I answer the question, How Do I Customize My Wordpress Header? several times a week and figured it might be of interest to the folks here at LBB. So, I put together this quick tutorial here.

I had the idea for a website that freely shared internet marketing tips for the “make money at home” niche that I wanted to call IMMaverick.com.

So, I bought the domain name and installed wordpress via Fantastico to the domain.

The default wordpress theme is very boring and since I want my blogs to stand out from the crowd, changing the default header is place to begin. So, let’s get started…

Step 1.

The first thing we need to do is get to the dashboard which is found at http://YOURDOMAIN.COM/wp-admin/ you’ll need to log in with the username and password you setup when you installed wordpress.

Step 2.

In the left sidebar, you’ll find the control panel. Everything you will ever have to do with your theme takes place somewhere on here. Scroll down until you reach the APPEARANCE tab.

Step 3.

There is a tab called CUSTOM HEADER, but this only works with the default header, giving you the ability to change the header color and the text color. I guess that technically does make it custom, but I have something else in mind.

Step 4.

Okay, so under the APPEARANCE tab there is an EDITOR tab. Clicking on that will open the Stylesheet, (also known as style.css). You are going to have to put aside your fear of coding for a few minutes.

The stylesheet is where design aspects of your theme header are specified. This holds true for most of the other themes available.

Scroll down the stylesheet until you get to the #header tag where you will see the header image spec’d, in this case in the images folder there is a file called kubrickheader.jpg. Looking in the root folder, the kubrickheader image is 760×200px. But if you look at the #headerimg tag, it clearly says the header is only 192×740px. That’s because the header actually has the border and some of the background around it.

Step 5.

I went ahead a designed a custom blog header that used the larger dimension, but think it will look fine, we’ll see.

In order to use this new header design, I need to put my design in the images folder, so I need to use an FTP client. I use Filezilla and go to the wp-content/themes/default/images folder and upload my header.

Step 6.

This is the place where most folks freak out if they haven’t set aside their fear of design code. But its really simple. Just change out the name of the kubrickheader.jpg with the new header file name.

Okay, so that can’t be right? Notice that the blog title is covering up the new header image. You can also see where the header is 10px wider on each side of the page content area.

First things first.

If we just delete the blog title info from the General Settings tab. Our blog won’t have a title and that’s a big SEO, no-no. Using the All-in-One SEO or the Platinum SEO plugin is one way to handle this, but I’ve been using this technique with most of my blogs lately.

Back in the stylesheet, I scroll down to the h1 spec’s and add this line of code,

     text-indent: -9999px

This puts the title tag way off the page, but it’s still there.

Step 7.

I didn’t like the grey background so I changed it to match the header leaving the grey border around the page content area.

Well, there you have it. It gets less scary after you’ve done it a few times. In the meantime, I’m happy to help you if you get stuck, just shoot me a PM and I’ll see what I can do to help.

Roy

Here is your Damn OFFLINE GOLD COW

I have two words to really express how I am feeling at this particular moment in time…

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

Please people, enough with the catch phrases that belong to others.

Andrew C. coined the term “Offline Gold” and David Preston coined the term “Cash Cow”. Why do we as marketers feel the need to use these EXACT phrases in our products?

Do you understand what you are doing when this happens? You are selling a product and making money off of someone elses property. No, the name may not be trademarked, but come on, have some respect. Use a little imagination and come up with your own catchy name for a product, it’s not that hard.

And for pete’s sake, stop starting threads with those terms in the title! Again, be original, there is no need to ride on the coattails of someone else’s popularity when you have the perfect opportunity to do the same for yourself!

So go out there and make the next damn “Offline Gold” or “Cash Cow” thread or product…Just call it something else. There IS such a thing as over-saturation.

Rant over.

I personally cannot remember the last time I did a website for a customer that was NOT a blog or at least a CMS(content management system).

I really enjoy the flexibility I have with the set up, and I also really love the search rankings a blog can get with less effort than a static page.

One great selling point that I usually use to convince customers to use a blog is the fact that they can update it themselves once it is up and running, saving them money they would normally pay to someone like me to do updates on a regular basis. 99% of all customers I speak with love this idea, but only about 40% actually take advantage of it, and the other 60% still have me do updates. It is a win-win for you as a service provider.

I would be interested in hearing your input on whether you are pro blog, pro static sites, what your customers are buying etc. I think it would be good for those who have not gotten out and made sales to get a good glimpse of what people ‘want’.

Of course certain applications may lend themselves to static sites, so if you have run across those, feel free to comment on them as well…

As we can all see by the monsterous 1000 page thread that never seems to drop below the first page, the ‘offline’ niche is picking up steam and tantalizing a ton of believers and followers.

Kudo’s to those who are out there beating the streets and pushing their businesses. Some have portals, some have web service related businesses, but all of us are targetting businesses in our local area. We are providing a valuable service that not only makes us money, but also helps business owners make money(if done properly!)

But, there seems to be this crazy notion out there that the offline niche, just like in regular IM, that all you have to do is sit back and money flows from the heavens into your checking account, beautiful people shower you with gifts and praise, little old ladies bake you chewy chocalate chip cookies, and small children wear your face ironed on to their t-shirts.

Can you make insane money in this niche? Abso-damn-lutely! But just like anything, you have to work your ass off, do your homework, and most importantly, understand what business owners WANT(not what YOU want).

If you have no understanding of Internet Marketing, how to use the internet for anything but talking on forums,have a severe phobia about talking to people, and how businesses work, then you might want to wait a bit before jumping in with both feet.

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