After the success of the new responsive VoiceCouncil theme, my company was commissioned to develop four new websites, on a tight budget and deadline.

Given these limitations, I decided to architect this in such a way as to minimise the duplication of effort (the DRY principle) across the four sites. Certain elements, such as social media icons, footer, search form, and so on, were largely similar across the different themes. I pulled these together in a parent theme, then developed child themes which defined and overrode the templates and CSS that were unique to any given site.

This was definitely a good decision – style tweaks and bug fixes only needed applying in one central place. Every child theme only contains the absolutely essential overriding components. Even more advanced features, such as a slideshow on the homepage, were built into the core theme, switched on via a config option in the child theme so that the JavaScript assets are only loaded if the slideshow is required.

Looping Live:

The Mobile Musician:

The Vintage Musician:

Music Maker Apps: