Some of you might remember the landing page we had up before our site launched. This pre-launch page served a few purposes:
- To allow users to input their email address and subscribe to our FeedBurner feed
- To promote our Twitter account with the little Twitter bird icon link
- To not have an unresolved page, or worse, an ugly ad-plastered domain parking page
We decided that all you people out there with unused domains might be interested in a domain parking theme like this, so we created a generic version of the theme for free download called Ice Breaker.
Instructions
Follow the steps below to have your WordPress-powered domain parking page online in no time.
- Get the theme – Download the theme here, and install it.
- Choose a color scheme – Pick either blue (default), red, green, or gray via the theme options page accessible through Appearance → Themes.
- Sign up to FeedBurner – My tutorial has some good instructions on how to burn your feed with FeedBurner. Make sure to activate email subscriptions as well.
- Arrange the widgets – Only text widgets, the custom subscription box widget, and the custom social icons widget are available. All others have been disabled.
- Edit the logo – Open up the logo.psd file in Photoshop and select the layer of the corresponding color you chose above. Edit the text and save as a transparent PNG.
There are more in-depth tutorials located on the Ice Breaker theme page.
Conclusion
The idea behind this theme is very inspired by Ian Stewart’s LaunchPad theme, which is another free “domain parking” theme. I’d like to thank him for paving the way for what I believe is the first theme of its kind.
We hope this theme will provide an attractive and usable parking page to use as an alternative to tired “under construction” pages and default parking pages served by your domain registrar.
Maybe while you’re in the planning stages of your blog, you could consider us for our custom theme design services.
Please let us know what you think of this theme in the comments, we’d love to hear your feedback! If you have any ideas for new color schemes, features, or suggestions, do let us know.
Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.