hey what's going on this is the duck
show
I'm Doug Pennington and in this episode
we're gonna talk a little bit about the
theme that I use over at niche site
project and I recently sort of revamped
the site a little bit and I often say
the theme really doesn't matter and I
stick with that because I stick with
that because a lot of times people are
asking like what is the best theme for
an Amazon affiliate site for example and
really most themes are going to be fine
all right that that's the real answer
most themes are gonna be fine
but what is embedded in that question
many times is like what theme could I
add on to my site or what what theme can
I change to where it's gonna make all
the difference what's gonna skyrocket my
conversions stuff like that that that's
what's embedded that's the subtext of
the question but a lot of times is just
not gonna matter right the people
selling the themes will tell you that it
matters a tremendous amount and you
couldn't possibly do X Y or Z without
their theme and I fell into that trap
you know I fell under that trap buy and
find themes that were complicated to use
they had so many features that did
things that didn't matter and I've been
using thesis over on each site project
signed up with a Pat Flynn's affiliate
link way back in November of 2013 that's
when I started the site so I signed up
got thesis it was supposed to be you
know customizable and give you
flexibility and be good for SEO and load
fast you know those are the critical
things right so generally it it's the
same right it still has that so
core set of you know functionality it's
fine for SEO which I think at this point
in time if you get a paid theme it's
going to be difficult to find one where
they've screwed up on the SEO of course
you can also get a plugin like Yoast or
there's many others that help you with
some of the SEO like meta like the meta
values that you may need to populate but
some themes have it built right in you
know you don't have to use an external
plug-in and so one of the things that I
I can go on and on about that that
thread I guess but I've used theses from
the beginning and it's fine
thesis has a concept called skins which
is essentially it's like a child theme
so a lot of other theme frameworks have
this and thesis is the framework and
then the skin lays on top of it and
earlier this year in 2019 thesis sort of
like revamped itself and I've used a few
different skins over the years but the
founder of thesis Chris Pearson it's
over at DIY themes calm he sort of
rebranded thesis in a way and put out a
new skin called focus and focus as you
can imagine it's all about getting
people to focus on the content and Chris
put out hopefully I can get him on the
podcast and have with the YouTube
channel but Chris put out several videos
sort of stating his thesis to be a
little bit recursive here but stated his
thesis on like web design and stuff and
he's he's a designer developer seems to
be a really smart guy out of Austin and
basically it's like keep things simple
you know make sure the site loads fast
he is very aware of the principles of
you know design and keeping people
focused and part of that is having like
a
single-column of you know content versus
like sidebars and distractions all over
the place by the way go have a look at
niche site project comm and you'll see
it's been revamped and it's a little
simpler now one of the reasons why I
wanted to talk about this topic is I had
a lot of assumptions right and I had a
lot of assumptions about what I should
do in things to implement so a couple
just real simple ones right you want to
have a menu usually on a website and
you'll notice the the menu is pretty
simple
on each site project and if you start
looking around on various sites you'll
see some menus that have you know eight
things on there and five of the eight
have sub menu items in there as well and
when it comes down to it it's like not a
helpful navigation tool no one's really
gonna use it and if they do try to it's
just like sort of cumbersome and weird
further right most people but a lot of
people browse on their phone or mobile
device or tablet so if you have a
complicated menu navigation menu is
gonna look like crap on their device so
if you have a bunch of items in there
it's just not gonna be useful at all so
go check Google Analytics or whatever
you're using for analytics and you're
probably gonna find you have a pretty
decent amount of traffic from mobile or
tablets all right pretty easy to check
that and then you'll know oh 50% of my
traffic is on a mobile device and the
reading on their phone that menu is not
going to be useful and one of one of the
other sort of like things that I was
assuming is well let me finish the
thought on the menu so I thought I
should have like a lot of things on
there but it turns out having fewer
things on your menu it's probably a good
thing when you think about how folks are
getting to your site if
me for most of my sites people are
getting to a inner page via Google
search right they have a problem the
user the the searcher has a problem they
type in some query they end up on my
site fantastic they're trying to solve
their problem they don't care about me
or all my menu items and they're not
browsing around aimlessly trying to find
you know some other to distract
them
not usually some people sure but most of
the time someone's like how do I do X or
what is blah and then they solve their
problem go on with their day they're not
usually looking for stuff to waste their
time not most people some people but not
most
so moving on one of the other
assumptions that I had and this will be
a good example for you to go look at a
niche site project to see what I did so
I looked at other websites and a lot of
times in the footer area I saw that they
had it's kind of like footer navigation
right you can have your privacy policy
your Terms of Service other you know
useful links and maybe a disclaimer and
a lot of times there's like three or
four columns in the footer area again go
browse around various different sites
and you'll see how you know different
people implement that so in my head I
was thinking I really need to have
columns down there and then they got me
thinking about you know should I have a
table down there what kind of coding is
there a plug-in for me to install so I
could do this stuff in the footer do I
need to put widgets down there right
there's a lot of ways to come at this
and when I took a step back and I was
looking at what you know Chris was doing
over there DIY themes and he has a
support forum for thesis there and focus
and I was just looking at different
implementations and then it hit me
because I saw it in someone else's site
I was like I don't need to
of like the footer how it is on anyone
else's site right what do i what do I
want down there what needs to be
accessible and does it need to be in
columns does it need to be in some sort
of you know predetermined formatted way
especially when you're thinking half of
the traffic is coming from mobile
devices so if you go check out a niche
site project you'll see I just have a
text section down there there's a search
bar right because I know sometimes
people if they get to the very bottom of
the of the post maybe they want to
search for something else they didn't
find their answer in there so search bar
that's useful sure but then there's
other navigational areas so I can point
people towards my social right or
YouTube or Facebook or whatever I can
let them know where the FAQ section is I
can let them know where the blog is
resources etc you don't have to
implement things the same way as
everyone else and the advantage is those
are just text links down there right so
it's just text hyperlink and that's it
there's no additional formatting so two
things are valuable because of that all
right or it's valuable for two reasons
rather number one no formatting is like
the smallest amount of data that you can
send over right so it's just text with
the links there's no tables there's no
CSS there's no columns there's no
garbage there's nothing else it's just
text is literally the simplest simplest
data that I can put out there right the
other thing is when you have these
different mobile devices and different
resolutions and that sort of thing you
run the risk of it looking crappy on
certain devices I don't test every
single device and with the simplest
implementation it's going to look bad
more often hopefully hopefully I'm right
about this this is my own assumption but
if there's no columns or predetermined
formatting where I'm trying to make this
fit somewhere it's probably going to
look better on more devices than not in
general simple is better and the other
thing and again Chris Pearson a lot of
these ideas I got from him and I'm sort
of you know putting it through my own
lens here but the idea is no one cares
about like if I formatted it pretty you
know they just want to solve their
problem they don't want to they don't
care if it's like some sort of clickable
image or if it looks pretty or whatever
it just needs to be clear how people
solve their problem and not waste their
time and through all of this right
through all of the you know minor you
know focus again on these details you
end up a lot of times with a faster
loading site so I also got obsessed with
I go through periods where I'm just like
yeah how fast am i site loading like to
have big images like what's going on
here and I went through and tried to
lean things up a little bit make some
images smaller where a couple of them
were big but in a lot of ways I've
already like optimized at least to some
degree those images so a lot of it was
just like extra you know garbage that
was loading and thesis is cool because
Chris actually has like a piece of sort
of like a he calls them a box but it's
like it's like a plug-and-play black box
where it strips out what's called Kroft
which is like extra unuseful code it
strips out the craft from like WordPress
because WordPress can be a little bit
bloated you know there's a lot of times
there's some extra stuff in there that
maybe you don't need sometimes you do
needed but the one of the flaws with
WordPress is by default
will load some stuff that you maybe
don't have to have so this thesis box
like takes out some of the Croft that
you don't need for certain things so I
can't talk about the specifics of what
it's pulling out but you know Chris had
some helpful videos where he was like if
you're not using X Y & Z you could take
those out and you save whatever 25 K or
30k of data which doesn't sound like
much but when you're you know when
you're shaving things down when you get
obsessed like I do you know there's
there's no reason not to shave out that
little piece and get your site loading
faster so if you check out a niche site
project you will see it should be
loading pretty fast actually let me know
if it's not loading fast for you so I
could check it out but you know I think
the main the main sin that I've
committed or that I haven't fixed yet is
some of the images are a little big and
I really need to get a plugin that will
go through and optimize everything
there's there several out there but I
just a minute I made the files a little
smaller but not as small and optimized
as they could be so the point is you
probably can use you know almost
anything and I would encourage people to
use the simplest theme that you can even
if a theme has a lot of features and
stuff it doesn't mean you have to use
them all and a lot of times now think
about it right so when you have searched
for information on a product a lot of
people that are listening are Amazon
affiliate folks or affiliate marketers
of some kind and think about yourself
and think about when you've been
searching for information on a product
specifically let's say you're at a store
and you're like I don't know which one
of these products to get let me compare
the two let me google it
see what I could find when you're
looking on your phone in a store couple
things may happen think about this
scenario
right you're at the I was this is me the
other day I was at Best Buy and I was
looking at uh I don't know some kind of
you know device let's say a cell phone
alright I was looking at no tablets
let's say I was looking at some tablets
and I was like I don't know which one of
these to get I google it and you're
inside the store your cell phone signal
your network signal isn't that as strong
it's loading slow do you actually care
if you have little feature boxes around
the content there that you're reading
doesn't matter if the pro and con list
has a special little check mark or a
