Ipseity Personal Branding WordPress Theme
“Personal Branding” is extremely important in today’s digital economy. Knowing how to effectively manage it is equally important, if not more so.
What most people forget is that the moment you’re born you begin a journey of digital-equity building whether you like it or not. (You can thank your parents for that in some cases…!)
The question is whether you will take control of it… because if you don’t someone else will (or the masses).
I decided that I’d rather manage it instead of the social media landscape that could do whatever they wanted with it, for better or for worse really.
So, I bought JohnSaddington.com (site has changed, link to DEMO below) and just sat on it for awhile, but I wasn’t sure what I should do with it.
It looked like this for a while:
Obviously it couldn’t stay like that. At first I thought I should purchase some ready-made website (like GetNectar.com who was an obvious inspiration but will set you back 200 bucks or so… but they do have some amazing other versions and flavors!) or off-the-shelf app or theme. … Bleh. I knew I could do better for free.
So, I set out to develop a WordPress theme that would help do that in a creative and attractive way. I wanted something simple, elegant, and super easy to change as my brand changed. I wanted it super light weight, memorable, and had elements that mattered.
I also wanted to make it readily available at no cost to my friends, family, and many others, especially in today’s economy.
I’ve had a lot of friends laid off recently and as they search for jobs and as businesses/recruiters/HR managers review their credentials and use Google to help find the “real” you (hopefully they don’t find the MySpace picture of you half-naked and piss-drunk) wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if they found YourName.com instead with an attractive and impactful first impression?
Right. You get the picture.
So the Ipseity Personal Branding WordPress Theme was born.
Ipseity Personal Branding WordPress Theme
“Ipseity” means selfhood, or individual identity. I couldn’t think of a better name for the theme (and I wanted something original).
It’s powered by WordPress, it’s super light weight, around 150kb total file size (without background images), only 3 .php files, 1 .css file, and 2 essential .gifs (the arrow keys), and a js folder for the side-scrolling action.
It’s also easily styled with H1/H2/H3 tags and you can add images… heck, you could even make it a photo portfolio with style!
I’ve included a few backgrounds for inspiration as you can see as well as a few screenshots of how to control the styling. It’s pretty simple and straightforward.
Here are some examples:
How To Manage Ipseity
I made it super easy to manage, update, and change.
Each section is just a single blog entry/post.
Yeah, it’s that easy.
I’ve even included “dummy data” for you to import into your WordPress install so you can get started even faster.
The following images show you how it all works (there’s not much…).
If you want to add images like the last example, just make sure that they are 940 pixels wide by 600 pixels tall to fit perfectly into the theme.
The theme is pretty strict in terms of width, so I wouldn’t deviate from these dimensions, unless you do something like a much smaller image for a bio image.
Again, you could have an all-image gallery for your personal brand or portfolio.
Mix it up with alternating images and text.
The sky is the limit here.
To manage the actual text, I’m just using H1/H2/H3 tags for the main title and copy below.
The regular “paragraph” text is available to use as well, of course.
And finally, to change the background, just change the following name of the file in the “images” folder:
Ok. I’m Ready. I Want To Download It!
Here you go. Have fun and tell others!
Please feel free to comment and leave examples of your personal brand site using Ipseity! It’ll help other people visualize what others have done with the theme and the possibilities. Think of it as a community activity.
- See a Live Demo Here
- Download Here : Ipseity Personal Branding WordPress Theme Beta .001
- Updated Version Here: Ipseity Personal Branding WordPress Theme Beta .002
- Thanks to Nathan Smith for the heads-up on some small SEO upgrades. Love community support here…!
- Updated Version 3: Ipseity Personal Branding WordPress Theme Beta .003
- Caught some code errors on buttons on certain browsers.
Again, feel free to leave your thoughts, comments, and “improvements”…! And let me know if you use it! I want to see some kickbutt examples!
Oh, and one final thing: If you need a cheap (but good and legit) host to get a new .com website, check out this deal I’m sporting here with Dreamhost.com!
Update!
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Go to https://signup.dreamhost.com/ and use the 12-digit code above!
Wow…I like the looks of that! I definitely see myself using this in the near future. Looks great.
Thank you my WordPress Ninja friend. This is EPIC!
you are welcome friend of ninja wordpress man.
EPIC….best yet….
Help? I soooo need to brand my blog and other social networking for my ministry but I am lost… http://www.cyndysalzmann.wordpress.com.
moving to a self-hosted wordpress install is the first place to start…!
Very cool usage of WP – great personal branding theme
Sure thing!
I'm so excited to implement this for myself! Thanks for making this happen
Thanks, John. I have it set up on blairandress.com, but I have not had any time to tweak it yet. It is absolutely amazing, though!
great stuff. this is a really sexy, smooth theme to use.
i'm wondering also if there's a way to make a specific page be the blog updates. it looks like the one drawback of using this theme is that you lose the having a blog. it'd be cool to include that without making the theme too busy.
also, i'm having some trouble with the link buttons.
try downloading the theme again. i fixed a few things.
I'm having problems with the link buttons as well, and I'm using the latest version.
Just what I was looking for. THANK YOU!
http://alleneskelin.com
blair, looks great! share the love man!
wow this is good stuff
gonna have to give this a go
Hm, unless I'm doing something wrong, I'm having trouble with those js buttons. On a fresh install of WP, I'm not able to get the pages to turn. I even uploaded your dummy content to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong on that front. If you're curious, my site is <a href=”http://stevenjrossi.com.” target=”_blank”>http://stevenjrossi.com. It currently looks a bit like your site, that is, only the first post of your site. I'll keep fooling with it, though.
