First of all I do not know much from WordPress itself. I installed it once couple of years ago and if I remember right things went smooth. This time I did not bother installing it. I usually do html layouts from scratch with Notepad++ so I never really used any of the ready-made themes.
So I looked few themes at WP and decided to go on http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/azul
Looks like typical WP layout, pretty cool and like said "Free, easy to edit and completely standards compliant". Time to press Download button.
After unzippin files it looks like this theme (probably all WB themes) uses one single index.php file which does the work by including header.php, footer.php etc. So it looks like easily do-able.
So here we go...
1. I created empty template in CMSms "Templates" to be my base template.
2. index.php had the main WP theme layout so I open that and looked what other files are included by PHP in it. I copied "header.php, sidebar.php and footer.php" code and replaced php includes in index.php to have an idea of complete page code. This is not necessary but it makes it easier to understand what and where the layout parts are. This can be seen on file index-combined.php which is an attachment.
Now you can start with CMSms theme. I took my CMSms base template and started copying bits from that combined WP theme file I just made into it.
3. looked good in my CMSms base template already so I left it untouched.
4. on WP theme started with so I copied that to base template.
5. Next thing was header and it looked:
Code: Select all
<!-- Header starts -->
<div id="header">
<h1><a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('name'); ?></a></h1>
<a href="<?php bloginfo('url'); ?>"><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></a>
<div id="search">
<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?>
</div>
</div>
<div id="navbar">
<?php wp_page_menu('show_home=1'); ?>
</div>
<!-- Header ends -->Code: Select all
<!-- start header -->
<div id="header">
<h1><a href="#">{sitename}</a></h1>
<a href="#">Description</a>
<div id="search">
{Search}
</div>
</div>
<!-- end header -->
<!-- start menu -->
<div id="navbar">
{menu number_of_levels="1" template="minimal_menu.tpl"}
</div>
<!-- end menu -->Notice here that on menu call I added number_of_levels="1" as I believe layout could only handle one level of navigation. I also included "minimal_menu.tpl" as menu template since it will work out of the box in this case. I feel it should be the default menu template in CMSms if no menu template is specified but it's not.
6. Next I moved to actuall content area.
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<div id="posts">
<?php if(have_posts()) : ?><?php while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" title="<?php the_title(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
<div class="date">
<?php the_time('F j, Y'); ?>
<?php edit_post_link('Edit', ' | ', ''); ?>
</div>
<div class="tags">
<?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', ''); ?>
</div>
<div class="entry">
<?php the_content(); ?>
<div class="commentbubble">
<?php comments_popup_link('0','1','%') ?>
</div>
<p class="postmetadata">
<?php _e('Filed under:'); ?><br />
<?php the_category(', ') ?> <?php _e('by'); ?> <?php the_author(); ?>
</p>
</div>
</div>
<?php endwhile; ?>
<div class="navigation">
<?php posts_nav_link('|','Previous Page','Next Page'); ?>
</div>
<?php else : ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
<h2><?php_e('Not Found'); ?></h2>
</div>
<?php endif; ?>
</div>Code: Select all
<!-- start content -->
<div id="posts">
<h2>{title}</h2>
{content}
</div>
<!-- end content -->Code: Select all
<!-- Start sidebar -->
<div class="sidebar">
<ul>
<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar() ) : else : ?>
<li id="calendar">
<h2><?php _e('Calendar'); ?></h2>
<?php get_calendar(); ?>
</li>
<?php wp_list_pages('depth=3&title_li=<h2>Pages</h2>'); ?>
<li>
<h2><?php _e('Categories'); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats('sort_column=name&optioncount=1&hierarchical=0'); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<h2><?php _e('Archives'); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<?php get_links_list(); ?>
<li>
<h2><?php _e('Meta'); ?></h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_register(); ?>
<li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
<?php wp_meta(); ?>
</ul>
</li>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- End Sidebar -->Code: Select all
<!-- Start sidebar -->
<div class="sidebar">
{content block="Sidebar"}
</div>
<!-- End Sidebar -->Code: Select all
<div id="footer">
<p>Powered by <a href="http://www.wordpress.org">Wordpress</a> | Designed by <a href="http://www.switchroyale.com">Switchroyale</a> 2009</p>
</div>
<!-- End Footer -->
<?php wp_footer(); ?>This is simple. Only thing I do not know is wp_footer so I just removed it. -->
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<!-- Start Footer -->
<div id="footer">
<p>Powered by <a href="http://www.smsms.org">CMS Made Simple</a> | Original Design by <a href="http://www.switchroyale.com">Switchroyale</a> 2009. Converted to CMS Made Simple</p>
</div>
<!-- End Footer -->10. Next thing to do is to copy stylesheet so I found that on style.css file which I copied to a new stylesheet in CMSms "stylesheets" and I attached it to my new template. One last thing and we are to see how things look.
11. stylesheet needs images so I copied them from /images directory to CMSms installations /images directory.
Time to see how things look. I had new CMSms installed with default page content so I went back to templates and pressed "Set All pages" right next to my new template. I looked the pages and things looked very similar than in original design and in WP themes. Very very nice. Ofcourse I cut down lot's WP functionality but I got that template transferred to CMSms with very little work and I would be able to use it normally.
This is just an example of transferring theme from WB system. To move basic layout is very very simple because of CMSms smart(y) templating system. And took me less than 1 hour with this cut down functionality (including downloading and installing XAMPP and CMSms to my home computer. Theme is included as attachment. Use Theme Manager to try it out.
I hope someone finds this inspiring. I could consider adding part of that removed functionality on another post if someone wants. Anyhow it proves that WP themes can be transferred with very little work to CMSms and that brings a lot's of more choise to choose for people who does not have time or experience creating their own templates.
Happy CMSms'ing!
