After so very many descriptions of how to create WordPress themes–and after having creating a bunch of them–I decided to try to really try to understand how WordPress templates actually work. The greatest frustration for me, was that when designing a new theme, and formatting it with CSS codes, I realized that it was extremely difficult to determine which elements, classes, and id’s were responsible for which formatting.

References to the articles read are below. There were two key points that I had heretofore, through “messing around,” not been aware of:

1. You can make an entire theme just by including a style.css file, and optionally, an images subdirectory. You need to tell WordPress which theme you want your theme to piggyback off of, by refering to the directory name of that theme. The syntax (within the CSS comment at the top of the style.css file) is: Template: theme-directory-name.
2. It is highly recommended that one become familiar with the logic and structure of the default theme (Kubrik), as it has been thoroughly code-tested, and should conform to the best of the WordPress standards.

On the first note, I decided to create a style.css file piggybacking off of the default theme. At first, it just looked like this:

/*
Theme Name: CSS-Only Base Theme
Template: default
*/

It was interesting to go into the Presentation tab, and load that theme up. It was just a plain, raw HTML page, with almost no formatting at all. Then, I proceeded to style it based on my expectations. I was able to make a very attractive, simple theme. But what I also found was, I was having a very hard time understanding which elements, div’s, and id’s were wrapping which areas. Therefore, I created a file specifically to indicate this, based on all of the div’s and id’s in the default template. The file also indicates where the included modules (footer.php, header.php, and sidebar.php) begin and end. Here is the file:

• Click here to see the file.

I discovered that, using this visual guide, I was much more able to see what I was doing, and construct a clean and useful theme. And I also discovered, happily, that the structure of the default template is really quite simple. Using this visual guide, as well as basing my theme designs as much as possible off of the default template, I will be able to minimize the changes I need to make in the code. Where necessary, it will be better to comment out a piece of the template (or often, just to turn off its display using CSS). This approach allows me to make almost all the changes I need to in the CSS, rather than mess with the PHP files.

References (from the WordPress Codex site):

• Blog Design and Layout
• Designing Themes for Public Release
• Theme Development
• Template Hierarchy

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Robert Middleton has an excellent post on the potential role of marketing, and independent professionals, to do something really big in terms of turning the tide.

“What if you were the coach or consultant to someone who invented a battery that could run a car for a week? What if your support helped them develop it twice as fast?”

Link here.

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White space creates an empty vessel that allows one’s attention to settle in and focus.

Take Google. They have to have had a great deal of self-discipline to resist the temptation of increasing the demands for attention on their home page for short-term gain.

Remember when Yahoo! was really, really simple? After the dot-com crash of 2000, they caved in and added more and more stuff. That was when I switched to Google.

Apple is another example. Lots and lots of white space. Your attention can easily focus on the one, simple message. It feels clean, clear, high. It respects your attention.

And Craigslist. Craig turned down numerous requests to buy him out for lots of money. Because he felt he had a commitment to provide something to the community—a space they could make their own, that was free of the annoying barrage of advertising almost everywhere else. The design is very 1995—practically no design at all. A blank slate for you to fill with whatever you want.

Designers are always telling us to use white space. So are public speaking instructors and marketing coaches. The mind wants to fill up every space with as much stuff as possible, and sees this as the best option. And when we encounter a space that is already filled up, the habitual reaction is to shout louder.

It dilutes the message and clutters the mind. Something in our mind wants to fill up every space in our lives—with thoughts, with drama, with clutter that makes us feel busy.

People become obsessed with being busy, and miss the main point of their lives (whatever it may be).

Public speakers who speak slowly, simply, and clearly give off an air of power, while those who try to rush through their speech sound weak.

Realize the difference between creating white space around what you have to say, and not having enough to say. Clarify your main point, and cut out everything.

Respect other people’s attention (and your own), and make something good.

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Maybe this is obvious to the seasoned professionals out there, but I thought this was really cool.

I was reading DuctTapeMarketing’s page on getting found by local search enginges. One of his example pages was for a biz in Kansas City called Schloegel Design Remodel. At the top of the little profile, along with contact info, etc., was the phrase (linked): “Jake Schloegel answers remodeling questions”.

Again, pretty obvious – but powerful. Jake is willing to give away free advice, and he’s willing to put it right at the front of his thing, not hide it on some buried part of the site. The effect is that I am immediately interested in Jake though I didn’t think I had any remodeling questions, etc.

Being willing to put your free information right out there in front—and not just some generic tips, but being willing to answer actual questions people have—will grab people’s attention, instantly make them appreciate you, feel grateful for your time, and put you first in their mind. Immediately, you’ve gotten three or five steps further along the decision chain, by putting yourself right out there in the open. What’s more, by being open to actual, random questions, you’ll get a great sense of what a cross-section of your audience (the people who are actually looking you up) are actually thinking about.

And on Jake’s site, the main page is actually a blog, where each post is a question from someone, with Jake’s answer. So, the site gradually becomes a knowledge base of pertinent information about remodeling.

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I realized that I often go to a web site, and start to browse around. And if I like the look of it, the feel of it, the energy behind what they are saying… I start feeling like “Hey! These are real people, and it sounds like they like what they’re doing.” The next thing I do is scan to see if I can detect anyting about the people behind the business… “yeah, that’s nice that they’re excellent, etc.,” but who are they?

And that is often when I click on the About Us link. Sometimes it gives me personal information about who the people are, that starts to let me feel connected to the real people behind the site. That is a very good thing. Other times, it doesn’t—say who the people are, what they’re like, or even where they are located!

My point is, if people like you and like what you’re doing, the more they’re going to want to know who you are, and have some kind of information about who you are as a person… what makes you tick. Please give it to them.

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I don’t know enough to know whether it is “uncool” to link to old (but relevant) posts. But the purpose of this blog is to provide useful tips and perspectives to my clients, and others like them.

http://www.horsepigcow.com/2006/01/marketing-in-post-cluetrain-era.html

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These are some of the ideas that are emerging for me about radical honesty and marketing.

Total transparency. There is nothing to hide. At the higher modes of consciousness, you start to notice that lying is impossible. As society evolves, we each become a little more genuine and honest. And the more we are not trying to pretend ourselves, the more we are going to notice pretense in others.

I have a feeling that’s part of why there’s such a strong backlash people often feel when the hear the word “marketing”—we were all made to many promises about the benefits of the right soap powder to our success in life when we were children watching television. And now, we’re starting to wake up to our own, and others’, dishonesty.

When we first realize that we can’t hide anything, we might be very nervous, because we’ve been hiding things for so long. And what we keep as secret, we’re identified with. But when we start to get a little more honest, and widen out beyond it, we can see it all with a little more lightheartedness, and move on.

What is the quality that makes you really love a business? My guess is, that it has a lot to do with the degree of sincerity, realness, openness. Of course, that has to be combined with a wholehearted emphasis on being in service, and genuinely tuning into you, your needs, and how to serve them. And I guess the third quality is the feeling that they are tuning into their own passion and spark, their own zest for life.

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So, here I am, sitting in my new office, at the Source, and feeling, essentially, very happy. And a lot of the time extremely happy. And I still don’t know exactly what I am doing. But I’ll tell you—a few months ago I decided that it was my prime goal in life to follow my spark, and bring it fully, unabashedly out into the world and to be totally in service with it. And ever since then, things have gotten a lot smoother, a lot easier.

I have become a “marketing fanatic”. I am fascinated by books on marketing; and the more I read, of course, I realize that it’s not all a bunch of used car salesmen in plaid suits trying to huckster you out of your money (maybe used car salesmen aren’t, either, by the way). It’s so amazing—it’s what I always used to tell myself, when I was younger:

If only marketing weren’t wrong and evil… I would love to do it, because I’d be really good at it!

Well… it turns out it doesn’t have to be, any more than anything else is! And I realized that, even though I am a total marketing newbie, and I don’t want to hide that from anyone or have any pretense that I am some expert with lots of experience about it, I am, nevertheless, starting to develop my own philosophy about it, and it is starting to define how I want to construct my business, and the clients I really want to serve. And I realized—oh! It’s all based around this same principle:

Bring your spark of passion out into the world, and fully serve the world with it.

So, I am starting a business assisting others in doing this, and by so doing, doing this myself. The implications are incredible. I’ll tell you—there is a whole, huge market of people out there who think marketing is evil and wrong, or at least feel so alienated from it that they don’t know where they would begin, or at least, have no clue what to do about it. And the interesting thing is, when I talk to these people, and tell them that I am developing a practice in high-vibrational marketing, they immediately go, “oh—I need that!” Pretty exciting!

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A very interesting post (from last August) on the new marketing from Creating Passionate Users. It’s amazing to see how much anger and mistrust the old “TV soap ad” version of marketing has garnered. The author has to defend the fact that “we are all marketers”.

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I was looking at del.icio.us. I searched on “marketing fun” (because just “marketing” might pull out tons of really boring stuff). (This is a really fun way to browse the web, by the way.)

Somehow, I noticed a site called MailChimp.com. It had been saved by 156 previous del.icio.us users. After browsing the site for about three minutes, I was completely sold on it, and realized it was obviously a great tool, that I would use, love, and meet my needs. To be honest, I realize I have not even given myself enough time to completely verify that this is true—but the point is that everything about the site told me exactly what I wanted to know, and it did so in ways that are not obvious.

First, I did not “read” the site at all. I scanned it. The site is beautiful. Everything about the clean, clear, crisp design tells me they have already thought through what their users want and worked out the bugs. The MailChimp tag line is “You Design. Me Deliver.”

The first subheading reads “Features you’ll actually use”. So I know (a) they have a sense of humor; (b) they’re concerned about tailoring their tool for actual users, not just being hype-meisters.

The site has a ton of “marketing” information, all of which is tailored to giving me the information I need to make a good decision. “MailChimp email design guide. Free! Click here!” “Quicklinks – Free trial… Pricing… Screenshots… Testimonials.” “Kudos from our clients…”

I guess part of my point is, the fact that they are making all the right information available for me, in a scannable format, sold me, without my even having to read it all. The fact that they know to provide it gives me the information I need to want to use their service.

I think this all points to what happens when you really, genuinely think about your customer, what they want, and what they would need to know in order to decide to use your service. The site gives a pervading impression that there’s no shenanigans hiding underneath the surface, and that’s something you can’t really fake.

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