Help me choose a Wordpress theme, please!

November 21, 2010 12:47 AM

I need a theme for a new Wordpress site I'm making about hot springs in Japan. I have a large Bento database of over 200 location with reviews, pictures, addresses, types of baths, and so on... I've found a way to automatically turn the CSV file that Bento makes into the pages I want... I just need a template to put those pages into. Something simple and more geared to hosting static pages rather than a blog. I've spent hours searching through all of these theme websites only to get confused in the 1,000s of choices. So I'm asking you, the MiFi community, to choose for me. Thanks!

The current site is iloveyu.jp which I was making in Rapidweaver. I thought I found a way to make automatically static pages, but that didn't work out, so I'm switching to Wordpress.

My previous blog has some examples of what the pages would look like.

posted by sleepytako to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

This is not the "right" answer, as it's something that you'll need to do some custom engineering to achieve. In my opinion, you'd ideally want to make use of Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies.

For example, my friend built and runs a Wordpress powered site that uses custom posts for the shops, and then custom taxonomies for the people and brands. Now, if you click on an individual person or brand, it automatically tells you how you which shops they're associated with, and an individual shop would tell you which brands are sold there.

It sounds to me like you would benefit from a similar kind of thing. You could then use static pages for the About and Learn section.

I'm guessing, based on your question, (and apologies if I'm wrong) that what I've described is beyond your current means, but if you want to get started, there are tons of great resources out there.

In terms of importing data - I'm not a MySQL expert, but it's just going to be a case of importing different CSV columns into different bits of the database. Ideally, you'd have another bit of custom code for it. But maybe someone more experienced can advise you on a useful tool.
posted by Magnakai at 3:42 AM on November 21, 2010

Best answer: My favourite theme is Hybrid. It has a great community and some awesome support (requires a membership fee of $25/year). I'd recommend it just so you have access to the support.
posted by backwards guitar at 6:18 AM on November 21, 2010

There actually is a CSV importer that can handle custom taxonomies, which sounds pretty slick. That would let you get more out of your data (eg, show only 4-star onsen, show only onsen in Niigata, etc).

Choosing a theme is one of those personal decisions that other people can't necessarily make for you, but if you limit yourself to some best-of lists (there are lots out there) you can cut out a lot of chaff. Here's one. Getting a theme to work with a custom taxonomy might take some tweaking.
posted by adamrice at 8:19 AM on November 21, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks for the great info... I really want to do what Magnakai talks about, but I lack the time to really study it. And I looked at the CSV importer, but again, found it too time consuming to learn. I have a slight deadline because I'm being featured in a local magazine and I want to get something more substantial online before it gets distributed.

The Hybrid Prototype theme seems to be what I'm looking for. Thanks backwards guitar!

BTW, I'm using the paid TurboCSV plugin to import the shopdata for now and it seems to work well.
posted by sleepytako at 6:37 PM on November 21, 2010