Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › General Discussion › Two themes on one website
Tagged: multiple themes
- This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 1 month ago by
Tonya.
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December 18, 2013 at 10:27 am #79965
Tonya
MemberI'm fairly new to wordpress and totally new to Genesis framework.
I'm about to start on a website for a uk firm of lawyers who do a range of different work (wills, personal injury claims etc), including real estate.
I was considering using two different themes, one for the real estate section and one for the rest of the website. I've looked at a number of different plugins, which claim to enable multiple themes on the one website (such as jonradio multiple themes) though from what I can gather there are many issues with this. I've also seen it suggested to use multiple installs of wordpress in subdirectories. I have also considered using a subdomain for the real estate part.
I wondered if anyone had any recommendations for how best to do this with Genesis? I'd be really grateful for any advice or suggestions.
Thanks
TonyaDecember 18, 2013 at 3:00 pm #80015David Chu
ParticipantTonya,
Interesting question. I've never seen that plugin before! Who knows, maybe that would do it.When presented with this, I have used separate sites and just linked them together. That's what I did here. Other times I have just used CSS on a single site to gently re-style different sections with other color combos, which preserves some brand unity, and this is my favorite method, as it's simple to manage and has no unusual site complications.
And one can use official "multisite", although that can be a bit complex.
Feel free to share what you finally end up using if you'd like.
Good luck,
Dave
Dave Chu ยท Custom WordPress Developer – likes collaborating with Designers
December 18, 2013 at 3:29 pm #80019chrisrouse
MemberWhat's the intended usage of the site? The "best" approach is probably going to depend on the final end goal of the company. Is the real estate portion considered a separate business within the firm, or just a division. Any particular reason for using two separate themes?
December 18, 2013 at 4:00 pm #80032Tonya
MemberThanks David.
I found your example really interesting. It's something I'd considered doing if I go down the road of a subdomain, but I don't recall actually seeing it done in practice. Thanks for sharing it.
I may try to use CSS modifications on the real estate theme I've chosen and see how far I can stretch it to make the rest of the site how they want it. I'm just concerned it'll be too much of a stretch and I'd be better just starting with another theme.
Thanks again,
TonyaDecember 18, 2013 at 4:25 pm #80042Tonya
MemberChris
The intended use of the site is explain the different areas of work the firm does and attract clients for the firm. It is a UK Law firm and it is mainly clients from the local area that they are trying to attract. They are already blogging and want to have that more integrated into the site than it currently is.
The real estate part of the site is the most important part and will be used to showcase and sell property. It's a division within the firm.
I've decided to use Hans WordPress Real Estate Theme (for Genesis) from Web Savvy marketing as the Real Estate Theme, one of the main reasons being that it's mobile responsive (which they specifically requested). I feel I need the real estate theme to start with as it has all the built in search functionality etc.
My thoughts on having a separate theme for the rest of the site was that the real estate theme is so geared towards presenting real estate that it might feel like having to force the rest of the site into it. I don't want the overall site to have the feel of a real estate website.
They have also specifically requested different side bar menus for each area of expertise of the site, and I'd like to have some flexibility to be able to achieve that. I'm hoping it will be straightforward ๐
If you think it's worth trying to alter the Real Estate theme, that would be good to know.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks
TonyaDecember 19, 2013 at 3:17 am #80152Mealtog
MemberTreetops, unless you have lots of time for trial and error or you have a good grasp on CSS in a responsive environment, that task may be daunting. Reason I say this is changing styles and colors seem easy most of the time but there is always something that needs to be tweaked, especially when CSS now controls the responsive part of the website.
If you really want 2 themes, why not use multisite or just use 2 separate WordPress installs? If you have time, quickly test out multisite, it will do what you want and in fact, you can offer your client 2 separate domains all running under 1 WordPress install. The only downside I can see is that if one site breaks, the other does too. Or if you ever want to move the multisite (secondary domain) to it's own separate WordPress install, that is not easy to do.
Hope that helps.
December 20, 2013 at 4:00 pm #80509Tonya
MemberThanks for the advice Mealtog. I was more than a little concerned about getting too heavily into changing the themes in case it affected the responsive aspect of it - and I don't have much experience in that at all. I'm glad you reminded me of that!
Thanks also for pointing out multi-site - I have used one in the past, though didn't know it was an issue if part broke down, or that transferring it to a new separate installation would be difficult.
I am tempted to go with the two separate installations. I believe I can do one as a subdomain and not have to get extra hosting. I'll give that a go and see how I get on.
Thanks again for your help.
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