Web designer needed to convert a Joomla template to a WordPress theme

[tranglos]

OK, so I need to convert this Joomla template:

http://ethervane.com/

...to a WordPress 3.x theme. Not a simple task, I know! This is a commercial template (from RocketTheme) that I absolutely love and want to keep using, but I need to kick Joomla out the window. There is nothing remotely similar for WordPress.

The template has some Joomla-specific functionality (e.g. convert page to PDF) that I don't need. The content will be different and the site will live on a different domain. I just need the WordPress site to look as close as possible to what you see at the link above - mostly just the CSS, the menus and colors, and the graphical elements; the layout will be somewhat different in WordPress of course.

The WP theme must be compatible with the latest WP 3.x release, which I suppose means supporting WP widgets and the new custom menus, among other things. The theme should be two-column and fluid, so no fixed-pixel widths, please. Must be able to accommodate images (screenshots). The site will have lots of static pages, which is relevant to the design, because there are a lot of WP themes out there that totally fall apart when the listing of pages grows too wide. (Note the fly-out menus at the top right; they are very small now, but they'll have plenty of items.)

I don't care about the inconsequential issues like whether the search box has rounded corners (in fact, I don't like rounded corners very much, they're too Apply :-) or where it is positioned.

I will of course deliver the Joomla theme source to work with.

I am serious about needing this, but I have no idea how much a job like this may cost. If I can meet the price, I will be positively ecstatic to have it done for me. So if you are or know a web designer who could do this, please pm me or email me at marek then the at sign then tranglos.com.

(In case anyone wonders what's wrong with Joomla... well, everything is wrong with Joomla, but here is a good starting point: Go to the main page linked above. Click "New products" on the left. Click "ActiveHotkeys" underneath. You'll see "Download" and "Screenshot" links. This is all as it should be. Now forget about this and just click the "Ethervane Activehotkeys" title link on top of the page you're at (or, for a better moment of Zen, click any title link on the homepage). Now look at the navigation menu in the sidebar and figure out how to get to the Downloads page from here. That's what's wrong with Joomla: it's a big honking CMS with a totally broken navigation, and its authors seem entirely uninterested in rectifying this.)

[tranglos]

I feel like I have posted a plea very much like this before, years ago. Well, here's hoping!

[mouser]

you really sure you don't want to start fresh with a new wordpress theme?

[rgdot]

I think a widely used theme like Suffusion can mimic most if not all of the requirements with little or no coding. Thematic framework can do the same with some coding.

[Carol Haynes]

There is a very simple three click solution to your problem in Joomla - open the Article manager, click on the Paramters button (top right) and turn of article titles linkable.

This is an option for clicking on the titles of blog style articles when only summaries are presented and not relevant to what you want to do. By the way you can also apply this on a per article basis in the edit screen look in the Parameters (Advanced) section.

[tranglos]

you really sure you don't want to start fresh with a new wordpress theme?

Yes, I'm sure, as long as I expect to like the way the site looks

One free theme I liked was Fusion from digitalnature, but it hasn't been updated for WP 3, so no menus and I'm really not sure I want an unsupported theme that may become entirely unusable when WP internals change some more.

Of course not even WordPress is quite suitable for what I need, I wrote about it at length before, but there just aren't any CMS-es that make it convenient to publish software and do other stuff as well. I do like how WordPress goes the extra mile to make working in it pleasurable, plus it's widely supported and there's plenty of free, quality add-ons for it (unlike Joomla, where almost everything is commercial), so my only hope is sticking with WP.

[tranglos]

There is a very simple three click solution to your problem in Joomla - open the Article manager, click on the Paramters button (top right) and turn of article titles linkable.

Thank you, Carol, but article titles are linkable all over the world, as well they should be. But that doesn't solve the problem at all, because someone out there is always going to link to a specific article on your site, linkable titles or not. And when visitors arrive, they will see the article but no useful navigation to related pages. How would you like to click a link in an application review, go to the app description page and see no links to download or screenshots?

I could manually add the necessary navigation links to each and every posted article, but CMS-es were invented to relieve people of such tasks in the first place...

[tranglos]

I think a widely used theme like Suffusion can mimic most if not all of the requirements with little or no coding. Thematic framework can do the same with some coding.

I really don't mind how it is done. The thing is, I absolutely cannot do this myself. I don't have the time, or the skill (at all), or the patience, or really willingness to learn how to do it, which is why I'll be happy to buy the service from someone who can. If all it takes is installing Suffusion (nice theme, yes) and editing all the CSS to match the existing design (while making sure it works well with modern browsers and all that), then I'll love it.

