A few weeks back I decided it was time to update the Apple Core Labs website. Since I’m now making my living doing Freelance Development I figured it would make sense to have a portfolio look. This would allow me to show, and talk about, some of the applications I’ve contributed to.
Finding a Theme
Since I’m a fan of WordPress it made sense to find a provider of professional quality WordPress themes and buy one. I’m not a web layout professional and my HTML and CSS knowledge is minimal. In the past I would’ve tweaked and poked at the page until I was happy enough with the outcome and leave it at that. Witness the current Apple Core Labs page. It’s minimal at best, which isn’t a bad thing, but now I’d like a bit more.
During my search I considered quite a few Professional WordPress Theme shops but decided I’d go with The Theme Foundry. Why? I love their style. Their themes have an ascetic that’s pleasing to my eye and they’re very functional and professional looking.
In the end I chose the React theme. When I viewed the live demo I knew it was the them for me.
Updating
Now comes the hard part. I have to set aside time to install WordPress as my main site on Apple Core Labs and make sure I maintain all the static pages that are important to me, like RxCalc. That’s where it gets tricky, I think.
Creating pages that display on the home page will be the easy part. The Theme Foundry did a great job making that a no brainer. The thing I’m having trouble with is how do I feature a link to a random static HTML page on the home page without tweaking the template and messing up their fantastic scheme? The page I’m talking about is the beautiful RxCalc page, designed by my friends at Hundred10 Design. It’s a masterpiece and I’d like to keep it, but I’d like to give it a space on the home page, which means doing something special to the WordPress theme. At least I think that’s what I have to do?
What about my weblog?
The Apple Core Labs Weblog is WordPress based, but lives on a sub-domain. It’s easy enough to adapt that to use React. Thank goodness. At least that’s an easy change.
End of Line
Overall I’m really excite about the new look for the site and The Theme Foundry is a real class act. They’ve already been a great help. If you’re looking for a professionally built WordPress Theme I strongly recommend you visit The Theme Foundry.
If there are any React theme, or WordPress, experts out there and you read this, could you lend a fella some advice? How do I feature my static RxCalc page on the main React landing page? Is it possible without changing the template? If you have a suggestion leave a comment or send an email to rob.fahrni@gmail.com. Thank you.
Steve Streza: “Today I shipped the first alpha of Apparchy, which turns Twitter’s official iOS apps into App.net clients. You sign up for a free account on apparchy.net, add your app.net account, and then log into the Twitter app with your Apparchy username and password. Then, the Twitter app will start loading data from app.net through the Apparchy API.”