This topic contains 3 replies, has 2 voices, and was last updated by 
- Posts
Hi, love the theme! I have a relatively novice question. I have a website jobstr.com but our blog sucked, so I opted instead to install WP at jobstr.net and blog there instead.
Now I want to hire a cheap freelancer to re-style the header and footer of the StartupWP theme to exactly match (or close to it) the header and footer at jobstr.com. In short, when a user clicks Blog from jobstr.com, they’ll be taken to the jobstr.net blog, but for all intents and purposes, I want it to look nearly identical to the main jobstr.com site.
Did that make sense? If so, my questions are simply these:
1) All I’m planning on doing is hiring a WP expert from oDesk and asking him to customize the header and footer of the StartupWP blog…I figure that’s much easier than asking them to replicate the HTML/CSS of jobstr.com to create a custom WP theme of my own. Is that all I really need to do? Is it that simple a request?
2) If I customize the header and footer will I lose any of the functionality or compatibility of the StartupWP theme? One of the reasons I don’t want to build a custom WP theme from scratch is that I like how simple and powerful the StartupWP theme is…I just want to make sure that I’m not sacrificing any of that if I customize the header/footer.
3) Which files should I point my WP guy to when asking him to edit (I assume he’ll know, but want to be sure.)There are many avenues to take for what you’re trying to accomplish.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Integrating_WordPress_with_Your_Website
Some people would just iframe jobstr.net to jobstr.com/blog, but we don’t recommend that as you lose basic SEO and user-friendliness.
Any decent web designer that you work with be able to get the integration done without “losing” any parts.
So, it’s not a matter of the possibilities, it’s a matter of finding the right pro. This can be a difficult task.
Post on http://craigslist.org/ and http://jobs.wordpress.net/ that you’re looking for a web designer/programmer with WordPress experience. Don’t pay for any premium job listings anywhere else, you won’t get any better results or different candidates. At this point, screen screen screen until you have narrowed down to someone you’re fairly confident with.
Thanks for the reply, and indeed you’ve answered the “parent” issue, and what you suggested — integrating WP into my existing site — is indeed what I ultimately want to do. But for now (given limited resources) I want to, at the very least, go with my “low-budget” solution of simply skinning jobstr.net to look like jobstr.com.
If the user checks his address bar, he may well realize that he’s on .net, and yes, I know that I’ll be losing the basic SEO juice of my blog posts. In other words, yes, I’m aware that it’s very sub-optimal, but my goal for now is to just get up and blogging, and my developer is occupied with other projects.
So, aside from the above drawbacks of my proposed low-budget solution:
1) Will I risk losing / compromising any of the StartupWP theme’s functionality if I have a WP programmer re-style the header and footer?
2) Assuming that I ultimately focus my attention on the better solution of full WP integration on jobstr.com, will I be able to still use the StartupWP theme? Or will the theme necessarily have to be a custom job built specifically for the site I’m integrating it into?1. As answered above:
“Any decent web designer that you work with [should] be able to get the integration done without “losing” any parts.“
So to elaborate further, of course there’s a chance that a web designer with a low skill set or work ethic could cause you issues. But inherently, no, there isn’t anything about what you’re trying to do that instantly results in a compromise or loss of options in any way.
2. Through child theming (https://startupwp.com/topic/child-theming/) you can still utilize the options of Startup or StartupPro and essentially completely alter the look safely.
Although these are difficult questions to answer based on their subjective and speculative nature, we hope the information we’ve provided has been helpful.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.