KeyToKorean.com

Visit KeyToKorean.com →

Key To Korean is one of my personal “pet” projects. I started this website back in September 2012 with TWO goals in mind:

  1. To motivate myself to learn Korean to fluency
  2. To provide supplementary (“blended”) learning materials for my wife’s Korean tutoring classes

2015 Redesign

gojoseon-responsive

I’d wanted to do a total overhaul of the brand since early 2014, but never really had time for it until winter break 2015 when I DIDN’T work an English camp. I took two months off to redesign the site and code a totally custom WordPress theme called Gojoseon.

Features of the theme include:

  1. Fully responsive template
  2. Extensive menu options (I specifically wanted a menu in the sidebar for quick grammar reference – still building that on the live site)
  3. A social menu (specifically for social networking sites)
  4. A Pinned Posts slider
  5. Built on the Foundation 5 framework (so includes a nice CSS grid and other sweet features)
  6. Uses Google Fonts – Roboto & Roboto Slab originally
  7. Has the option to use Google’s Hangul (Korean) Early Access fonts
  8. Utilizes FontAwesome icons
  9. Uses Masonry.js in the footer widgets to float them and responsively resize them properly
  10. Custom Color options in the Theme Customizer
  11. Custom Layout options (right, left, no sidebar) in the Theme Customizer
  12. Additional Theme Customizer options for background image, header image, logo, breadcrumbs, and so on
  13. The color scheme was “inspired by garlic and mugwort” – from a famous myth about the origin of Korea’s Gojoseon dynasty

This work was inspired by and based partly on the FREE Magazine Theme by Gavick Pro. Compare the two of them below:

Upcoming Features for 2015-2016:

  1. Forums (bbPress)
  2. Social Interaction (BuddyPress)
  3. Shopping (WooCommerce)
  4. Memberships (Paid Memberships Pro)
  5. A blog network (WP Multi-site)
  6. Online courses (WP Courseware)

Of course, all of the above features require significant time and energy to implement, so it will be an ongoing process over the next 1-2 years to get them all implemented.

2012 Version

Visit the Archived 2012 Version →

2012-homepage

The 2012 Version of KeyToKorean was built with CyberChimps Responsive Theme. Compare the two of them below:

In 2013, I added Learning With Texts to the website which is a feature I’ve included in a number of different websites by now. It’s a separate PHP web application that utilizes its own database tables and is built specifically to help users practice reading in a foreign language. Perhaps someday in the future I’ll consider trying to turn it into a one-click-install-type WordPress plugin.

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