Hi There,
I am an amateur web designer migrating my current site from wordpress.com (my current site can be found at www.catalystcooks.com) to wordpress.org (my development site can be found at http://69.89.31.130/~catalyu8/).

I have been playing with Atahualpa for a week, to see if I can achieve my desired look and feel. This forum has been a great resource as I make a decision about what my solution will be (and donate/buy accordingly).

I have also learned how to use Firebug and in addition to getting solutions from this forum, I am using several websites for inspiration (such as http://www.eyebridge.com.au/).

If you compare my development site's CSS to the inspiration site's CSS, my CSS is much more complicated which I know will impact SEO (not to mention how easy it is for me to manage future changes!)

What do any of you recommend ??? Should I keep going in Atahualpa? Try out Themeframe? Learn CSS from scratch and hard code my website myself?

Atahualpa or Themeframe could both do a nice job with your site but like any theme or software will require becoming familiar with. I could probably flesh out the initial look and feel in a few hours but I am not sure how I would explain how to do that in a quick message.

If you have some specific questions that might help you please ask away. One thing I noticed right off the bat though is a HUGE (over 2Mb) background image will will definitely slow down page load.

Also when you say your CSS is more complicated can you give an example?

Hi Larry, I respect your work on this site and have used some of your solutions!

Thanks for the reply.

In regards to your question about simplicity between my site and the inspiration site~ right now I am working on the Menu bar, and trying to get two images for each menu line: a link/visited image and a hover/active image.

On my site (home is a bit broken) my Home menu line CSS look like this:

div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:active, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:visited, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:active, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:visited, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li a:hover {
    color: #F4F4F4;
}
/~catalyu8/ #2 (line 21)
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item > a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item > a:active, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item > a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item > a:visited, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item > a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item > a:active, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item > a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item > a:visited {
    color: #F4F4F4;
}
/~catalyu8/ #2 (line 21)
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li a:visited, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li a:active {
    color: #000000;
    font: 25px "Myriad",Verdana,sans-serif;
    text-decoration: none;
    text-transform: lowercase;
}
/~catalyu8/ #2 (line 21)
a:link, a:visited, a:active {
    color: #666666;
    font-weight: bold;
    text-decoration: none;
}

and on my inspiration site, their menu lines look like this:

#menu .solutions {
    background-image: url("images/tab-solutions.png");
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    height: 160px;
    left: 353px;
    top: 11px;
    width: 134px;
}
style.css (line 25)
#menu a {
    display: block;
    height: 49px;
    outline: medium none;
    position: absolute;
    text-indent: -900%;
    width: 89px;
    z-index: 101;
}

I can understand the CSS from my inspiration site so much better than I can my own; and I'm wondering if I'm modifying/overwriting the Atahualpa theme TOO MUCH to keep my code clean?

PS thanks for the tip on the image. I am just playing around right now and the elements will likely all be changing before my site goes live and I migrate all of the content over.

I just edited your post to make thing more readable,

CSS can be coded different ways and one of the ways is using shorthand, lets look at your firse bit of CSS which is

div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:active, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:visited, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:link, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:active, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:hover, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current_page_item a:visited, 
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li a:hover {
    color: #F4F4F4;
}

wow that is a lot of CSS selectors, you could have each one like this

div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:link {
    color: #F4F4F4;
}
div#menu1 ul.rMenu li.current-menu-item a:active {
    color: #F4F4F4;
}
etc...

but since they are all setting the color to the same thing, putting them all in one statement means you can make one change and it will apply to them all.

Now for a history lesson. Prior to WP release 3, themes had to deal with menus themselves. Atahualpa use a menu scheme called 'Ruthsarian's rMenu' (you can read about it at http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/) which is where the class 'rMenu' and 'current_page_item' or 'current_cat_item' comes from. Since the theme had two menues (for pages and one for categories) the ID's 'menu1' and 'menu2' were used

Now comes WP 3 and it's new custom menu's and guess what - new class names like 'current-menu-item'. If someone used the new custom menu, then the Atahualpa menu styling nolonger worked. If the them had just been re-written so that it used the same names as WP used, you would have half the menu CSS..BUT (there always seems to be a but) then anyone who had added CSS Inserts styling theie menus different would suddenly have their site looking wrong.

So the solution was to use booth sets of CSS selectors to apply the rule.

probably more than you wanted to know, but now you may understand the 'Why is it like that' question.

Hi Juggledad,
Thanks for your help also, I've used your solutions too, thanks.

I appreciate your explanation of, basically, how as wordpress changes the theme too must change (and hopefully be flexible enough to grandfather in all of the code from previous versions of the theme).

The CSS you highlighted that could be simplified, was some that I did not code myself in the "Add HTML/CSS Inserts" menu in Atahualpa; rather, it must be from one of the forms in the theme. Not sure how I could simplify that on my own...

Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on what theme I should use, given my situation? As I mentioned, I'm ready to commit financially to a theme solution, I'm just not sure what to choose.

You are probably looking at the CSS that is part of the theme files and doesn't need to be touched. All CSS that you add would go in the the various style boxes in the theme options such as CSS Inserts.

As for what theme to use my suggestion is Atahualpa (no big surprise there). I have tried and bought many themes and keep coming back to Atahualpa. Others may promise ease of use but so far that promise has not been met. Atahualpa does require some learning but so do all the others.

You may think I am biased and I am because this theme allows me to do what I want to do.

And I'll have to agree with Larry and say use 'Atahualpa' it is the ONLY theme I will use at this point...umm, did you really expect any 'other' answer asking the question on the Atahualpa theme forum

I suspected I might hear- "since you're new I'd go with Themeframe" which is another Flynn product... maybe he's spending more development time there and maybe it's more suited for the current Wordpress (or something like that).

I was intimidated by Atahualpa at first, but have also found that it allows me to do what I want-- as long as I'm not screwing up the CSS and the potential SEO, I'm okay!

You want to be creative, unique? Go Themeframe and never have to hack another theme again. And you can spit out lots of different themes, so much easier than trolling through the ATO's of ATA.
I loved ATA, but I would suggest you go Themeframe.

Here is my take on some of the differences in Atahualpa and Themeframe. Hope this helps. I suspect that some of use still use Atahualpa because that is what we have used for a long time and are comfortable with it. And there are those like Jam who have done a marvelous job of crafting sites with Themeframe.

Atahualpa (Theme)

• Free
• Can make modifications via theme options
• Over 200 settings (This is initially confusing for many)
• Understanding CSS is important if you want to "get creative"
• Adding widget areas, images, etc. is done via html or CSS

Themeframe (Theme creation tool)

• Yearly cost
• Cannot currently make modifications via theme options (this IS planned for a future version however)
• Many areas for configuration however most have sliders and color pickers etc so you can see what you are doing in real time
• Understanding CSS is less important but helpful
• Adding widget areas, images, etc is done via drag and drop
• Requires installing a server environment on your local computer (not a big deal but worth mentioning)

Thanks a million Larry. That is a great, concise explanation of the differences I should take into account. I appreciate it! Still in decision mode- would be great to be able to "try" Themeframe before I buy...

by the way, I decided to continue on with Atahualpa. Still developing my site and navigating CSS and HTML, but liking how things are progressing!

(It's hard to commit to Themeframe without being able to try it first)