August 4, 2008
There has been quite a bit of discussion about the convergence of BANS and WordPress. I just wanted to take a quick minute and show one of the stores I have had the pleasure of running conversions on in the past couple weeks… See if you can spot the BANS store!
I am not going to reveal the owner of the store and the link has been no-followed, just for safety sake! I would also like to point out that this site is brand new to the conversion and a work in progress.
The site uses an edition of Brian Gardners Revolution theme, mixed with a good bit of content and a few additional features you wont find in other BANS sites!
Whenever you hear me talking about integrating Build a Niche Store with WordPress… this is the type of site we should all strive to achieve! The site owner has made this site look and feel like anything OTHER than an affiliate site and he has done that through the use of unique content!
Incidentally, I have converted about 13 different commercial themes to work with BANS… ALL of the Revolution themes, several of the iThemes, Chimera, and so many others, I have lost count! I would have listed others in this place as well, but do not want to do so without the express permission of the site owners.
Over the next few weeks, you will find MANY themes available on the web designed to work with WordPress and BANS. I hope to post the BANS templates for Revolution within a few days for those who may be interested.
If you are interested in learning more about the conversion process, make sure you follow along with the posts at: Converting WordPress Templates to work with BANS
Mark
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22 Responses to “One of the Best Looking BANS Sites I have ever Seen!”
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Hi Mark,
First I want to thank you for your excellent service. I was very impressed.
For anyone who cares, Mark worked with me last Sunday, (a day when he usually doesn’t work) to get my Chimera Site working. My point is….if you have any questions about buying anything from this site…I think I just answered it.
Thanks Again Mark,
Shawn
Mark, this is really a gorgeous site. I’m jealous! This is exactly what I’m looking for with my sites.
My concern is that you’re going to get all of us whipped into a frenzy wanting these cool WP/BANS sites built, and then not be able to meet the demand of helping us all. There are only so many hours in a day, after all!
It seems that unless we’re tech-y enough to be able to manage the conversion of BANS from the root to a folder, we’re pretty much stuck with just adding on WP in a folder and then decorating the BANS part to look like the WP part. Or hire you to do the conversion for us. I’m not opposed to paying you to do that in general, but I have too many websites that need converting and as a business decision I don’t want to invest the money on niche sites that may not pan out. I’d like to see some more generic commercial themes expanded to use on current BANS sites that need a blog and an integrated look and feel, but not a full blown custom conversion. I’m thinking a few more variations in the SimpleCSS (with some improvements) family in that price range would suite me perfectly. Is this something on your to-do list, or do you see it as something of little interest?
I also have a lot (and I mean A LOT) of domains I haven’t built out yet and would like to get going on those asap. Go forward I’d like to have WP on the root with BANS in a folder, but done like that awesome Star Wars site where it’s impossible to tell where one starts and the other leaves off. Sort of like SimpleCSS Plus, incorporating what you’ve learned since you did the initial SimpleCSS to make it easier and more integrated. I think some commercial websites could be selected that would lend themselves to easy artistic customization by those of us who don’t want the gee-whiz site for all of our sites. I could just change logos and colors and the sites would be perfect. I hope that this is where you are going when you mentioned doing more templates over the next few weeks….?
Anyway, I’m totally impressed and wish there were more hours in the day and I were more proficient at editing this stuff. Practice makes perfect though, especially when working with the same template and making modifications to the exact same files every time.
On a totally unrelated issue…has anyone ever had their keyboard suddenly start typing backwards [queue Exorcist music] ? All of a sudden I can’t type in for example Terapeak, or fields in various websites wanting my name/email and comments without the letters coming out in reverse order. No problems with email as you can see, but the other stuff is maddening! Is it time to replace the keyboard???
…ereeh ekil skoolgniepyt ym tahw i siht
I don’t think this should be hyped that much. Its just another modified WP themes. The real challenge is to modify BANS only to get away from the default look. I can do anything with WP if I could integrate it into my BANS (or the other way round).
The site looks good, don’t get me wrong but from design side its nothing spectacular. Looks like WP, is WP ;-) He spent some more love into details and that is what I count…
The Storm Trooper website is a great looking site, though there is not much color(not a bad thing) the background is awesome.. I see I need to learn more …thanks for showing what can be done with a little know how…We have not talked about backgrounds on our new websites..I need to do some investigating…Otis
It is a good unique looking site.
The main - front page is fantastic - however, the internal pages for the shop or store are not that great. A lot of the products are displayed below the fold. I think conversions would be higher if they were above the fold, especially for a site built for shopping. This design may fail when using PPC models.
@ All -
I just want to reiterate that this site was just launched a few days ago and is a work in progress…
@ Shawn - Thank you for the nice comment! I have been trying to reorganize my days to allow for an off day on Sundays… The darn PC is just a magnet though and I cannot put it down! Glad to have helped!
@ Alice -
I do plan on working more general themes into the mix and today, there will be a video tutoral on moving BANS out of the root! Its actually very easy.
The main reason for the Conversion of WP to BANS series is to try and help as many as possible get the solution to the themes they want as quick as possible.
I do plan on posting polls on which theme to convert next so users can submit requests directly to the masses and vote on each conversion.
@ Manuel -
I think I understand what you are saying about the site being a wordpress theme. At the same time, I think the way he has used the available real estate to build a content website versus simply BANS content is priceless.
