One of the most challenging things for any Web Developer is to make a site easy to amend for their clients without the client potentially breaking the website every time they make an update.
As we have said many times previously, we know Divi is a great ‘out of the box’ Web building tool and is fantastic for ease of editing via the page builder.
Sometimes though, we want to build a site that looks as unique as possible – and even with Divi, this is totally possible. We have seen what the Uber talented Melissa Love does with her child themes and we know that using a child theme is pretty much essential if you are going to get a great result that is consistent with your design and layout ideals.
The featured site here was built by Andrew Palmer – one of our founders here at Elegant Marketplace.
The site was designed by another developer using a theme bought from a well known wordpress theme store and as with a lot of themes, the actual management of the back office is a learning curve. This particular theme needed a high knowledge of HTML, PHP and CSS even for the client to upload simple product shots and images.
The client approached Andrew and his team with a view to redesigning the site with an easier back office system but wanted to keep the look and feel as they were happy with that.
Here’s what the team did:
Downloaded the content, images and Database using the WordPress Exporter and myphpadmin functions.
Initiated a Divi install and made a child theme
Installed Woocommerce for the product content and built a plugin to take away the ecommerce aspects of WOO. (Plugin will be available on here soon)
Installed Revolution Slider as the Divi Slider just did not cut it – we talk about revolution slider here
Added a few key CSS tricks to make the text as we wanted it to appear in the sliders with different colours, weight and size
Added the rest of the content and launched.
Made a login for the client that excluded access to plugin install, The Editor and most Admin functions.
Trained the client on amending slides, adding content and basic SEO techniques.
By using Divi, making a child theme and building the site in this way, the team saved time, effort and money – AND allowed the client to keep their much loved design. Because a Child Theme was used, the client and the developers need not worry about future updates Affecting the website – even more reason to use a child theme don’t you think?
