How Stavanger Golf Club Revamped Their Site in a Weekend with Canvas

Overview

In April 2013, Magnus Jepson took on a challenge: give the Stavanger Golfklubb website a professional refresh. The club needed a clean layout, highlight news items, display course info, support member login, and showcase sponsors. To achieve this, Magnus choseCanvasas the parent theme and set up all modifications in a lean child theme.

Preparing a Lean Child Theme

Rather than tampering directly with the Canvas files, a child theme was created containing only style.css, functions.php, and a custom.css. In functions.php, unnecessary features were stripped out: the feedback script, default site width, auto-generated style output, and meta tags revealing theme details. The navigation was moved into the header, and links for two Google Fonts (Coda and Arvo) were enqueued.

Crafting the Custom Header

The header gained an extra contact area above the main menu via a woo_header_inside hook. A custom header_address() function was added, outputting HTML for address and phone details. This small tweak instantly lifted the site’s professionalism and improved visitor access to key info.

Building a Dynamic Homepage

A new home.php template borrowed from index.php was built to arrange the homepage sections: a full-width image slider, a news feed that excluded one category, course details pulled from regular page queries, a Golfbox login widget, and a sponsor carousel. The slider followed the WooThemes business slider tutorial but required a custom CSS overhaul to span the browser’s full width. Flexslider powered both image and sponsor slides, with sponsors managed via the WP125 plugin. To sprinkle in scalable icons, the EightyShades web-font was referenced in style.css, making it trivial to add decorative icons with a single class.

Optimizing with Plugins

Instead of heavy themes loaded with unnecessary bells, a curated plugin stack kept the site nimble and secure.Better WP Securitylocked down common attack vectors.Codestyling Localizationenabled translation to Norwegian.W3 Total Cacheboosted performance.WooSidebarsused custom sidebars per page, andWordPress SEOfine-tuned titles and meta tags.

Results and Next Steps

In around 10 hours over a single weekend, the site was completely overhauled. The new layout is easy to update, mobile-friendly if desired, and loads faster. Sponsors, news, and course details are front and center. Unlike typical lengthy projects, this was wrapped up quickly thanks to the child-theme approach and targeted plugin choices. If you’re looking to revamp a site without bloat, this blueprint shows how to keep scope tight and deliver big impact in a small window.

Lessons Learned

Child themes simplify updates by isolating all custom work. Removing unused theme features trims code and reduces load time. Focused plugins maintain speed and security, while custom templates tailor pages exactly to client needs. These tactics combined made this project both fast and robust.