hello all!

I have been thinking lately that I would like to make a custom theme for my site. I have been watching my statistics and realized I have a high bounce rate. This got me thinking and talking to people I respect about how I should format things and make it easier to navigate.

Long story short, I am thinking strongly of hiring somebody to create a custom theme from scratch. Do you know anyplace in particular I should look for good deals on this?

Thanks!
Matt

Hi Matt,

We have a list of recommended developers on the following page:
www.ostraining.com/resources/wordpress/developers/

and a list of recommended theme providers on the following page:
www.ostraining.com/resources/wordpress/themes/

and you could also do it yourself using our newest class, WordPress Theme Design :)
www.ostraining.com/courses/class/latest/themes/view/

Hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Nick

ah. Interesting. I may do this myself.

Essentially, I need 3 important things:

1. responsive design
2. clickable background ads similar to Pandora
3. possibility of infinite scroll

Will the tutorials teach me about this?

Hi
I have been thinking about your post for a couple of days now - just worried that you are associating high bounce rate with poor site.
I know nothing about your site or business but there are many reasons for a bounce rate. Could be anything from people looking you up just to find a contact phone number on your home page to people misspelling "yogurt"! It does not have much to do with the navigation of your site. Drill down in the analytics - it might be that you are spreading your SEO over a large geographical area.
There must be a wordpress template out there close to the specification that you want - I would use the template tutorials to learn how to alter a template to the exact spec that you need. Get feedback on your present site from as many people as you can.
Regards

I see what you are saying Mark.

But unfortunately I have been over this many times with friends and watched people as they clicked around the site. On my homepage, people are looking at the images and forgetting they are articles. See for yourself: theyogablog.com

So is there anyway I can get this optimized for the specifications I named while using your tutorials?

1. responsive design
2. clickable background ads similar to Pandora
3. possibility of infinite scroll
4. maybe retina display

Hello Yogamatt
I have had a look at your web site and confess to inadvertently adding to your bounce rate! I was looking for a menu to focus on, so much information appeared on the page, I started to scroll down and more and more information kept getting loaded. I just could not take it all in - without anything obvious to click on and without any conscious thought I closed your page down.
I am getting old and probably not in your target market but I can see where your friends are coming from. Contrary to my comments above I would expect a site like this to have a high bounce rate.
I do like responsive templates (I think that there are plans to have template tutorials - I am sure others will confirm this). I try to have enough info to fill a moderately wide screen without scrolling. On a mobile device you do not want to risk a RSI flicking your way to the bottom of the page nor do you want to download more than necessary.
Regards

Hi Matt,

Sorry, we only cover the basics of Theme Design, HTML, CSS, and PHP. You'll have to build on those basics with a little Googling to achieve #1-3. As to #4, "Retina Display" is in reference to Apple's screen resolutions which have enough density that the normal human eye can't notice pixelation, so it's not really applicable to web design, as it's on Apple's end of manufactoring.

Kind regards,
Nick

p.s. The following article about Responsive Themes would likely be of help:
www.ostraining.com/blog/wordpress/10-res...ve-wordpress-themes/