After a winter hiatus, the DACS Web Design workshop/SIG started up again on April 19, 2016.
At this meeting we focused on a website developed by Andy Woodruff for Sofia Chiarandini, a young musician with many talents. http://www.sofiachiarandini.com/
Andy presented a description of the steps he took to get the site up and running. Hosted on dreamhost.com, this process was not entirely smooth, but we learnt from both his experience, and the solutions he found.
See his presentation here (PDF)
We then looked at the current website, both the front-end as well as the admin area, and discussed what Sofia can do to continue the development of her site, and some possible design improvements. My analysis included some of the below observations:
- Tighten the empty space at the top of the page, to make page content more visible in the browser window.
- The main navigation links could be consolidated to avoid a cluttered look
- Edit the CSS for the colors and styling of the calendar to coordinate better with the site color scheme
- Add Social Media links, and a Facebook ‘share’ link
- Write occasional blog posts to keep the website fresh and updated
- The WordPress theme used is “2016”, but it is recommended to activate a “Child Theme” to allow style and code edits
- Be vigilant about keeping the WordPress core files and plugins updated as needed
Next month’s meeting will cover the setup of a WordPress “Child Theme”, an highly recommended protocol for any website running on WordPress. This allows all theme modifications to be done in the Child Theme, avoiding any possible loss of edits when the “Parent Theme” is updated. Join us next month for the full tutorial!
Read more about Child Themes here: https://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes