WordPress Child Themes – Your Gateway to theme development paradise

Child themes are a fairly new concept. I’ve been hearing about them for some time now. Never really bothered to check out before. But luckily for all of us, I have now. This is not complicated. This is somewhat easy to understand . So don’t fret about all the lingo.

Basically, you create themes that rely on other themes as templates. Now that it turn means you only have to change the child theme to make changes to your WordPress theme .

So why bother you ask ?

As it turns out what most wordpress theme designers do is build on top of existing themes they like. I’m guilty of that myself. Why write everything from the beginning when you might need only a few things changed. For example Serving Niches itself it built on themeorrhea by JTK. I loved the way his theme was built. It was simple and didn’t have too many files cluttering up the back end.

The basic layout for any theme doesn’t have to be different. Now previous to WordPress 2.7 I would have had to change the theme files using editor and add my embelishments. Everytime a new version of the theme was released , I would have had to copy paste all my changes to the new theme. Almost rewrite the whole thing. If you had seen the serving niches theme files , you wouldn’t recognize themeorrhea. There were way too many changes made. So imagine having to write all that again on top of the new theme. It would take time.

See now I don’t have to do that. Now with the concept of child themes , I could simply put all my changes in its own folder , so when I upload a new version of the original theme , I’ll only be rewriting the theme’s files not my changes.

So how do you make use of child themes ?

Child themes are put in the same folder as any other theme on your wordpress installation.

wp-content/themes

To build a child theme , you will first need a mother theme or a main theme to build a child theme on.

All you need to do is to make changes to the style.css file . You need it to tell wordpress that this theme is a child theme.

Neat huh ? Imagine all those hours you’d have to spend rewriting and testing and playing and rehashing and indenting and what not all that code if you were to update the mother theme.

The mother theme style.css. Below is the beginning of a typical style.css .

/*





Theme Name: Your Theme Name

Theme URI: http://your-theme-homepage.com

Description: Oh what a lovely description of your theme you'll put here!

Author: Your Name

Author URI: http://your-website.com

Template: If this is a child theme, you'll set the template theme's folder name here,   otherwise don't put this here

Version: A version number

.

Any general information, license statements, plugin requirements, or any other information you

may want to share.

.

*/

You do need to make a few changes to the child theme’s style.css . The one file it needs is style.css . You need to put the basic information below in it. Below is an example of how you’d want to fill out the child theme style.css file.

Theme Name: will the child theme’s name

Theme URL: url of your theme if you choose to upload it somewhere so that people can download or purchase it

Description: small description of the child theme

Author: your name or nick name

Author URL: if you have a website. Get a free one atleast mate if you don’t have one.

Template: This is the important option. This is where you mention the location of the mother theme. So say the mother theme is located in wp-content/themes/themeorrhea/ .

You’d write “themeorrhea” here. So it would be Template: themeorrhea .

Version: this is you first child theme ? Call it version 1.0 . you could call it 10.0 if you wanted. It doesn’t really matter.

An example of what a child theme’s style.css would look like.



/*

Theme Name: Sandwich

Theme URI: http://anupvasudevan.com/sandwich

Description: This is Sandwich, a child theme for themeoreaa.

Author: Anup

Author URI: <a href="http://thor/">http://</a>anupvasudevan.com

Template: themeoreaa

Version: 1.0

.

You need to have both Sandwich and Themeorrhea in your wp-content/themes/ folder for this

theme to work.

.

*/

This child theme will be like any other theme . You’ll be able to activate it like any other theme from the Appearance page in wordpress admin .

So what about the remaining files ?

Simply add them to the child theme folder. The child theme’s files get precedence by default over the mother theme’s files. In other words, should you add a header.php to the sandwich folder at wp-content/themes/sandwich , it will be chosen over themeorrhea’s header.php . Thereby replacing it. The rest of the files will be used as is. If you choose to use the mother theme’s files , do not make an empty file in the child theme folder.

That is all . There you’ve made it to the end.

You should be able to use child themes on WordPress installation now.

An example use of this would be during the holiday season. You want to change the look for maybe December 25th alone or even the week leading up to December 25th .

This way you don’t have to write the code all over . You just need to build a child theme. Maybe just change the background image to something with leaves and bells.

You are limited only by your imagination.

image credits : http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamperegrino/2913018697/ WordPress stickers & stationery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine-events/3832855830/ WordPress screen

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Now I do mean you can end up making a minimum of $100 a day. But it isn’t going to

happen in 5 seconds. You’re going to like this method if you didn’t know about it already.

Have fun Guys !

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This is the easiest but the most time consuming method to earning $100 a day. It won’t happen immediately but it will happen when everything is in place. This is commonly known to as article marketing or bum marketing. I can imagine you are thinking I’m asking that you get into the Adult industry. Fret not. I’m not .

Bum marketing or article marketing allows you to earn money online from the commissions of affiliate products, sales of your own products , adsense ads, ebay , amazon links and so on.

Here’s the big picture.
-You write keyword optimized articles in under-exposed niches.
-Submit them to popular article websites
-let the search engines pick them up
-earn affiliate commissions
-get opt in signups or make money from selling your own products.

This is one of those rare occasions where you have a method you can use without putting in any money . It doesn’t take money to make money. Without over complicating this process or wasting time, lets dive in.

1). Finding an untapped , low competition niche .
Before you start putting in all that effort , you need to find a relatively untapped market. It is really quite simple.

What are you passionate about ?
What do you know a lot about ?

It is better to write about something you know something about. Atleast vaguely. Find a niche where people have a problem or a need. If its something you’re involved with like a hobby. What bothers you ? . If you have a problem related to your hobby, others could have that same problem.

See if there is a product to solve the problem. Another good way to find such pains people have is to use yahoo answers, ebay pulse, google and yahoo groups.

2).Find an affiliate program with a complimentary product that pays out a decent commission
The product you choose to promote should have atleast a $50 commission to make it worth your time. The sales page conversion rate should be atleast 2% which is realistic to expect. Avoid anything lower.
You need to find something decent. If the product you’re promoting is complete rubbish , it probably won’t work. 

Some places to find good products to promote -

-Clickbank
-Commision junction
-Linkshare
-PayDotCom
-LifeTimeCommissions

Try focusing on wants not on needs too much. I’ve pretty much come across marketers suggesting both, but people are more likely to be more excited about buying that xbox game than microsoft windows.

Don’t worry too much about the price. Something priced $997 will be perceived as much superior than a $47 product based on price alone. Of course the $ 47 product will get more views. But in the end you’re putting in the same amount of effort. So don’t let price stop you from promoting a higher priced product.

3).You then research and find low competition keywords that you can write articles about.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal?defaultView=2

Type in your problem or keyword.

The keywords that turn up , choose only those that have a minimum of 500 to 10,000 results. If there are about a million results, theres probably too much competition for you to get on google’s page one. The article directories you will be submitting to usually rank high in the searches, so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

so how do you check how many results they get in google ?

Its easy just select your preferred words and type them in google in ” ” .

for example. – i looked up article marketing and liked a keyword  = interesting marketing articles

I go to google.com and type “interesting marketing articles”. It shows me about 22,900 results . Now that is something I can compete in.

4).Next write a series of articles based on the low competition keywords or keyword phrase(s).
From the previous process you would want to choose 10 – 20 keywords. Each keyword in google should have 500 – 10,000 results when put in quotes in google . This should give you a good idea what to write about.

You can either write the articles yourself from scratch completely. Or you could google or ebay the topic you’ve chosen and buy a cheap book or any book. Or maybe even free information. I suggest buying something of decent quality. Once you have done that break them into 10 or more articles. Plagiarism is not advised. You should atleast rearrange the content. Its worth the effort.

I mean read them and rewrite them in your own words.

If You can afford it , you can also outsource your article writing. On sites like www.elance.com , www.rentacoder.com you can find people who are willing to do this for you for a few dollars.5).Then you submit your article to popular article directories so they get picked up by Google and the other major search engines.

Your articles need to achieve a minimum of 250 views per article. If you submit your article to a minimum of 10 sites, and expect about 25 article views per site , we should be good. This is an extremely realistic number.

You’ll want to submit each article to a minimum of 10 article sites. The more popular the site, the more likely they are going to be picked up .
So for that reason here are some of the most used article directories.

http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.buzzle.com
http://www.articlealley.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.articlesfactory.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.isnare.com
http://www.promotiondata.com
http://www.businessknowhow.com

6). And finally, earn affiliate commissions, get opt-in signups and make money from selling your own products or from ad clicks.
There isn’t anything to explain in this. It just means reap the benefits.
If you follow the simple steps you are practically guaranteed to make money online. All it takes is a little time.

I know you can do it.

 

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This is not an Advertisement

No Really it isn’t

Hello. You guessed it . This is the part that has nothing in common with the rest of the Blog post. Two FREE pdf’s you would like to check out.

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Pilage and Plunder ClickBank for Autopilot Income <– Its a tiny report. This report really does give a Big Picture about making money with Clickbank or any affiliate Program. Check it out. The reason they put this report out is to promote their product “Clickbank Pirates”. Clickbank Pirates automates the whole process described in the report. Don’t be fooled. In spite of the hype and what not. The report does give you a solid big picture. Check it out. Its Free.

Commission Junction University - Amazing wealth of Information. Sign up for cj.com if you don’t have an account there. You don’t need an account to go through the university content. But signing up for cj.com lets you get affiliate commissions from various companies in various industries. When I say various I mean there are Credit cards, dating services, artwork , hosting , kodak, anti virus solutions. I mean really a lot of options .

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Getting Traffic From YAHOO ANSWERS !

Yahoo Answers is a fantastic way to get not only a strong backlink, but also some very highly targeted traffic as well.

http://answers.yahoo.com

This is a place where anyone can go and ask a question, about anything they want. Others then answer the questions, often citing websites as references. Yahoo Answers is a goldmine, because it contains a ton of people that are literally asking what they should buy!

When you provide an answer, be sure to list your website like this:

http://YourWebsiteAddress.com  <—What I mean is include http:// at the beginning or it doesn’t become a link.

 

You basically have people who are searching for answers. Answers that your product or service helps solve.

 

Yes you can put up a link to your website or blog there.

There isn’t much to explain here. Yahoo Answers is great for generating targeted traffic. People who click through either are looking for a solution or are curious. As long as you don’t literally put in an entire sales pitch in the post you should be fine.

Need another reason to use Yahoo Answers ? Okay then they also tend to rank higher in search engines. So there will be a lot of people seeing your link. Its the same reason we use Myspace, facebook, hub pages etc.

Remember we’re not just getting traffic from people who go to Yahoo Answers but also from the search engines that display these pages.

Just look through yahoo answers for your topic of choice. Check if someone has done something similar. Doesn’t matter if anyone has or not. The post should be like you’re in a conversation with them in a real place. It isn’t hard at all. You’ve done harder things before and will do harder things again. Just don’t complicate this . Its simple.

 

See You Soon

Stay Safe !