WordPress integration
Once you have completed the design of your PhotoDeck website, you can export it as a WordPress theme. This way, your blog will appear to be completely integrated into your website.
The resulting WordPress theme is based on WordPress’ default Twenty-Ten theme, which is part of WordPress 3.0 (and above) distributions. If the Twenty-Ten theme is already installed (which is normally the case), all you need to do is install onto WordPress the custom PhotoDeck theme (zip file).
The theme has multiple widget areas, so it is easy to customize it with blog archives, linkrolls, tag clouds and any other WordPress widget.
Note that for best results, the block that normally contains the images on your website should be at least 950px wide.
How to install your theme on your WordPress blog
Once you have downloaded your custom WordPress theme, log onto your WordPress blog as an admin and go to: “Appearance / Install Theme / Upload”.
WordPress limitation: if you want to update a former custom WordPress theme, you will have to delete it first. (If it is active, you have to switch to another theme before being able to delete it).
NOTE: www.wordpress.com does not allow the installation of custom themes. Most website hosting services offer full-fledged WordPress blogs, though.
Note to Safari users when downloading your custom theme
By default, Safari automatically opens downloaded zip files, whereas WordPress requires the theme zip file. To work around this, you have 2 options:
- Re-create a zip archive of the downloaded folder (“PhotoDeck-WP”)
- or change Safari’s behavior so that it does not open the downloaded file: Safari > preferences > General > uncheck “Open safe files after downloading”
” Once you have completed the design of your PhotoDeck website, you can export it as a WordPress theme. ”
Great! … how?!
You can do that under My Website-Style and Layout, over on the right.
My issue is–I selected the Photodeck WordPress theme thinking it would allow me to have colors match the site, etc., but I wasn’t expecting it to bring in the pane where I have my list of galleries, etc. I don’t understand how to modify that. For example, look at http://www.eonimages.com, and then go to the blog link. I didn’t expect my blog would have to fit within the main content frame. I’d like to have all the top navigation stuff, but not the other components of the website. The blog itself should be able to have its own categories, etc, without being cluttered by also having all of the web page components.
How do I keep the blog separate but still be able to have a theme with the same logo, overall width or dynamic aspect of the page design, etc.?
Sorry, such a blogging novice…
Hi Diana,,
The purpose of the export feature is indeed to match exactly the layout of the website with the blog, including the menus, so that it is perfectly integrated.
If you want to remove some of the components in the blog theme, you (or someone else familiar with html) with have to edit the WordPress theme manually (look for the header.php and footer.php files within the theme’s zip fie).
hi, is the blog integration possible with photodeck LITE account?
The WordPress theme export is part of the Style and Layout editor, which is not available in the LITE plan.