Themeforest.com question about templates.

[Mr.Cheese]

I want to make a website for myself using a template because I have never made one before.

Themeforest.com was recommended by a friend, but I don't know what type of template to use. I'm guessing it's between Wordpress and PSD. I noticed that the wordpress templates are fully functioning and intricate, while the PSD ones do not have anything spectacular. In fact, you can preview the wordpress templates and you can't preview PSD templates.

I read a little about wordpress and I downloaded the program to start learning it. I had to download something else for it because I'm on a Mac.

Also, I HAVE ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE 2 on my Mac. So, I am wondering: will I get to use Adobe at all if I am using a wordpress template? I'm trying to figure out if I can edit images in photoshop and then insert them in the template?

I would like to use Adobe for most of the graphics work and design. I'm just not sure which route to go.

Any guidance please???

 

[iniedrauer]

I'm not certain I entirely understand your question, so correct me if I say something you already know...

A WordPress theme (I presume this is what you mean by "template") consists of PHP and CSS files. These are all editable in Adobe Dreamweaver. Photoshop or Fireworks can handle the images.

The most entry-level way to edit a WordPress theme is to find the images in the folder and make changes to them. You need to place the entire theme folder in /wp-content/themes/ folder. First you need to install the theme, and then you can make changes.

You will probably have to made some changes to the styles.css file if you change the dimensions of any images.

 

[Mr.Cheese]

Yes, you cleared up a lot of things for me; Thanks!

I'm basically creating a music website to feature my work. It will have a menu where I can click on something like "Music" and it will take me to a music portfolio. The music portfolio will have descriptions by each song title and a picture along with it to give each song some visual character. Users will be able to click on the picture (or a play button) to open up an audio player that will play the song. I may or may not want to have a "but it now" button that will link users to Paypal.

There will be contact/information, biography, and services pages as well, among others.

Do you use wordpress? If so, is it difficult to do things like change the color of items or the background; or change the shape of buttons and move them to different locations? This of course, from a beginner perspective.

Any good links or anything you can kind of guide me towards, at this point, would be helpful!

 

[Phreaddee]

have you considered trying bandcamp?
its already built for you to do that,

all you need to then concentrate is getting your music up. which ideally is what you want right? to get it out there.

once you've set it up, you can purchase your own domain and have it sent to your bandcamp account.

also it has the ability to charge for music if you desire to do so.
the user can download in any format they want, it gives you good enough statistics, and its free.

not only that it can also embed into your facebook account, so you can do fantastic social media marketing as well.

why reinvent the wheel, particularly if you dont make wheels to begin with.

 

[Mr.Cheese]

Yeah, I heard of bandcamp.
I'm reading more about it now. But I don't know if this is what I want. I want to have an artist page and everything to be integrated on my website. I want to customize the pictures and the layout. The most important thing for me is customize-ability. And I don't necessarily want to sell my music either, I just want to have that option in case I will in the future.

Just checked - the maximum size is 250 mb, and 600 mb after you have sold over $20 worth. I have about 100 songs I want to display. All I really want to do is showcase my music so people can contact me to purchase. Bandcamp would not give me enough space.

Let me also clarify. I make instrumentals. I do not plan on recording artists on my instrumentals. So, in part, this is a major reason why I don't necessarily want to sell my music. Of course, if a person decides they want to buy a song, I would like to offer them the song.