Changing Theme later

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Sorry if this has been answered but I'm a noobie. I'm actually building my own site or trying to at least. I am first building all the content using plain yogurt theme at the moment. Though I do want to keep the theme somewhat plain and easy on the eyes I do anticipate changing the look and feel of the site eventually {will probably need your help with this later on ;) }

My question basically is I've created a specific page style and anticipate creating another. When and if I change themes whether it's I download or create myself will my pages be greatly affected? Should I concentrate first on the design and then the content, vice versa or does it not really matter?

I've tinkered with Joomla (my old real estate company built their site on it and I was somewhat in charge of the backbones) and played with wordpress (too bloggy even though they have a come a far way). I like concrete5 as it is easy enough for me to use and seems complex enough to really create something spectacular.

My plan is to build my own site for a mobile phone business and then depending on how good that is try to build sites for other people. I have confidence that I can learn it!

I appreciate all your help on this.

Tal

 
codingpenguins replied on at Permalink Reply
Welcome, and yes a new theme will affect your pages. Not greatly though, but it mostly depends on the new theme, to how drastic it is. But you should still do the layout of everything but do not spend time trying to make it perfect or 100% fit together. Since this is a base theme all the page types should be in other themes so you should have nothing to worry about, but do be prepared for sizes and color changes, which should not take long to clean up everything.
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Hi Tal,

Short answer, NO.

Obvious things are if you design a two column or three column website and revert a single or whatever, things will go awol.

So having several themes in a three column style or one or whatever will always show the same content.

The other thing is calling areas, the same area needs to be in all themes.

For example: if you 'Main Two' in one theme and it is not in your other theme it won't show. The content should be in the database but won't show in page, but if change to a theme that has 'Main Two' it will.

Hope that make sense and helps.

Steev
codingpenguins replied on at Permalink Reply
I have two question:

Question: Since taltal13 is using Yogurt their is no three column page type, so this should not be a problem, because I have never seen a marketplace theme not have the base page types (correct me if i'm wrong). - So first point does not matter in this situation right?

Question: Go into more detail about 'Main Two' What is calling areas of a theme? are you saying like 'page' or 'sidebar' classes?
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
I will explain more later, but for me it is time for supper!

Original question:

"My question basically is I've created a specific page style and anticipate creating another. When and if I change themes whether it's I download or create myself will my pages be greatly affected?"

Note: if all themes are laid out as 'Plain Yogurt' then you can swop and change without loss.

If the theme is of a different layout it will not show properly.
taltal13 replied on at Permalink Reply
It really is a catch 22....I have a basic idea of what I want to do but of course there are always new ideas, changed ideas, etc. At this point my content is most important but of course I will want it to look nice in the end too.

This actually all brings me to another question.

I've created the content on lets call it DomainNameA...I'm not thrilled with the domain name and have all but decided on DomainNameB. How easy is it to move all my content from A to B. I may just work on the content on A and when I'm ready shift it all to B.

Thanks so much for your all your input so far everyone
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
Sorry, my last post didn't make it?

Q: "I've created the content on lets call it DomainNameA...I'm not thrilled with the domain name and have all but decided on DomainNameB. How easy is it to move all my content from A to B. I may just work on the content on A and when I'm ready shift it all to B"

A: I normally use a plain text editor to create content on my local computer and save it.

Same as images and anything else I might need.

So when and if I move servers and/or domains I can just copy the content.
JohntheFish replied on at Permalink Reply
JohntheFish
When I first began looking at C5 I did what I am sure most do when evaluating new software and downloaded a whole rush of free stuff, just to see what it did and how the whole lot fitted together.

In the process I found a small minority of free themes that are a bit hacked and don't follow the basic rules, for example renaming the 'Main' or 'Sidebar' areas to something that suited the fancy of whoever converted it to C5, and thus making it incompatible with content developed for other themes.

The vast majority of themes I am sure behave responsibly, but the naming of areas is something I would ask of a theme developer before buying.

Perhaps (if someone at C5 has an hour or two to spare) the themes marketplace could look inside themes and list the area names they support.
codingpenguins replied on at Permalink Reply
I see, and yeah I agree there are some themes like this. And that is a great idea with the themes in the marketplace. This would make it way easier to know capability. I mean a program can be used for this. This will look through, really just the style.css and some how display what classes, and defines a theme uses, right? or do you think more complex?
JohntheFish replied on at Permalink Reply
JohntheFish
I was thinking even simpler. Scan through the all php in the theme and list areas defined/rendered.

Or am I thinking too simple?
Steevb replied on at Permalink Reply
Steevb
You can change 'ALL' themes to fit your requirements?

My advice is download a few themes and play with them, but stay within the rules concerning 'Areas' and have fun.

The basics are all the same?

Get stuff:-
<?=$this->getThemePath()?>



Nav:-
<?php $as = new Area('Header Nav');$as->display($c);?>


Main content:-
<?php $a = new Area('Main');$a->display($c);?>


More content:-
<?php $a = new Area('Main1');$a->display($c);?>


Sidebar:-
<?php$as = new Area('Sidebar');$as->display($c);?>



My site did have nine 'Main' areas, no sidebar and two 'navs' and all worked.

Just pick a theme that has the layout you want and modify it.

With CSS you can change just about everything!