Changing from Baskerville2 to Canard
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I am wanting to redesign my website to become more of a news blog or magazine. How challenging is it to do this, and is there a way to learn without ruining what I have already made? I am nervous about making changes as it seems overwhelming with all the information and I made this a few years ago.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi @susandunncobb,
Thank you for reaching out. Am sorry to hear that you are nervous about loosing a content that has been created with lots of efforts after a new theme installation.
There are few options to ensure your content security, but as long as Backup requires Business or higher plan, lets focus on the free available option- test the appearance before installing a Theme.To see how your content looks like in a new Theme, first choose a Canard theme: https://wordpress.com/theme/canard. Then press Open Live Demo > Try & Customize > Here you can check how your blog will look like in a new Theme. But at this point Canard Theme is not installed yet, it is only a preview window. Press “X” in the upper left corner to return without installation, or press “Activate and Save” if you are ready to install current Theme. If necessary, this article explains same steps: https://wordpress.com/support/themes/#view-themes
Does this help? In any case, we would be happy to hear from you!
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Hi there,
If you want to redesign a site without messing up your current site, the best way to do that is to create a second, private site in your account you can use as a test site. Import content from your main site to the test site, and then you can try out different themes, play with the layout and customization options, etc. on the test site.
Once you find something you’re happy with, you can then activate the new theme on your actual site, and replicate the settings and customizations from your test site.
The Try & Customize option mentioned above lets you do this to some extent, but it’s limited to only the options directly in the Customizer itself. I always use a test site to try stuff prior to switching themes instead.
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Thank you. I was just getting ready to ask if I could do something like this and you filled in the missing links for me as I was trying to formulate the right question. I appreciated the quick response from the first answer but when I tried it, I noticed it wasn’t going to work out. My idea to change my website is a complete change from the original and so I have to redo most of it. I am okay with that, but your plan seems to be the best way to go about it.
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Just double checking…would I start with “add new site”? Is this the place where you develop the second private site in the account.
Thanks, again. I am very much “illiterate” when it comes to all of the vocabulary and locations in doing this stuff. I sit and stare at words until I think I know what they might mean, lol. -
Hi @susandunncobb,
Yes, “add new site” is the right place to create a second website under same account, as described in this article: https://wordpress.com/support/create-a-blog/#adding-a-new-site-or-blog-to-an-existing-account.
Also you can start from here: https://wordpress.com/website-builder-website/For this part:
My idea to change my website is a complete change from the original and so I have to redo most of it.
What exactly do you want to change? Something more than a new theme? Please tell us how do you imagine a new website, we would be happy to hear and help.
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I want to make it like a news site; specifically the five visuals on Canard would allow some categories. I work on behalf of a cause and there are ongoing cases, events, changing legal issues, activities of leaders, and daily news. I felt like the five visual blocks would be a good way to organize and divide those categories in a way that could be easily seen.
Also, there is going to be a podcast, I have files and pdf’s to share, music videos from those who are writing songs for this issue, and I thought that might fit in a sidebar.
We are expanding to other social medias and then there is the aspect of archiving some of what I started with so it is still accessible (and findable). I have made many videos which I published on a couple Youtube channels but I thought I could put the MP4s directly on my web site if I learn how. I was thinking avoiding Youtube, facebook, and twitter in the future might be wiser, due to all the censoring. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but the writing is on the social media wall. -
I felt like the five visual blocks would be a good way to organize and divide those categories in a way that could be easily seen.
Just a clarification here – the blocks you see at the top of Canard is the Featured Posts section. It’s not something that’s affected by category, but that section will show any posts to which you apply a special dedicated tag. Of course you could make sure that you always tag five posts from five different categories. I just want to make sure you understand how that feature works :)
Also note that there’s something called category pages in WordPress – whenever you publish a post in a category, it automatically generates an archive for that category, where you can see all posts for the specific category. You can link to a category page directly from the site menu.
https://wordpress.com/support/posts/categories/#category-pages-and-menus
Or another approach you can follow is to use a static front page, rather than displaying your posts on the front page. Then you can use multiple instances of the the Blog Posts Block to display posts from different categories, each in their own section on the page.
While I understand why you want to go with Canard, you should know it’s an older theme, and a theme that pre-dates the block editor, so it will likely be retired at some point. If you want to add some future-proofing to the new design, I really encourage you to also look at our newer block-editor themes – the ones appearing at the top when you go to Appearance ->Themes. With them the layout options are restricted only by your imagination in how you combine different blocks.
But if you prefer to go with Canard for now that’s completely fine. It’s not slated for retirement yet, and a retired theme can still work for years after it was retired, so I’m not advising against using it. Just making you aware of other options.
I thought I could put the MP4s directly on my web site if I learn how
You can upload video files directly to your site on the Premium and Business Plan.
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