Embedding responsive CMS (WP?) and Big Cartel into responsive site?

let me start by saying I am currently a design student still new at HTML5/CSS and this is my first post here! I have been searching all over for a definitive answer with no luck. Any help would be greatly appreciated! 🙂

Basically, after spending a quarter learning about RWD, I agreed to do a responsive redesign of a very simple, 4-5 page site for a friend’s retail business. No problem. But, as soon as we started talking, the subject of a blog came up, as well as their Big Cartel shopping cart. I know there are responsive themes available for both and I’ve found a few that look promising, but what I’m wondering is; Do these play well inside another responsive site? I am actually learning WP from the ground up next quarter but, the plan was to have the site up by the New Year. I realize the answer might be to create the entire website as a WP site but, I don’t know if I have the time to learn that right now. I took a quick look at this page but I don’t know much about PHP, yet. Plus, that still would leave the Big Cartel site as a potential problem. Worst case scenario, they don’t mind the shopping cart opening in a new window, styled similarly to the main site.

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Pretty much all of the “design” takes place in the header/footer and the CMS/shopping cart would be between those. Perhaps that would help make it easier? I figured I could just remove all of the theme’s navigation, etc. Also, it doesn’t have to be WP, just something reliable that the client can use to easily post news, new items, events, etc. Only the main page would have the blog embedded. I made a little illustration to make sure I’m being clear. This is what I’m thinking:

(Bah, can’t post images yet) http://i.stack.imgur.com/yXjCj.png

My question really is, what’s the easiest way of doing this?

Can I just drop those elements into an iframe or..???

I will continue to research and play around, I just don’t have a lot of time. This project got much more difficult very fast. Perhaps it’s not as difficult as I think? That’d be nice.

Also, if it makes any difference, the WP(.com) theme I was leaning towards is humdemo.wordpress.com and the Big Cartel theme might be tiska.wearenine.com . Again, I am unfamiliar with WP and not sure how much customization is allowed with wordpress.COM themes.

Okay, enough rambling. Thanks in advance for any help! Other solutions are encouraged!

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  1. From what I can tell bigcartel.com itself is not responsive and I’m not sure entirely how they allow users to implement their store to their personal sites. Many of these store fronts use iframes or have you style a custom theme to match your theme but I’d venture to guess that since their site is not responsive then they do not have responsive store front themes to work with. Now Bigcartel does have a WP plugin and perhaps if your WP theme is responsive this plugin will too react to the theme but again having never used it you’ll have to try and see.

    There are other shopping cart options however which would require more work such as WooCommerce which is responsive.

    Hope this helps.