New, Free WordPress Theme for Ski Resort Websites
Gregg Blanchard /
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:
