Question

I hope this is not too basic to be off-topic, but I am wondering to what extent it is possible to customize WordPress to fit an existing design. I have a design in mind and read somewhere (WordPress manuals?) that it is possible to only manage a small part of a website with WordPress and then slowly migrate the whole site to be WordPress-managed. If one would like to preserve a certain design, is this preferred to tweaking WordPress templates? That is to say, should I start from a website and slowly move into WordPress, or should I start from the WordPress template, and try to tweak it until I arrive at the design I want. Are there any examples of WordPress sites, which fall into light-weight (but image heavy) websites, which exhibit freedom from the WordPress mold? (Is this too vague?)

Answer 1

Generally speaking, I think it makes more sense to start with WordPress from the start if that is what you intend to use at the end. It will be much easier to transition your site into being fully WordPress-managed after you have some small piece of it in WordPress. This is because, while a lot of the design will fit easily into the HTML WordPress with only minor tweaks, WordPress theming is kind of a specific subcategory of its own, and there will be less of a barrier to moving if your start with CSS that is compatible with WordPress.

WordPress also makes it easy to override individual page nodes, so the static portions of your site can be part of WordPress in a very loose sense, and you’ll have full control over the markup. It is less to start writing your markup knowing what you’ve already had to do to get your design to work with WordPress than to transition to WordPress later.

If you are new to WordPress theming, here are some links to get you started:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Theme_Development

http://themeshaper.com/2009/06/22/wordpress-themes-templates-tutorial/