Stumped About WordPress Theme

[Robin]

OK, so I have my blog, Crooked Glasses, that I recently finished writing on for a while, and I want to update its layout before March. However...I am absolutely stumped as to what to do, and how to do it.

What I want:
- Responsive design
- Teal blue/white with a bit of black
- 2-column desktop display, 1-column for mobile

(I've mocked up a design like this already, though it's a bit plain: Big concerns:
- I has a herp derp when it comes to working with Wordpress (I almost broke this blog trying to fix it before -_-)
- None of the 1000+ posts are formatted for mobile; many use tables for info organization, for instance
- I used <p> classes for headings and subheadings in my posts, instead of <h1>, <h2>, etc., and I don't think <p> classes translate on mobile very well :/

So...should I just scrap this Bootstrap layout and just install a premade theme, or would a premade theme face these exact same issues? Do I need to do some groundwork beforehand?

[nyxmidnight]

Note to self: come back to this here thread. I will help you!

[Robin]

Oops, I forgot to add that I'd like to put up an Article Series page to collect all of my various post series together, but, as you can see, it's suuuuuuuuuper rough and suuuuuuuuper time-consuming. So, while I'm tackling the layout, I'd like to find a more automatic way to grab posts with similar titles and congregate them in a list.

(Pretty sure there's some PHP/MySQL magic that can make this happen, but alas, writing PHP is a bit beyond me still.)

[nyxmidnight]

Okay I am back.

I am currently viewing source on your blog and while it hurts a bit I don't think it's unsalvageable. The main issue with the formatting using p everywhere is for semantics, SEO and searches, but I think it can be overcome. As for the tables, there is most likely a plugin to make them responsive automatically. Series could be harder, I'm thinking either a plugin or custom fields.

For the layout itself, I think you shouldn't start from scratch, but rather use a framework based on bootstrap to start with most of the back-end work done for you.

Okay back from searching for a framework and most of them are understandably not free, so perhaps you'd be better off with a premade layout that I could help you modify. If you want something really bare, I've found this one. You can also look at these and see if something pleases you.

(If you wanna splurge on a paid premade theme, there's always ThemeForest.)

What template/theme are you using right now? Can I see it?

ETA: I also like this theme a lot. The navigation is off-canvas, so on mobile it will hide behind the hamburger menu icon :D

[Robin]

I actually built my current Wordpress theme myself back in 2011, though I heavily referenced the Twenty Ten theme (at least I think it was the Twenty Ten and not Twenty Eleven). I've made some small edits over the years for color, style, navigation issues, etc, but the bones of it have remained the same.

The "Flat" design you linked (last link in your post) looks SUPER cool. I could really see editing that for font choice and colors and uploading that summagun. :D

I'll have to do some searching for plugins to help with the bad formatting--I've not had a lot of luck with plugins before, but hopefully there will be something for the hapless pseudo-developer out there, LOL!!

[Robin]

Are you familiar with child themes? You take a (pre-made) theme as your base (called parent theme), then create another folder with just your CSS file and a functions.php file and write a little code in your CSS file to read the parent theme folder's files and CSS file. Using your child theme's CSS file, functions.php file, and so forth, the customization possibilities are endless and a lot easier, plus it won't break your (parent) theme if you went "overboard" with your changes and if your (parent) theme has got some updates.

Yeah, I finally learned about child themes this January when I broke down and used the Twenty Fourteen theme as a parent for my blog and update log! SO MUCH EASIER. Kinda mad at myself because I couldn't build my own themes after all, but I was also sick of the headaches this was giving me, LOL. Responsive development is very hard for somebody untrained/non-logical/non-mathematic like me xD

[Robin]

Awesome! That's a good trick--I will definitely use that :D