Themes

Now that wireframing and planning is complete, i have begun to look into themes. The first problem i have encountered is that the previews of themes look absolutely nothing like the actual theme does on the site, so picking it isn't just a case of seeing something that works and then changing it to fit my needs, but actually working out how wordpress works, how to manipulate a theme, and then seeing if it works, which up till now has been incredibly difficult and it may be the thing that has made harder to create the site.

But i have looked over a few themes in order to maybe find one that i can manipulate to the point where i can say i had a hand in creating the overall look and feel of the site. I have already decided that a premium theme is not for me. Not only due to the money, but also the fact that this site will never go live and therefore doesn't warrant the amount of resources being thrown at as if it were one.

The themes i am looking at are fairly basic with a lot of editability that will enable me to use plug ins for a majority of the tasks i wish to perform, such as news galleries and splash tiles for the artists.

The first theme that caught my eye was one names "Esplande" and as previously mentioned, the preview looked absolutely nothing like it did on the site, and for me to get a feel of what it would look like whilst having no previous experience to go on was very difficult. That said, there were elements of the theme that looked like they could work, but actually working out how to utilise these things shown in the preview window was more difficult that i feel i had time to invest.

Another theme that caught my eye was "Simplify", again, it became too difficult to manage, and they wanted to charge $59 for a premium theme that would allow me to add more items to a gallery that didn't fully do what i wanted, and add more text to the homepage which doesn't help when my site will have atleast 9 overall. the gallery looked nice on this theme but really didn't showcase the news and picture section of the site that i wanted it too.


At this point it occured to me that i should really look into plug ins, specifically starting with that of a gallery plug in, enabling me to show the gallery i had been looking for in the themes menu. After quick google search i came across this page;

It references a galler called NextGen Gallery, and claims to do everything i needed for my news gallery and artist gallery. Unfortunately upon trying to use it i was greated by a message that i haven't been able to find a meaning for;

I think this is a server based issue, and again, seeing as these will never go live i don't know what the likelihood of this issue being resolved is. Either way, my first experience with plug ins was a wonderful one. With again another frustrating endeavour in wordpress, i returned to themes in order to find one that would perhaps be a little easier for me to use. Although my luck so far hadn't been great, i was suggested a theme called Fruitful, as many other people working on this brief are creating the same thing with a limited knowledge of wordpress this seems like the best theme for me, it has a high level of manipulation whilst also keeping itself grounded with the changable colours and tick boxes for easy access to thing that would otherwise involve CSS.

That is the theme i feel will compliment my site best and i hope i'll be able to change it to fit my wireframes. Overall so far my opinion of wordpress hasn't been high and has in no way invited me to want to use it again, but atleast i'm making headway with the project.