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let me start by saying I am currently a design student still new at HTML5/CSS and this is my first post here! I have been searching all over for a definitive answer with no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated! :)

Basically, after spending a quarter learning about RWD, I agreed to do a responsive redesign of a very simple, 4-5 page site for a friend's retail business. No problem. But, as soon as we started talking, the subject of a blog came up, as well as their Big Cartel shopping cart. I know there are responsive themes available for both and I've found a few that look promising, but what I'm wondering is; Do these play well inside another responsive site? I am actually learning WP from the ground up next quarter but, the plan was to have the site up by the New Year. I realize the answer might be to create the entire website as a WP site but, I don't know if I have the time to learn that right now. I took a quick look at this page but I don't know much about PHP, yet. Plus, that still would leave the Big Cartel site as a potential problem. Worst case scenario, they don't mind the shopping cart opening in a new window, styled similarly to the main site.

Pretty much all of the "design" takes place in the header/footer and the CMS/shopping cart would be between those. Perhaps that would help make it easier? I figured I could just remove all of the theme's navigation, etc. Also, it doesn't have to be WP, just something reliable that the client can use to easily post news, new items, events, etc. Only the main page would have the blog embedded. I made a little illustration to make sure I'm being clear. This is what I'm thinking:

(Bah, can't post images yet) https://i.stack.imgur.com/yXjCj.png

My question really is, what's the easiest way of doing this?

Can I just drop those elements into an iframe or..???

I will continue to research and play around, I just don't have a lot of time. This project got much more difficult very fast. Perhaps it's not as difficult as I think? That'd be nice.

Also, if it makes any difference, the WP(.com) theme I was leaning towards is humdemo.wordpress.com and the Big Cartel theme might be tiska.wearenine.com . Again, I am unfamiliar with WP and not sure how much customization is allowed with wordpress.COM themes.

Okay, enough rambling. Thanks in advance for any help! Other solutions are encouraged!

Matt
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  • I have never used big-cartel before, but do you have full access to style it how you wish? If so what is stopping you creating the main site in that(I assume they will give you a master header and footer) and then adding a link to a wordpress blog inside the big-cartel site? Meaning the big-cartel would be the 'main' area of the site and wordpress just the blog on side? – 1321941 Dec 13 '12 at 19:12
  • Not a bad idea. Unfortunately, I have not used Big Cartel either and that particular theme isn't free (which is why I haven't played around with it yet). I am not sure if they give you a master header/footer but they do have blogs built-in, so it's worth looking into. My only concern is having either the CMS or BigCartel dictating the design, especially things like typography. Lots to learn but, all of this will be very handy to know in the future. –  Dec 13 '12 at 19:22
  • Take a look at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/big-cartel-plugin/screenshots/ didnt seem too bad, if you try to create two instances of wordpress and bigcartel then you will need two different layouts as they both work in different ways, from what I can see the easiest and quickest way would to find a big cartel plugin for wordpress and run the site through that. However, if the theme has a blog functionality that could be quick? – 1321941 Dec 13 '12 at 19:26
  • Thanks, but I still wonder how that solution would work with responsive themes and that would still mean designing the site as a WP site. Something I have not yet learned and again I don't want the theme dictating the design. The Big Cartel theme I mentioned (Tiska) does have a blog and I just realized it does support Google fonts so that might be the answer. Again, it just comes back to how customizable is it really? I am not even so sure about simple things like, can I float in some text (address, phone and hours) to the right of the logo? Because there is nothing there in the theme. –  Dec 13 '12 at 19:35

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From what I can tell bigcartel.com itself is not responsive and I'm not sure entirely how they allow users to implement their store to their personal sites. Many of these store fronts use iframes or have you style a custom theme to match your theme but I'd venture to guess that since their site is not responsive then they do not have responsive store front themes to work with. Now Bigcartel does have a WP plugin and perhaps if your WP theme is responsive this plugin will too react to the theme but again having never used it you'll have to try and see.

There are other shopping cart options however which would require more work such as WooCommerce which is responsive.

Hope this helps.

svsdnb
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