Feels like it’s been “WordPress-all-day, Every-day” lately! One of the things I’m most excited about is hosting the WordPress WorkShop at Real Estate Connect in a few weeks!
The Inman team did a fantastic job lining up speakers (Check ’em out: Chris Pearson, Peter Ricci, Reggie Nicolay, Justin LaJoie, Chad Parizman,Todd Carpenter, Niall Kennedy, and Jane Wells! Wow! )… and it made me realize how much I needed to play with WordPress again!
The result: I completely new 4realz.net!
Just some of the things I wanted to accomplish with this new theme include:
- Really wanted a much cleaner look that didn’t feel overwhelming. It’s not in my personality to get too simple, but I knew I could do a much better job!
- I wanted to play with the concept of a WordPress child theme… so I started with Twenty Ten as my “base” so I’d have built in access to some of the more interesting new features!
- I thought I would focus the homepage on a few key areas that drive the most of my business… i.e. my speaking and consulting.
The result is that after more than a few hours, everything is “working” well enough to write this post (although I’m far from done with what I plan to do!).
Some of the changes I made:
- The homepage is now a “static” page that uses the Smooth Slider plugin to highlight “featured posts”. I figure these are probably more relevant to someone who is new to my site.
- I added a bit about myself to the homepage and filled out a bunch more on a page I call My Story. This is the part of the page I’m least “sure” of, but I think I like it and I’ll just have to look at the stats to see if others who land on 4realz find it interesting to learn a bit more about me… and the story itself is far from “complete”. I’m hoping to add some more photos and details over the next few days, weeks, and years! 🙂
- I changed with the operation of the default “header” graphic on the theme. By default, there is no header graphic! However, it’s really easy for me to use the “set featured image” to add one, although the only place I’ve done that so far is on my speakers page.
- I added a few things to the footer that I thought people might find interesting… like the Google Voice “call me” button, a twitter feed of @tyr mentions and my latest blog posts.
While I like I’m at a spot where the current theme is an improvement over the last, there are still a few things I’m hoping to do in the near future:
- Revising the page on Agent Marketing Tools to better reflect my current approach… and in particular, my thoughts on the Agent Business Cycle.
- Add more header graphics to specific pages
- Improve how I track conversions on the page… I’ve worked with more than a few clients to use Google Analytics to track conversions, but I’ve never done much beyond adding the GA code to 4realz. I’m going to change that and play a bit more going forward!
- (not 100% sure about this one)… I’m thinking of using the new MU-style hosting that’s available with the standard WordPress to host some of the “other” wordpress sites that are currently on my server. I’m not sure I want to take the time, but Boone Georges sure does make the multisite option look tempting.
In terms of what I learned by hacking away at a WordPress theme… I was super-impressed with just how easy the entire process was… and, in particular, how easy it was to build a child theme off of twenty ten. The WordPress team has done an awesome job with the child theme functionality!
If you made it this far in the post, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new theme! 🙂
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