Edit: Now that I look at it, I noticed that all the links on the page do a weird flashing thing that also makes them unclickable. I tried it in a couple different browsers, and it did the same thing. It's probably some really obvious problem that I'm just overlooking.
Edit 2: I have no idea why the link in this comment to my site won't work.
Try downloading the theme again, overwriting all files. let me konw if that works.
Looks to me like that did it.
My Father In Law was looking for me to find a way to do his site. I think this is it. Sheer Genius Brother!
sure thing! pass the love on.
of course dude!
word up.
First pass at the Ipseity WP Theme: http://www.kennyjahng.com
Thanks! Now it's time to go trolling for a new background image.
That's beautiful! great job. love the nice small touches you made… !
that's awesome
this is way cool. I want one now. But…someone already has my name.com
It's a furniture company. Now what?!
You can get a different one…! PCNAMES.com … be creative!
That's awesome. Great job.
thanks bill! let us know when you got yours up!
Thanks! Finally found a background image I can be happy with for awhile (at least for 24 hours I'd guess). It might be cool to integrate an auto-rotator for backgound images. Throw all images in the folder and have the theme auto pick a random one.
I also added a link to the admin login page to the template so that I can edit without manually typing in the http…./wp-admin/ URL manually.
Also, being the avg. non-reader, I scanned your directions above and assumed the 940px wide specs were for the background image. The 940px is for a photo to be displayed without cropped by the arrows right? And the background is 1440px wide I believe, right?
This is awesome.
Time to add Google Analytics, SEO plug-in for better url nominclature and…
dude, i dig the background too. that's cool. the background is best as a tiled version… because other monitors might have bigger (or smaller) screen resolutions…
EPIC
epic is as epic does.
Me likey! You make a good point about personal branding… I haven't put much effort into, but you've done a great job making it easier to get started. Thanks man!
thanks tyler!
Awesome! I'll have to use this in the near future. Right now my name points to my children's ministry blog. Thanks for all the sharing of these themes
of course henry, right on.
Very nice!!
Is there any way to use this as a front-end for an already-existing blog? I've got a long-standing blog at my domain (jasonclarke.net), and I'd like to leave all the posts there and continue to use it as a regular blog, but it would be fantastic to use Ipseity as a front-end gateway. Does anyone know of a way to move the root of the existing blog to a subfolder (jasonclarke.net/blog/) for example, without messing with the permalinks for existing pages, and then use Ipseity at the root of the site? Or is this idea just silliness?
I was pretty much wondering the same thing!
Be sure to give some props to Nectar for your inpsiration bro http://getnectar.com
I heard a bunch of you guys goto buckhead church.
word up.
oh, and yes, you guys were definitely an inspiration… design wise, perhaps not spelling…
Updated to represent! you guys rock!
I threw some php in there to pull the first post separately from the rest of the posts so that I could apply individual styling to the first post.
Also, I lean towards the SEO camp that holds to one h1 per page, although I'm not too strict about it. For that reason, I applied your h1 styling to the h2's in every post except the first, so that there's consistency in design while the code keeps the important stuff distinguished.
Just some thoughts for you…
Steven,
Word! it's open to being creative. This was just a simple jump-off. rock it dude!
John,
rockin theme. I love it. Thnanks for sharing.
sure thing dude.
John – can you think of any easy way to pull someones latest tweet and display it? Is it even possible to do that in a post?
very cool, i'll be testing it out!
sweet!
Welp, I already invested prior to a domain and hosting site for a blog type thing at servantsdiary.com (still in the works)
BUT…you have me some ideas for this free wix flash site I had been working on. http://www.wix.com/resume/christinameyer
I'm no expert but it was fun putting this together.
EPIC. Can I set this up as a Page on my site? ( I want to keep my theme/blogs )
(found via ChurchCrunch)
edit: just read the other comments. yes, something like what they said : )
install a new wordpress on a subdomain or off the main page like SOMETHING.COM/ipseity… or whatever.
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:59 AM, John Saddington <johnsaddington@gmail.com> wrote:
thanks!
Thanks!
yeah, you could do that pretty easily… hmm…
wtg, good hotness.
How do you design most of your… well, designs? Photoshop, straight code, dreamweaver(haha), or what? I'm trying to learn some and wanting to know the best methods.
I do it while i should be sleeping and lots of caffeine while fighting a migraine in my underpants at 3 in the morning on a friday night.
help! am i doing something wrong? the first entry is not displayed – just a blank screen. all other entries display fine, but the first one (which appears last in the site, if you get me) is empty. http://davidsharpe.net …….. any idea why? what am i doing wrong?!
I see it… are you using rev3?
using firefox 3.0.8 ………
argh. why can't i see it? (what DID you mean by rev3?) i am using the latest version of your theme. it's very strange.
I can see it.
I've found that using the Custom Post Order Plugin helps in re-arranging posts/pages already written – http://blogs.ubc.ca/support/plugins/custom-post-o...
Thanks for this great template!
I must be missing something. I downloaded the theme, got it installed. How do I import the "dummy" data?
On the left side, under Tools…
Loving the theme! It's my first venture into WordPress too. Thanks for keeping it simple!
http://brendancosgrove.com
I can't get my left arrow to work the right arrow works.
I've downloaded V3 (4) times and reinstalled it plus uninstalled the theme and reinstalled it over and over.
Love the theme and appreciate the work you've done.
By the way, I just checked it with FireFox Version 3 and both arrows work, But I use Internet Explorer 7 pretty much all the time, and ideals for it working in I E 7…
Be Blessed, Richard
Ah. I'll have to take a look into that…
Ok, Thanks…You Rock!
Thanks, Richard
Great theme! Thank you.
another great theme john.
digg it! http://digg.com/d1neSy
Cheers! Do you plan to have some licsene on this one+ GPL, or CC?