Designing CMS layout, not sure where to start

[otectom]

Hello all, as you can see by my post count I am pretty new to vb. I have searched the boards (lightly) for related topics but have not found conclusive answers to my specific questions.

I am currently in the process of moving my entire website from wordpress to vb. The problem is that I'm not sure where to start to modify the layout of the homepage like I would like it. I'm not looking for an exact copy of my wp site (although it would be nice), but simply to make vb look a little bit more like it.

My wp site is located at - http://www.overtheedgecustoms.com
My vb site is located at - http://www.teamotec.net

I understand how to handle the side bars in vb so we can skip past that. What I'm most concerned with is the layout of the post previews. I would LOVE to incorporate the image rotator that I currently have on my wp site. Is there a plugin for such a thing or would it have to be coded in manually? If so where? If the rotator is a little to advantageous, where/how can I increase the size of the image associated with the first post? This is the most important thing for me to get right currently, as my site is focused on high quality photography, where large colorful images count.

After that is taken care of I would like to modify the posts below as well. On my wp site you will see there are three headings in white text. Below these headings there are post previews. The previews are sorted by category under each heading. Is it possible to control vb this way? If not is it possible to force posts to skip the first position without having to always set which post hits the first position?

OR is it possible to convert the wp theme into vb? This would be the easiest option for me, but I don't know if such a thing is even possible.

OR does anyone have another creative solution that would allow me to keep the look and feel of my wp site with full integration into vb? (ex: display the wp homepage minus the header and footer AND merge all users so comments can be posted in wp with single vb account login?)

Any input on this project would be greatly appreciated as I am currently in way over my head.

[Lynne]

If you go to the 4.x mods forum, there is a prefix selector at the top and you can select to view only the CMS Widgets - https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/forumdisp...c&daysprune=-1 So, you can browse through those and see if there is an image rotator widget already created.

[setishock]

Here's a handy dandy little script I use at my place >
http://www.alistapart.com/d/randomizer/rotate.txt
You can leave everything as it is. It's a tiny 4K file.
Create a folder with the images you want to rotate through. I sized mine at 250w x an average of 158h. The height varies and the widget streches to fit. Drop the rotate.php file in with them. Works best with 50 or less images in the folder. Shoot them up on your ftp. Remember where you parked them.
In the cms HTML widget put the path to the folder as you normally would do an img src image call except the image path ends with rotate.php. If you call the rotate.php more than once from different spots, all of them will display the same image at the same time. One folder, one call.
You're done. Go admire your handywork. Refresh the screen or jump to another page and come back.
Oh and it works in the sidebar widgets. www.animeappeal.com

[otectom]

Thanks for the speedy answers! Seti, I have actually used that same rotator script in the past with excellent results.

Perhape, however I should have clarified, the image rotator on my wp site links to recent posts. Different image takes you to it's corresponding post. It is a flash program (I think, didn't code it myself) that loads a post's main image, link and preview text into a rotating image.

As I said before, this may be a bit too advanced for me to start off with, if so is there any advice on changing the size of that first image?