When faced with having to use an unfamiliar Wordpres theme, what do you do? If you love WooThemes, you try to use Canvas or something like that instead. Stories of what to do when you can't use WooThemes, and the lifesaving features of JetPack.
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What Would Woo Do
1. www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
What would woo do?
A brief overview of what happens when your client
doesn’t have or doesn’t want the theme you know
best, and you miss it terribly.
Presented by Laura Rinaldi
Principal Catalyst Creations West
13. 13 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
So, when you can’t use what you want?
• The client has already bought a theme
• You are working on en existing site, and the client just wants you
to modify their theme, and oh, make a bunch of changes that will
be fine, because they have a theme, but it wans’t designed for
what they want to do.
• Or some other lame reason, such as the client doesn’t like woo,
and there is nothing you can do about that.
14. 14 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
So, what do you do when you can’t
woo?
• You can install Canvas anyway, and build the site out, and be a
hero, and the client is none the wiser
• You can work with what you have, and learn one more skill, the
skill of working with different themes even though you don’t like
them.
• You can choose not to work with the client, although that is a bit
on the extreme side.
15. 15 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
So, familiarize yourself with other
themes
• Some of the themes I have had to work with include Genisis,
InkThemes, some free themes, and the bane of my existence,
Elegant themes.
• And install JetPack.
16. 16 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
Why should you install JetPack?
• It comes with a bucketload of
extensions
• SiteStats, for when you can’t
or they don’t know about
Google Antalytics.
• Custom CSS
26. 26 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
So, the site was live, what to do?
• I could have used theme Test Drive, if I had known about it
• Instead I installed backup buddy, and rebuilt the site in a sub-
directory I called “dev”, so that I could get approval for the
design.
• Once it was approved, I made the site live by overwriting the
index.php folder, and updating the .htaccess file.
28. 28 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
But, what happens when you can’t use
Canvas
• A client came to me recently with a five page deck (which used to
be know as powerpoint slides). She wanted a site build with it.
• To say that the deck was sparse is calling Death Valley a little bit
hot.
• There were no graphics, other than the logo, no concepts,
nothing, and the site had to go up in two weeks.
• She wanted it all on one page, a one page theme, and that was
something I didn’t think I could do in Canvas, so I went
searching for a theme.
• I didn’t know where to start, so started with themeforest
43. 43 www.sans-serif.com | 831.338.4687
So, that is what I woo do
• If I can’t use canvas, use at least a wootheme
• If I can’t use woo, make sure I have jetpack
• And if the site is easy enough to just change to Canvas because
all the changes wont’ work with the current site, dont’ tell the
client and just do it.
Notas do Editor
This is what happens when you go to Theme Forest
The problem is, there are a tons of themes out there these days, and as clients are getting into knowing about Wordpress, and maybe even trying to do a little of it themselves, they want to “help” you find the right theme to get them where they want to go. Soemtimes they just have a vague idea of what they want. Other times, they know exactly what they want, and will point you to that theme, even if, it either a) doesn’t work for the type of business they have or b) doens’t look all that good or c) looks exactly like their competitor
Makers of Genisis themes
So, if it seems overwhelming to you, who have worked in wordpress, imagine how it must be for your client, who has google or bing working for them, and a strong sense that they are “helping” you.
This is Canvas. I know, it looks dull as dishwater. There are no fancy pictures, no stunnying sliders.
It does not restrict how I build sites, because it is a blank canvas.
Custome CSS will save your but when you are faced with an unfamilir interface.
Why not just go into the styles.css? Becasue some styles just dont’ get overwritten when you do that. Usually, if you put the new cose in CSS editor, it does overwrite the style you want.
This is so restrictive, and I hate it.
Remarkedly like Woo
I got this from a client, and got in and out as quickly as I could, using mostly CSS Editor, so I didn’t have to learn a whole new way of doing things.
This was the website I was told to work on, Stroke Awareness Foundation. The client wasn’t happy with the site, which had been built by someone else, and then just handed over to her. She had ideas about what she wanted.
This is not to dis Themeforest. I have gotten some good plugins from there, but it is very hit and miss. Although I have bought themes from them, I have always ended up not using them.I need some documentation, although I can usually figure things out, and if the documentation isnt’ there, it isn’t worth my time. Still, the prices were good, so I took the plunge and looked for the most popular one pager, at the time, Asthhra
The example looked nice, so I thought, how bad could it be? So I bought it.
I thought I could handle it without documentaton
It is a bit overwhelming to look, because, as you can see, there are a ton out there, and I was short on time.
Which, was called of all things, The One Pager
I suppose falling back into woothemes is the same priciapl idea as using Adobe products, where everyone of them is similiar enough that you can pick up how to use it quickly.