We did build the new Advances site for the School of Public Health using Wordpress. http://www.advances.umn.edu/
I usually build all of my themes from the ground up for the most part. Or I'll take an existing theme if it's necessary and strip the life out of it so it's a complete custom build. For the Advances site, the default index file (page) is a custom page mainly static PHP that pulls many of our feeds in from other sites we host. I have created a few custom loops that pull news content in from the actual WP database. Additionally, we created a fully customized mobile version of this site too.
I don't believe WP looks for broken divs in the code to my knowledge, I usually use the developer tool bar or firebug to check for errors like that. The only issues I've noticed is our feeds and YouTube embeds throw some validation errors, but we need our videos to work on the mobile platform for all devices. Which has proven to be a challenge being that YouTube hasn't supplied good "embed" fix for this yet to our knowledge, other than the new html5 iframe embed.
I've never run into a version upgrade that has yet to affect the themes, but then again 3.3 is out now and that will have to be monitored when we make the upgrade. If we ever need to use a similar theme for our other site brands, I'll keep the same structure created, then tweak or apply changes once integrated. We originally were going to go with the multisite setup, but realized it was still a bit too quarky for our needs. I hope WP will focus more on the multisite development in the near future. I think there's a lot of potential there.
Wordpress is fantastic and I've yet to find something I can't do with it yet. If there ever is a group discussion, I'd love to be a part of it.
--
Tim Beaufoy
Web Developer/Designer612-625-3218
School of Public Health
University of Minnesota
Room A-302 Mayo MMC 197
420 Delaware Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455
On 12/14/2011 8:34 AM, Jeffrey Abuzzahab wrote:Nice and clean! I like your sites much better than my Twenty Ten mod.
Did you build the theme from the ground up? If yes:
Did you run into any problems using your own HTML? Did WP ever try looking for a div that was missing, or if you get the PHP in the right place you are good to go!
Do version upgrades to WP impact your theme?
Is the same theme used for all three sites? Is a parent-child theme method used.
This is great inspiration! I think WP is going to be a seamless part of our web systems. Thanks for sharing!
-Jeff
On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 3:36 PM, Rachel Lam <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I've made a variation of the UofM template that we're using in CFANS.
a couple live sites:
http://canolaresearch.horticulture.umn.edu/
http://enology.umn.edu/
http://fpmdi.bbe.umn.edu/
I'm happy to talk about it with anyone who is interested.
- Rachel
> Hey!Rachel Lam
>
> We are using Wordpress for some academic projects here, some of which will
> be public facing.
>
> I modified a copy of the Twenty Ten theme to include the UofM header and
> footer and it seems to be working alright.
>
> Before I finalize this for production I wondered if anyone else is working
> in Wordpress and would be up for discussing lessons learned making a UofM
> theme.
>
> Keep the css separate, unique ways to make a parent theme... etc.
>
> I think it will be a fun discussion!
>
> -Jeff
--
Information Technology Professional
College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences
101 Coffey Hall
1420 Eckles Ave
University of Minnesota
St. Paul, MN 55108
Phone: 612-624-3619
Email: [log in to unmask]
--
Jeffrey Faruk Abuzzahab
Web and Multimedia Lead
College of Education & Human Development
Tel: 612-624-6034 | E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Can't get a hold of me?
Contact the web team at [log in to unmask]
--
Tim Beaufoy
Web Developer/Designer612-625-3218
School of Public Health
University of Minnesota
Room A-302 Mayo MMC 197
420 Delaware Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55455