Adding The Optimizepress Theme To An Existing Site
If you are thinking of adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site (WordPress) you won’t find much information on exactly what will and won’t work. Its not too clear for example, which of the Optimizepress theme’s building blocks (elements) will work within an existing WordPress theme. For that reason I thought I’d go over my own experience of adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site. I hope it helps if you are in the same boat.
I have built a site from scratch using the Optimizepress theme. It was a learning curve for sure but with the included video tutorials and support site, wasn’t too challenging.
Adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site however was a different kettle of fish. With hindsight it may have been easier in this case to add it as a plugin as my initial plan was to use it to simply customise and update my site. As I decided to install the full theme however here’s what I found.
How Optimizepress And WordPress Work Together
First of all adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site is simple within WordPress. Depending on where your site is hosted you can either just install it from a zip file then add the API key that comes with your purchase or via FTP software such as Filezilla. Be sure to take a back up of your site before you do this then if it all goes wrong all is not lost.
When that’s done you just add the OP theme from your WordPress dashboard as normal. Unlike with a standard WordPress theme however you now have two methods of editing pages and posts: The standard WordPress editor and the Optimizepress editor with some grey areas in between.
On installing the theme your old site remains largely unchanged: The fonts and some of the styling will have changed and your menus and navigation will need re-setting. Don’t panic, everything is still there but you will need to move menus and navigation from WP to OP and set up your branding again using the OP set up procedure. At this stage your site is a sort of WordPress /Optimizepress hybrid.
Optimizepress make things fairly easy with numerous video tutorials incorporated into every section of the process. At this point you need to think carefully about why you are adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site. If like me you just want to add some customisation options to spruce the site up you certainly can (but with limitations) I’d suggest however you take a longer-term view and over time, redo all your content the OP way. Here’s why.
Short and Long Term Advantages Of Adding The Optimizepress Theme To An Existing Site
The Optimise Press methodology is to choose from a range of basic page styles and build the pages by adding elements. You can only use the full range of elements however on pages built using the OP live editor. There are some elements that will work on your old theme: Headlines, styled text boxes, dividers, custom header, footer and menu customisation. A lot of the really cool stuff however won’t.
Video players, countdown boxes and so on can’t simply be added to standard WP pages. You can create new landing pages (one of OP’s prime features) from OP’s large selection of styles. Since these won’t usually be appearing on your site navigation there’s no conflict between themes or editors to worry about.
Worth Doing?
In summary: Adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site will give you some nice customisation possibilities right away. But to use it’s full capabilities you will need to recreate your pages via their page building and live editor system. The number of pages and sub pages you have will determine how much work that will involve. The good thing is that you can do this gradually, building up a new menu as you go. Then it’s just a case of loading that menu and its new pages to the theme.
Once you’re familiar with the way Optimizepress does things you’ll be able to decide how to organise your new pages. Then just copy and paste your content accordingly.
As mentioned at the top, in this particular case the plugin version would possibly have been smarter. My intention is however to give the site a full OP makeover so I’m happy with the choice. I’ve been able to do quick site refresh without making drastic changes and can work away in the background to make use of the full feature set. Adding the Optimizepress theme to an existing site then has some great short and long term benefits.