I also LOVE the fact that it is mostly black and white with grayscale. When you think about it, it is a perfect match for ANYTHING to do with Star Wars…
The one thing I like the most about the site is that it is much more than just a BANS site… I can easily see myself subscribing to a site like to daily news updates etc.
@ Sean -
Yes, he is experimenting with product displays and layouts right now… but just as an fyi, only the store pages are BANS, everything else is done differently, be it rss or phpbay.
Mark
Mark,
How is the site owner displaying the ebay auctions in the blog posts?
Regards,
Fred
A very nice store and congrats are due to developer and designer. I love the revolution themes myself. I think the main point here is that in no way could this be described as a thin affiliate site. If this kind of thing gets penalized then there is no justice. Great job both.
@ Fred -
He is using phpBay Pro in conjunction with BANS and WP.
Mark
@Mark
As you know I’m experimenting with phpBay Pro at the moment and I’m beginning to wonder why use BANS at all on a Wordpress Blog?
I know I’ve asked this question of you before Mark but I’d welcome opinions from your readers on the advantages BANS has over phpBay because I’m struggling to find any myself. I must say that
I do believe BANS is more suited to compete beginners though as getting to grips effectively with Wordpress takes 3-4 months.
I hope this isn’t too controversial a topic as I have no intention of ditching BANS but I am curious.
Mike
Mike,
I personally don’t see the advantage of BANS over phpBay either, especially if you use WordPress as the foundation of your site.
Otis mentioned “not much color” above, but I think it looks great the way it is. Most of the big stores use very little color on the main body, so it seems to be the way to go if you want to be successful. If anything, I might add a little color to the border around the ebay auctions, but that would be it. It’s very nice looking site, though. One of the best I’ve ever seen.
Hey all…figured I would chime in on the site seeing as it’s mine and I just wanted to share a few thoughts.
@ The lack of color - really it’s by design……Stormtroopers are black and white after all. Outerspace is black…the millenium falcon was white, the death star was white….etc.
As for the internal pages being “not that great”…what can I say…I started from scratch 7 days ago and I have about 6 hours into the site. I have 14 unique articles, I have a well designed and SEO’d front page that targets my keywords, graphics done, store cats hand built and search strings customized to target the products, Unique content on all of the main store pages and will get there on all of the subpages.
6-8 hours in….I’d put my site up against anyone…..don’t mean to be defensive here but I guess I am.
@ phpBay…it’ a nice plugin and I use it often but it isn’t as easy to set up a complete store as it is with BANS. Every single page of the store needs to be done 100% by hand with phpBay and if you don’t know how to use AllinOneSEO plugin then your SEO won’t be that strong with phpbay.
BANS is great if you use it right and so is phpbay. They are both cheap so use both in my opinion and try it yourself….that way you don’t have to speculate as to which is better or which you like. phpBay definitely has it’s limits though.
@ Bill -
I dont think you need to defend the site in any way, I would venture to say that in the 6 hours you have into it, it looks better and has a better flow to it than 80+ % of my own stores!
For myself, I like the “Community” feel I get when I visit the site - it gives me the feeling I am at a website, versus an affiliate type site.
Top shelf in my book!!
@ Mike -
I truly don’t doubt phpbay is just as powerful as BANS, they are really the same end product with just a different means of getting there so to speak.
I think the power of phpBay comes in the ability to add listings to your posts, whereas BANS in my opinion has the most power in the creation of a store type site.
Give me 15 minutes and BANS, I will give you a fully operation, ready to go store with 25 structured categories and subcategories. With phpBay, it takes longer to build each page individually…
On the other hand, the only way to integrate a few BANS auction listings within a wordpress post… oh, you cant! :-)
Mark
Miark, y
You were spot on when you said “the one thing I like the most about the site is that it is much more than just a BANS site.”
Not only that, from a design standpoint, I predict when all is said and done, it will also be much more than wordpress site. Its quite obvious to me that Bill is going in the direction of using the wp platform as a CMS…..content management system. In otherwords, you’ll eventually be hardpressed to recognize this site as either.
Keep up the good work Bill!
Looks really good…only i wouldn’t go with an animated gif background…
Indexing is continuing. It indexed 30 pages after the first day but then most of them dropped out and I am back to about 12 or 15 right now.
The good news is that it produced the first sale today…the Revenue was small….BUT it was an ACRU so hopefully that is a sign of good things to come.
:-)
Can you justify $100 for a one-site license for a Revolution theme? With this new strategy, maybe so, but that’s a lot of up-front for some of the per-month volume of Bans sites. Just curious.
Robert….I have a developers license on the Revolution themes so I already own all of them and can use them on my own sites or install them on sites I develop for other people if I choose.
I have a number of sites that make well over 100 dollars per month so even if I were buying the theme…it’d be break even after a month.
It might not be for everyone but I like the static front page that the original Revolution theme offers.
@ Robert -
I would have to concur with Bill on this… I reinvest approximately 25% of all net profits back into marketing etc.
Like Bill, I have several custom themes of my own and several commercial themes as well.
The big thing to remember about affiliate sites like these are that you may need to go through 50 sites, just to find 5-10 that are worthy of further invesment of both time and money.
ONCE you have that group of sites though… you will spend all your time promoting and building on those 5-10 sites. Your earnings grow considerably each month you continue the efforts.
Mark
You have to dig through a lot of dirt to find the diamonds.
great info from all. thanks. this blog is a fantastic resource, not just because of Mark, but from other contributors, as well!