68c / Blog / What would you do?

[sitewonders +]

Hi Guys,

After a bit of creative input

I have my 68c installation at uk.magicfreeads.com

Shortly I will have another at us.magicfreeads.com

I have just installed wordpress at blog.magicfreeads.com and skinned it using the matching theme to my template.

However, the template clearly doesnt 'match', as it doesnt have the tabs etc that 68c has. Thats not a moan, I fully understand why, but it means flicking between the blog and either of my installations will have obvious discrepances.

I would like everything to be as seamless as possible. I want he blog to be a big part of the site as I have product reviews and competitions lined up already.

So, what would you guys do?

I also need a homepage, which was going to be a static page, however I cant help thinking I should put wordpress in the root and use it as my homepage. Any thoughts?

Just popping to tesco for a sandwich, then back to this, so I hope you guys have some nice ideas

Thanks in advance.

Gary

[seymourjames +]

I would not worry about it. A blog is different to a 68 classifieds site with a completely different structure and different requirements. As long as it is similar and maintains the theme, colors and branding that is as much as you can do. It will not make any difference to your success. People will know they are in the same family.

Leading with the blog is not a bad idea. If you have a community which likes talking then it is a sensible thing to do.

[sitewonders +]

Thanks for the feedback.

I am not completely convinced that this will look good, but I am going to go with it, for now at least

Gary

[seymourjames +]

Well a couple of things Gary.

1. I don't have to convince anyone.
2. If you have a better idea and quite a lot of money to develop a template for Word Press that completely matches your template for 68C then try. Start thinking in terms of $600 plus to get one that really is cross browser, backward compatible and likely to work with future browser upgrades. This This one was free and its pretty good. It matches pretty well. Its obvious to anyone that it is part of the same family whether it has tabs on or not.

I would simply say this. It does not matter what you think. It only matters what your customers think and then do. You have such fixed ideas throughout many your posts but not once have I heard you mention the word customer. What do my customers want. What do my customers do. Will my English customers be willing to ship to the U.S and visa versa because it is going to affect the structure of my sites, etc.

If your customers think they are in the same brand they will quite frankly not care a damn. They may not care even if they know they are not. Sorry to be harsh but if you want to be successful doing this then stop fussing about tabs on blogs and start thinking about marketing and your customers. You may love green and 50% of the people will agree with you but 50% will hate it. I personally hate green. I would never use a web site if it was green but I might do if it had green tabs on .

Its about seeing the wood from the trees. My apologies again for being direct. Just trying to put the meat on the table.