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:
https://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:

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.