The last few weeks I’ve been re-designing my kids’ website. Why do a 10 & 12-year old kid need a website? I guess because I can, and besides they both like to take pictures. I set them both up a sub-domain of my backpacking website and I used WordPress as a back end. This way it’s pretty easy to set-up and change.
I also wanted to try and use the “new” Parent/Child themes. I decided on the ‘Hybrid’ framework/parent from ThemeHybrid.
Hybrid is a user-friendly, search-engine optimized theme framework, featuring 15 custom page templates and 8 widget-ready areas, allowing you to create any type of site you want.
I downloaded that and picked ‘Old School’ and went ahead and customized it them…picking two different “themes” since both kids are totally opposite, taste-wise. They both like playing Club Penguin, so I uploaded their characters and used them as their “logo”.
Since I was now a ‘pro’ at creating parent/child themes, it was time to tackle this blog. I was never happy with its SEO capabilities. I did change a few things to make it SEO-friendlier, but it still lacked a few things.
I went with the ‘Hybrid’ framework, but I chose ‘Leviathan’ child theme because it allowed my to use it without columns. I had a problem setting up my menus so they looked identically to the rest of my site. The solution… “Hooks”. The problem….I had no idea how to implement them. After a few hours searching the net, I found how to use my existing menu PHP page and basically link it to my blog menu.
Pretty cool…now I’m “Hooked”!
Mike Matenkosky is a Central Valley California landscape and nature photographer whose favorite locations include the Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Yosemite and the eastern Sierra. He is currently living in Atwater, CA.
The text and photographs are © Copyright Mike Matenkosky (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from Mike Matenkosky.
Very kool Mike. My kids would be jealous as hek… have fun with this excited to see more pictures..
Nice work Mike and they should have a good time with this. Kudos.
I am so glad to see a parent who is “with it.” Too many parents try to hold their kids away from such media as blogs, thinking they are inherently bad. I often get the feeling these parents think we will one day return to the era of card catalogs and typewriters.