[Carol Haynes]

There is a very simple three click solution to your problem in Joomla - open the Article manager, click on the Paramters button (top right) and turn of article titles linkable.

Thank you, Carol, but article titles are linkable all over the world, as well they should be. But that doesn't solve the problem at all, because someone out there is always going to link to a specific article on your site, linkable titles or not. And when visitors arrive, they will see the article but no useful navigation to related pages. How would you like to click a link in an application review, go to the app description page and see no links to download or screenshots?

I could manually add the necessary navigation links to each and every posted article, but CMS-es were invented to relieve people of such tasks in the first place...

If someone provides a link to the page it will go to the page - that will have the full navigation. It is only links to articles that go to an article specific page that are causing the problem. On your website there is absolutley no need to have the title of the article as a link because it would not provide any further information to the visitor - it just takes you to another copy of the same article.

I have never come across this as a problem with Joomla before - it may be a problem with the template.

[JavaJones]

There are cheap overseas companies out there that will do this for probably $500. I have no specific recommendations and haven't worked with any, but if you don't go that route I suspect it will be at least $1000, if not more.

Personally I think you'll run into issues with any system you choose. Wordpress is likely to be *less* flexible and able to "host simple software downloads" (because it's designed to be a blogging platform first). So I'd recommend asking in Joomla forums how to solve your problems rather than taking time and paying money to switch to another system that may cause as many - or more - headaches. But I *do* understand that you like the way Wordpress seems to work better than Joomla and while I'm ok with Joomla, I'll grand Wordpress is seemingly more friendly. I do think part of this is just due to lesser capabilities though.

Joomla's menu/linking system *is* one of the most confusing things about it in my view, but it's also fairly powerful. In your case I would suggest doing things a bit differently, by making an additional menu module that appears dynamically when you're on a product page. Have *only* the download and screenshot links (and any other app-specific links) appear in that menu. You could put it below the main menu, or on the right-hand side, or even above the article. Frankly I don't think deeply nested cascading menus are all that good an idea in general. If you really want to do it that way I'm sure there's a cascading menu component that will keep state per-page for you or do something like "open cascading menu to current nav position always".

- Oshyan

[tranglos]

There are cheap overseas companies out there that will do this for probably $500. I have no specific recommendations and haven't worked with any, but if you don't go that route I suspect it will be at least $1000, if not more.

Yeah, that last figure is a bit much, but my main point is that I'd much rather work from a personal recommendation (from a DC regular, any time!) rather than just go to a random website.

I'd rather not devolve this thread into a discussion of relative merits/demerits of various CMS-es. Instead, a couple of examples that will position my helplessness somewhere on a 0..10 scale:

WordPress has "widgets" - little islands of html and php you can place all over the layout. For those who don't know, they're something like Vista/7 gadgets and work for a similar purpose. You install them by drag and drop (some theme support is required but common). I had never coded in php, and I was wondering how much effort it would take to create a WordPress widget if I needed one. So I tried writing one that would display a random quote once a day, and once a quote was picked on a specific date, the same quote would be shown until midnight server-time. It was a few years ago so I don't remember exactly, but the widget was ready well within the hour and lives on to this day. Simple beyond a real coder's pain threshold, I know, but hey, it was my first php app ever. I spent most of that hour looking up functions and syntax in php manuals. That sort of thing leaves you with a nice warm feeling of having accomplished something and being in control.

BUT... I really don't want to have to write any serious php because I don't have the time for it and, being a total php noob, I won't even know when I do something awesomely stupid that will totally compromise the security of the site. In fact, "me writing php for use on a public server" is a security hole just there. I've seen a recommendation for Concrete5, a CMS I had not seen before, so I'm checking it out right now, and one, I don't understand any of it, two, worryingly many of their video tutorials tell you how to alter the php code to get it to do what you want, like search sections of the site that are not searched by default. For me, this means RUN AWAY.

So while I still have the Concrete5 website open, here's another example. There are tons of nice themes out there for all imaginable CMS-es. Some are free, some not, I can live with both. So take a random non-free theme for Concrete5 like this:



So, here's a nice, elegant template, though the green gradient sticks out really badly, and the bar on the top won't accommodate more than five or six sections (and probably won't scale down on displays narrower than its width)... but forget about that, look at the logo. It was designed by a pro designer. Now if I bought this template, how would I go about changing the logo to mine? How would I reproduce it as a graphic with my site's name in place of that nicely styled "obsidian", and replace the blue logo with whatever I wanted to use? I don't have software for that (these elements invariably require expensive Adobe software to edit, they don't come as pngs), but most of all, I don't know how. This is just a random example of course; I'm going to have this problem with any theme that uses a graphical header. That's one reason I'd love to keep the ethervane design, because at last that part is done there.

