Three months ago to celebrate 3 months of SlopeFillers, I gave away a free website design to a deserving ski area. I asked for a few nominations and they poured in. There are dozens and dozens of smaller ski areas that just don’t have the budget for a new website. In my opinion, that needed to change. So, I sat down and began brainstorming a way to give every resort a chance to have a good looking website. My goals were:

• Allow resort to create a semi-custom, attractive website that fits current design trends.
• Build it in a way that they can update and customize on their own.
• Make sure each required element is free.

I chose the WordPress platform because 1) its powerful, 2) its free, 3) its open source, 4) many hosts have one-click wordpress installation programs built in. Simply put, I’ve created a customizable WordPress theme. A simple file within the theme lets the user customize the following:

• The Logo
• Logo Position
• Snow Report
• Footer Color
• Background Darkness
• Background Image
• Main Header Images
• Headline
• Subheader
• Description
• Keyword String for SEO
• Links
• Social Media Links
• News/Alert Bar Color, Text and Link
• and a couple other smaller items.

Plus, since it is built on WordPress, they have:

• Easy WYSIWYG page creation (pages are automatically listed in navigation menu)
• Easy WYSIWYG Blogging
• A Widgetized Sidebar for Blog Posts
• A Widgetized Sidebar for Pages
• Access to WordPress plugin library
• Custom URL settings (site.com/about/ instead of site.com/?p=123)
• Multiple Admin / User Settings
• and much, MUCH more.

What I need now is feedback. Feedback on the design, features, elements, etc. There is a live demo at:
http://www.slopefillers.com/wordpress/

If you’d like access to play around with the settings or would like to download the theme to test on your own WordPress blog, shoot me an email at: