Help me Choose a Theme for My Big Idea!

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Alice said:
Hi Mark,
I know you’re excited – we all are! – but I don’t know what you’re asking in this post. The 3 routes you list are not mutually exclusive, so I can’t really choose just one. Also, you have put the cart before the horse – these are questions that will need to be answered at a later stage in the process, after you’ve done a little more work I think.
So I’ll just verbage-it…
If you truly believe this to be as big as you say it will, get outside help. I’m sure you’ve heard the maxim that virtually all of the mega-entrepreneurs say is the reason for their huge success: get a good idea and then hire people smarter than you. You won’t regret it, even if its someone to just act as consultant to bounce ideas off of. The important thing is that they out-class (in a good way!) you in at least one area that you’re weak in.
That IMO is your most important decision. The rest pales in comparison.
Build or buy? I’m a huge fan of buying it. Especially with WP where everyone and their grandmother has already built stuff for it, why are you wasting time on doing it from scratch?? Take someone else’s good work and customize it to to your needs. Not fall into the old IBM “not invented here” trap. I think you answered your own question when you said “its so much bigger than me.”
But before you do that, make a list of all the requirements it will need to do what you want. Rank in order of importance. Having a list is a discipline to make sure you don’t forget something and that you don’t get all excited about a gee-whiz feature that actually isn’t very important to your mission. Helps keep you honest and on-track.
Once you have the specs, THEN start looking around for candidate themes with the requirements you’ve listed. The results of this search will point you in the right direction of building yourself or buying.
As for readily available branded theme or custom one, without knowing what you’re doing its hard to say. Is this something that you plan to sell to others, like a Big Idea Template? Or will visitors just look at your site and get whatever it is from there? if the latter, you might not need to build a custom site (more time & $$).
Let’s see, can I guess what it is from what you said… I know! It’s a dating service for color-blind geeks! LOL!
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# 2 August 2008 at 8:16 pm

Rochelle said:
Alice,
I couldn’t help but giggle at your guess of Mark’s site, given that he said the age range would be 8-80. I’d like to see the 8-year-old geek ready for online dating!
Rochelle
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# 2 August 2008 at 9:44 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Alice -
Thank you for the kind advice – I have read quite a bit about your writing skills on your site. It’s apparent, your skills go much deeper than just writing!
Great guess on the color-blind dating service BTW!!
Mark
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# 2 August 2008 at 10:01 pm

Dawn said:
Have you seen the customizable Thesis theme by Chris Pearson yet? I ran across it a few months ago and really like it – now I just need my own big idea!
Of course, having a custom branded theme would be nice too…
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# 2 August 2008 at 10:14 pm

Alice said:
@Rochelle, just goes to show what you know! ;-)
An 8 yr old GEEK is going to plan ahead. By the time he/she gets old enough to date, they’ll have all the specs for their prospective dates written down in excruciating detail. Of course, no living breathing human being can meet those requirements, so the date-ready geek usually ends up DATELESS. And you thought it was because they were weird and had zits!
However, Mark’s new Big Idea will save them from that awful fate, and they’ll be happily chatting & IM’ing & trading pics of their laptops with like-minded geeks before you know it. :-)
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# 2 August 2008 at 10:31 pm

Alice said:
@Mark –
I have almost 30 years’ experience in consulting to big & little companies around the world on how they should do things. Handing out advice sort of comes automatically to me… ;-)
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# 2 August 2008 at 10:34 pm

otis said:
Mark, you are such a smart person that I think you(your staff) should develop from the ground up since duplicating it then would be very difficult for anyone. The value of your own designed wp theme or whatever theme you came up with, as long as the BIG Idea booms as you say, would be out the roof. then if you wanted to you could market the theme and it would sell if you chose to do so. With all the themes and info you have given us here at thenichestorebuilder.com, we all know you have no problem making your own template and themes as long as you have the time…as you have said or I read the less duplication the better…Otis
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# 2 August 2008 at 10:51 pm

Manuel Merz said:
Hey Mark, do it yourself. You can always have some assistance if you need (I work as fulltime webdesigner). I would be pleased to help you out if you need it.
Goto kuler.com or colorlovers.com and choose a colorsheme you want to build up your website. Don’t go fully with greyscale sites (except you have a really eycatchy color logo). I would got with the most simple site structure like this:
[LOGO] [search]
[ SIMPLE NAVIGATION BAR WITH DROPS ]
[ CONTENT ]
[ CONTENT ]
[ CONTENT ]
[ CONTENT ]
[ CONTENT ]
[ CONTENT ]
[ FOOTER ]
As far as my experiences are this is a common well seen layout structure. You can put ADS into the content (200*200 at the beginning works the best for my adsense ads) or put them separated beside the content in a sidebar.
Good luck :)
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# 3 August 2008 at 4:31 am

Sean said:
Do the template and designer yourself. You have shown your skills thus far that you have an understanding of design and html.
As you grow or get ideas, you can always outsource other needs. Then come to the table with a webdesigner or consultant with your goals, growth plans and needs to develop those areas that you will need assistance. It might be best to meet and talk to people face to face in your local area.
It is not surprisingly to know that the expert bloggers did not respond to you. Maybe they get thousands of emails a day, thought it was spam, overlooked, just ‘fan’ mail. Put yourself in their shoes.
How many times have you seen where a company is sued because some other company stole their idea? That is why so many good ideas have to be played close to the chest – just like any good poker player will play their cards.
Have you been watching the The Big Idea and the other entrepreneur shows on CNBC?
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# 3 August 2008 at 1:13 pm

Rochelle said:
@Alice,
You crack me up! That was a priceless description of geeks who want love :)
Rochelle
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# 3 August 2008 at 3:03 pm

Paul said:
I suggest for the Herding Geeks website that you farm out as much of the “time wasting” development of the Wordpress Theme as you can. In other words, there is no need to develop parts that are already out there available and SEO ready.
Especially if you “like” to do the development, maybe it is not the right thing for you to do. You will end up working on the theme and not devoting enough time to the”development & implementation” of the project.
You should be doing the items that are the most critical for the project’s success and leave the non-critical items to someone else.
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# 3 August 2008 at 10:36 pm

Alice said:
Paul is absolutely right. People spend time doing the things they like doing, and avoid the things they don’t like doing (DUH!), often to the detriment of their livelihoods.
If you’re talking about a hobby, then its no big deal. When you’re talking about a business, it’s a different game. There are things that MUST be done, at certain times and done right, or the venture will fail. These are the things you should spend most of your time on.
The theme will not make or break the Geek Dating service. Let it go, for now anyway.
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# 3 August 2008 at 11:08 pm

Jeff said:
Uhmm… if your idea is going to be half as big as you think it is, wordpress can’t handle it. It will bring your server to its knees.
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# 21 August 2008 at 12:26 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ Jeff -
You may be right about that… I will have to do some serious testing before hand for sure.
Right now, I have the site on its own dedicated box, but have not done much more as I work out details with a few other people who are helping me build the framework, down to the most basic! My intent is to have a dedicated host or hosting sponsor that builds, manages and maintains the hosting platform themselves.
WordPress as an application is pretty good with high traffic as long as you set it up to do so. This site handled more than 7000 visitors in one hour back in early March and the use of a cache plugin did its job then. It is however on a shared account, which the Big Idea, cannot be.
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# 21 August 2008 at 12:55 pm

John said:
What’s the latest work on your “Big Idea?”
Haven’t seen any postings on it lately.
Still in the works?
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# 24 August 2008 at 5:56 pm

Mark (author) said:
@ John -
Thanks for asking! It has actually grown quite a few legs and is in the building process.
Due to the nature of the idea, I have to get quite a bit of content in place before pushing out to the public, but once it is out there, it will become talked about immediately!
I am actually in the process of bouncing ideas of several well known internet marketing folks about some best practices to get it in front of many different media sources quickly.
There will be more info out very soon!
Mark
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# 24 August 2008 at 7:35 pm

John said:
Any launch date in mind yet?
Looking forward to seeing it when it “hits the pavement!”
:-)
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# 26 August 2008 at 9:16 am

JE said:
Hey Mark.
Looks like you have had some good comments. I may be a little late in the game with mine…
>> My Big Idea Website needs to Load FAST!
I would agree WP may choke under a load – depends on server and database performance. You may want to consider if you have static-type pages to make them plain HTML pages to help balance the load.
>> My Big Idea Design needs to Appeal to ALL Age Groups!
That is a big demographic to cover. Depending on the content you could maybe split the demographic into smaller age groups, again if appropriate. If so, maybe consider the age groups are on different sub-domains to help load balance. Just an idea if it is that critical and applicable.
>> My Big Idea needs to have Simple, Easy to Follow Navigation!
Again, maybe breaking down into age groups might be the place to start. Yes, keep it simple and use non-tech words/phrases – e.g. instead of ‘Contact’ use ‘Need Help?’. These are a little bit more everyday language that almost presumes the action of the user.
Flow-charting is another development tool to walk through the navigation. Of course, there are the basic pages like Home, About, Contact, etc. that you can get out of the way. It’s looking the process or flow of the user interaction – directing them through each step. It may be good to consider if a user goes through a process that they will stop somewhere along the way for whatever reason and may need to look for help. Having an easy and accessible help section to help hold the hand of the user can help close the deal, or like in e-commerce, lower cart abandonment.
>>> My Big Idea is Not Colorful!
That’s fine. If you look at a site like Apple they are primarily black & white so that when they drop a graphic on the page is jumps out and screams for attention.
>>> My Big Idea is NOT going to be An Affiliate Website!
Ok.
>>> My Big Idea will use the Power of WordPress!
Already commented on.
These are just thoughts off the top of my head. Hope this helps. Keep us posted on the progress.
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# 2 September 2008 at 5:51 pm

John said:
Haven’t been to your site in a while, and I was curious as to what happened with “the big idea?”
Still in the works?
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# 4 June 2009 at 1:20 pm
Week in Review and the Week Ahead - August 03 2008 | The Niche Store Builder - Succeed with Build a Niche Store said:
[...] Help me Choose a Theme for My Big Idea! [...]
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# 3 August 2008 at 1:27 pm

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