little bulletin bullet point does it
matter to you at all or do you just want
it to load fast so you see the
information you can read so there's no
real value in having like the extra
beautiful formatting yes I know some
people will disagree with me but think
about it did you really I mean do you
really care whether or not it's
formatted with a little shadow box
around the feature box like no one gives
a you're just trying to get the
data so when you when you really think
about it like that it truly doesn't
matter and if if it does like if it's
that optimization of like two percent
you know it takes you from 92% to 94%
and you're at that level then that's
awesome
like optimize for the two percent but
most people are operating in the 32 I'm
just making up numbers but you're
operating it like the 30 to 75 percent
range right like if you do some other
things like get your site to load faster
and stop around with the you
know all this formatting for every
single post and you could push out more
content because you're not you know
wasting an hour like doing the
formatting for your post you're gonna be
better off it's gonna load faster you're
not gonna be wasting time you're not
gonna be dealing that mind-numbing
activity of putting short codes and
that on there and then the other
problem all right
talking about shortcodes if you're using
short codes for example in a specific
theme so you're using short codes and a
theme and then you want to switch to
another theme guess what
trouble you're gonna have those short
codes are probably not gonna work with
your new theme let's say you have a
hundred posts out there and in 50 of
them you're using a few short codes well
I think you see the problem here you're
gonna end up with a bunch of migration
issues moving to the new theme is it
solvable yes I mean most things are just
a problem to solve but is it an
unnecessary problem that you have using
short codes the answer is yes now there
are short code plugins that allow you to
lay those short codes on top of a theme
and you know generally you know you'll
be able to move a theme because the
plug-in the short code plug-in is laying
on top however I do know that many many
many many plugins do use short codes and
it kind of changed you to that theme so
that it's a huge pain in the butt for
you to switch so that said I am pretty
pumped about this simplicity of niche
site project and there's a couple you
know little features the thesis and
focus have sort of built in which allow
you to format your post to look a lot
like what medium looks like and I
remember when I first one of my buddies
at Justin back in Bozeman was telling me
about medium and I you know I knew of it
but I didn't really pay much attention
and he was telling me hey check out
medium so went and look and I was like
content first you know it's all about
the content and they have some
interesting ways to you know format
images and other
just data I guess content in general and
it looks great
it just looks beautiful and when I was
looking at focus and Chris was you know
given the pitch for focus and I was like
this is exactly what I'm going for
got a single column here you can put you
can put a sidebar in thesis in focus but
I've upped it for the you know default
the pure focus aspect which is around
you know centering up the content
generally in narrow content area which
it's super easy to set things up with
thesis for like an arrow an arrow
content column and that's one of the the
biggest pieces of feedback that I give
people on their sites when I critique
them I have a look and they have like a
huge content area on their side content
section it's like a thousand pixels wide
so you end up with like two sentences on
one line and it just looks bad versus a
narrow column the point is in thesis you
can just go type in you know how many
pixels will hide you want it and you
could easily adjust it so you could have
like a very wide content window or a
really narrow one depending on what you
want so anyway I guess it was a bit of a
push for thesis I really do enjoy the
theme however the point is you can use
these ideas to keep your theme whatever
theme you're using keep it simple all
right you can keep it very
straightforward and I think you know I
don't know if what I mentioned it before
I am an affiliate for thesis I'm not
even sure if it's a very active program
these days but I think at least back in
the day I was an affiliate so I'll put a
link so you can check it out and I think
it's a fine theme if you have any
thoughts questions or ideas about themes
it would be awesome if you leave me a
voicemail or send me an email so both of
those
are in the description in show notes
there you can call leave a voicemail
play it on the air if you don't want to
be on air you could just send in the
email feed back at Doug show you can ask
your question actually I think a lot of
people probably have some strong
feelings about themes and maybe you
disagree about some of the things I said
would love to hear it we could have a
little you know back and forth and you
know what we'll leave it at that you
have a great day and we'll catch you on
the next one thank you so much for
listening to the Doug show I really do
appreciate it I mean I'm just sitting
here on my computer recording stuff and
you're listening to it and I think
that's awesome if you enjoy the show and
you notice someone who maybe would be
interested in it please let them know I
think it would be fantastic if you
helped spread the word if you are not
signed up for the niche site project
email list well you're in luck all you
have to do is go to niche site project
com click the green button into your
name and email address and I'll send you
a bunch of cool stuff about affiliate
marketing productivity including all my
templates if you happen to not be
subscribed to this podcast please do
subscribe and don't forget I welcome
your questions so you could send your
emails to feedback at Doug show I got
that really cool domain Doug show that's
it so feedback at Doug show or I'm gonna
leave my voicemail number in the show
notes so all you have to do is give me a
buzz leave a voicemail and then I'll
potentially put you on the air so
looking forward to it and we'll catch
you next time
you
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