Can WordPress deliver what we need?

So now we’re left wondering whether what we want the site to look like and do is in fact possible [with WordPress].

I’d like to say yes, but I really cannot tell for sure without more details. Could you please elaborate a bit as far as what you would like the site to do and what you want it to look like?

WordPress is quite capable. Of course, if you’re planning to have some multi-million dollars website done through WordPress, then that’s likely not going to happen. But for a standard “business website,” it should be more than adequate. The fact that your local web design company wasn’t able to turn in into reality makes me curious as to what sort of special feature you wanted in your site that took them over 2 months to develop but still unable to finish.

I don’t think there are any “special features” we required over and above a standard business website other than the actual look of it.

We want the usual things – a gallery of her work, a blog, links to social media, latest videos of her work. We want previews of the latest blog/gallery/video to appear on the homepage, but other than that I think its’ a pretty straightforward website apart from getting the custom theme to work on WordPress.

I’ve uploaded an image of our theme design to the page I manage for you to get a better idea of what I mean –

as you’ll see this is no multi-million dollar site, we aren’t even looking to use e-commerce on it. It’s more of a portfolio of my wife’s work to promote her business.

Thanks for your interest!

I don’t think the image you’d like us to see is on that page. “webkit-fake-url://DE65B8B4-E4BB-4AEA-AAF7-5AA557E714C6/image.tiff” isn’t a valid URL.

But yes, what you’ve listed there are all within capability of WordPress—from the portfolio to blog, even if you wish to have a small (a few hundred items) eCommerce store with a credit card checkout system (without the leaving the site), too. It’s just a matter of the developer and a theme.

Your scout website could use some tune up, too, such as a better slider, a responsive design (making the site auto-adapt to different screens, from desktops to mobile), etc.

Is there any way I can send you a .jpg of the theme design, as this seems to be the thing which the design company are saying they cannot get to work on WordPress?

Thanks for the feedback on the Scouts website too.

Is there any way I can send you a .jpg of the theme design

That’s not quite how these self-help forums work. ??

People can ask for help and get advice but that level of support is not for here.

If you do need that level of support then please consider posting to https://jobs.wordpress.net/ instead.

It is only help/advice i am requesting. I am in no way asking someone to do any work for me – as I have stated our web design company have told me it is not possible for them to use the design we have created for our website – I merely would like someone to look at the design and confirm if this is true or not (as I suspect).

Thank you.

You can upload screenshots and link to them, e.g. https://snag.gy

Thank you.

Basically the question is – Can our design (theme) be used to create a website using WordPress?

Image

The areas on the homepage image for Gallery, Blog and Videos are intended to show the newest posting from those pages (e.g. newest photograph from the “Scrapbook” page)

Thank you.

Most of that design is possible . . . but 2 parts would be tough to tackle with that design:

• the navigation bar, and
• the responsive view

especially that navigation bar, with a different design for every single item.

————–

Keep in mind that the navigation menu items are generated dynamically. Your navigation bar design has a different design for each item–some with different color, some with different decoration, some slanted left, some slanted right, etc.

Even if we make the lower nav #primary and the upper nav #secondary, it would still need individual classes for each item. If you add links via Appearance –> Menus, WordPress generates something like .menu-item-## (for example, menu-item-66, menu-item-143, etc.) class automatically for each menu item. It’s not possible for the dev to predict the ## generate by WordPress.

The theme would need its own custom navigation menu option, instead of the default Appearance –> Menus option. If not, then the only other way would be to customize them after you’ve gotten the nav items in place or hard code them in (bad thing about this method would be unable to change the nav items at all in the future, at least not without messing with the parent codes).

Unless, of course, if you would be ok with a uniform appearance while normal, then a different but uniformed appearance while hover/active/focus . . . this would simply everything and make the nav just a standard nav again.

———–

Making the theme responsive (meaning it automatically adapts to different screensizes, from desktops to mobile) would be another challenge, though probably easier than the previous. Your developers would have to strip out the majority of the design in order to do that though.

Thank you very much for the feedback.

So if the navigation bar were redesigned to be uniform, it would make the task of bringing it to life in WP easier?

It is possible to do the design to look like like that, and also have it be responsive as well. You just need to find a better devloper that can make it happen. I’ve seen more involved menus and it’s actually not that hard to transform a “standard” menu to look liek that with the proper use of CSS styles.

The issue is that someone that can do this properly and quickly won’t be cheap (but they might also not be that expensive) so you’ll need ot figure out your budget for getting it done. Oh, and also don’t pay the old development company anything more (unless you contractually have to) as they can’t deliver what they promised!