of) are all built on top of WordPress. Pfft...what were they thinking, right?

http://en.wordpress.com/notable-users/

@faithlessJun 14.2012 — #Never said that I am better or my knowledge is higher than anyone else. There is always someone better. I don't think anyone is stupid for using WordPress either.

I was just stating that in my experience with the types of clients that I work with WordPress was never been a long term solution. Not to mention the companies that you have stated of "notable-users" have a lot of resources and money to rewrite WordPress 3 times over to their specs and liking. So let's not compare the use of WP by the NYTimes vs a small business. Of course they are going to advertise who uses them even if there is only 1% of the original code left of the core.

Don't get offended I am just stating my opinion. I respect the fact that you can work with WP and do it efficiently. Everyone has their own ways and opinions. I don't enjoy working with WP. I like to be in control of every line of code.

@aj_nscJun 14.2012 — #I like to be in control of every line of code.[/quote]

I spent a long time with this exact mentality, so I know exactly where you are coming from. Then, one day after jQuery had been popular for probably at least 24 months, I decided to try it and was amazed that a simple interface that would've taken me about several hours (including working with the DOM and ajax calls) took me about about 10 minutes.

That was my a-ha moment and realizing that I don't need to be in control of every line of code in order to create excellent products for my clients. Come back and send me a PM when you have your a-ha moment.

@anthony10Aug 15.2020 — #[Custom WordPress development services](https://maxenius.com/services/website-developement/wordpress/) offer a super easy and simple Content Management system which literally anybody can use. We at Maxenius solutions always make sure to help our clients to learn some basics of WordPress CMS so that they can generate their reports, add new products to their inventory and can manage their orders as well.