Controlling other website’s style, or remake it?

[andyjoe81]

I’m posting this under PHP because the site whose lack of css taste I want freedom from is heavily PHP based.

I have a question for anyone who is interested. I am attempting to design my first wordpress theme for my music studio website’s second iteration. I want this to look clean and professional even in the source code. I want full control over everything, but the one last thorn in my side that I haven’t figured out is how to get full visual control over a function I get from a website called http://www.musicteachershelper.com. They’ve got awesome function in their site, but their form is wretched. I’ve emailed them a couple times begging for more access to customize their stylesheets, but they haven’t promised anything. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? You may know PHP well enough to reinvent musicteachershelper.com’s wheel, but besides that? Or if remaking my own version of this site is my only option, how would you approach that beast if you were a PHP novice like me?

Thanks so much for your time and thoughts!

[TheDoc]

I don’t understand… are you trying to steal another person’s design?

[andyjoe81]

The site MusicTeachersHelper.com has a set of functions you have to pay to access. The features, like booking, billing, and letting customers log in to pay bills and see their schedule, are very nice, and have been very helpful to our business. However, their site is ugly. I want full control over the look of the site. I can modify the login page, but the logged in pages are php files I can’t access. I was just wondering if there is a more customizable plugin or other free or paid site out there that has most of these functions that will give me more control over the look of it?

[john010117]

So you basically want to steal the functionality of the site, redesign it and claim it as your own?

[andyjoe81]

I can configure the login page with my own css, but anything after that I’m concerned that I may not be able to give a new skin because thats in a PHP file I don’t have. I was just wondering if there are any other tricks I’m not aware of to get where I want to go… and I was leaving the door open also for someone to say, "you’re using MusicTeachersHelper.com? Blah blah blah is a better more customizable site that does the same thing!". Sorry if I wasn’t clear to begin with! :-)

[TheDoc]

I gotcha now!

Since I’m not too familiar with the service, a couple questions…

You say you don’t have access to a particular PHP file, but are you using the service on your own server or theirs? There are a lot of programs out there (the majority) that won’t give you the source code, but most of the time the data that gets outputted is on your own server, so you can style it however you want without knowing the source code, you just need to know what the output will look like.

Ah, but I guess if you can’t access the files, you probably can’t stick a new stylesheet in the header… you might be able to *cringe use some iframes, though there might be some security issues with logging in.

[andyjoe81]

Yeah, this is a service entirely separate from my server. I was only able to snag the code for their login page, but everything else I guess is out of my hands. Are you saying that if I iFrame it I’ll be able to control it’s style? I wasn’t aware that iframes worked that way. Hey, thanks to everyone for their help on this.

[vroooomtech]

"andyjoe81" wrote:

Yeah, this is a service entirely separate from my server. I was only able to snag the code for their login page, but everything else I guess is out of my hands. Are you saying that if I iFrame it I’ll be able to control it’s style? I wasn’t aware that iframes worked that way. Hey, thanks to everyone for their help on this.

I believe he’s saying that you could have a page that has your styles on it that also has an iFrame on the page. Within that iFrame would be the site that you want the styles over. This would make it appear that it’s on your site with your styles, but it’s just loading their site in that iFrame.

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