Ski Resort Marketing
Ideas Inspiration Analysis

Ski Resort Marketing

SlopeFillers provides daily ideas, inspiration, and analysis for ski resort marketers.

New, Free WordPress Theme for Ski Resort Websites

December 6th, 2010

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:


  • http://mtnweekly.com Mike Hardaker

    Greg,

    You have once again gone above and beyond. WordPress may seem hard at first put with a little bit of research and homework it is the best platform I have found for creating, updating and maintaining the Mountain Weekly News website http://mtnweekly.com

    You should be getting a ton of holiday presents based on this site and especially taking the time to create a theme for ski areas. Well done!!

    • SlopeFillers – Gregg

      Thanks, Mike :) It was a fun project and will hopefully keep improving. Working on a visual / menu settings page now instead of a PHP settings file. That should help quite a bit. Any features you’d like to see added?

Industry Social Snapshot

Totals and averages from all North American ski resorts' social media activity.
total views new yest mo grwth
39,529,594 12,674 1.18%
total fols/+1 new yest mo grwth
36,544 25 4.79%
avg score was yest 7-day
45.26 45.32 -0.67
total fols new yest mo grwth
333,038 297 2.51%
total page likes new yest mo grwth
256,448 17 0.69%
total fols new yest mo grwth
13,294 21 4.56%

Resort Social Dashboard

View any North American resort's social media performance & compare them to other mountain resorts.

About: Gregg Blanchard

SlopeFillers is run by marketer and skier / snowboarder, Gregg Blanchard. He loves writing in 3rd person, meeting the talented people who read this blog, pretending to be a web developer, and eating reuben sandwiches. Need more dirt on Southern Edwards, Colorado's most famous ski marketing blogger taller than 6'?
ABOUT: The nitty gritty. »
SPEAKING: So they say. »
TWITTER: @slopefillers »
EMAIL: Say "HI". »