At one point I tried saving the page as-displayed and working from there to make it into a template, but even though I get html and css, this was way out of my league. Way too complex to make heads or tails of and figure out where what happens. I could write compliant html 15 years ago and learned css as it came along, but these days it's a domain of the pros.

[Carol Haynes]

If you want to do it yourself download the trial version of Artisteer from www.artisteer.com and create the template you want (it is very easy to use - just work through the tabs from left to right and pick the settings you fancy graphically).

The trial version is fully functional but the template you have produced will have a watermark on the page. You can grab graphics etc. from your exisiting template and include them if you want.

PM me when you have something you can use I will help you further or better still buy a license for Artisteer (much cheaper than paying someone - around $50) and generate your template yourself (it generates templates for a number of common CMS systems - and the cheaper license includes WordPress).

If you prefer I can give you a hand to get Joomla doing what you want it to do instead

[Stoic Joker]

If you want to do it yourself download the trial version of Artisteer from www.artisteer.com and create the template you want.

That looks like it might be quite handy for a project I've got going on the side. Thanks!

[JavaJones]

Concrete 5 has some niceties but IMO is no better than Joomla in terms of overall comprehensibility, and a large number of its better extensions are commercial, unlike Joomla and Wordpress. If the capability you want is part of C5's default setup I *might* recommend it - its front-end editing and previewing capability with built-in versioning is pretty dynamite - but overall I'm not a huge fan.

Regarding how to replace a logo, I'm far, far from an HTML or CSS expert, but I manage to muddle through stuff like this fairly often. The main method I use with that sort of thing is a combination of "inspect element" (Chrome, or Firebug in Firefox, etc.), finding an image name or relevant CSS id, etc., and then doing a full text search on a folder full of my CMS files using e.g. PSPad (my editor of choice). 9 times out of 10 I find 1 or more references to say the logo file and then I can replace them on a case-by-case basis or do an automated search-and-replace. That's just an idea of how to get started, but if you were able to code anything at all, as you said about Wordpress, then I'd say your chances of understanding this stuff are well above mine and it's worth knowing a *bit* even if you *do* have someone else convert the template.

I think you should take Carol up on her offer to solve your Joomla issues though.

- Oshyan

[tranglos]

If you want to do it yourself download the trial version of Artisteer from www.artisteer.com and create the template you want (it is very easy to use - just work through the tabs from left to right and pick the settings you fancy graphically).

Downloading Artisteer now, thank you, Carol! Will try.

If you prefer I can give you a hand to get Joomla doing what you want it to do instead

Thanks for that, too, but I'm afraid Joomla is dead to me This is not something I've just discovered BTW. I saw the problem soon after putting up the site. At the time I did ask on the Joomla forums, but to no avail. That's why the site has been sitting there unfinished for many months now. I just gave up after that (and after spending some money on the theme and a bunch of add-ons first).

[tranglos]

9 times out of 10 I find 1 or more references to say the logo file and then I can replace them on a case-by-case basis or do an automated search-and-replace.

That's not quite what I meant though - I know I can be long-winded and that doesn't help clarity. It's not about finding the image. It's about making your own image, with your text and maybe a logo, that fits the style of the theme. If you take the theme I used as an example and replace the brown-and-blue "obsidian" header picture with, say, Google's logo, the effect will be rather crappy, wouldn't you agree?

So basically when you buy a commercial template like this, you may also need to buy the services of a professional graphic designer who will make a logo for you that goes well with the theme. That, or you have to name your site "Obsidian"

[JavaJones]

9 times out of 10 I find 1 or more references to say the logo file and then I can replace them on a case-by-case basis or do an automated search-and-replace.

That's not quite what I meant though - I know I can be long-winded and that doesn't help clarity. It's not about finding the image. It's about making your own image, with your text and maybe a logo, that fits the style of the theme. If you take the theme I used as an example and replace the brown-and-blue "obsidian" header picture with, say, Google's logo, the effect will be rather crappy, wouldn't you agree?

So basically when you buy a commercial template like this, you may also need to buy the services of a professional graphic designer who will make a logo for you that goes well with the theme. That, or you have to name your site "Obsidian"

Ahhh yes, I see what you mean. Unfortunately that's much more a matter of artistic/design skill (which I too lack). As you say, hiring a graphic designer would be the best bet in that case, but not cheap.

- Oshyan