Create Your Own Custom Buying Site Theme

Create Your Own Custom Buying Site Theme

In addition to the two built-in Buying Site themes (Legacy and 2.0) that come with the Investment Dominator system, you can design and develop your own custom themes and even share those custom themes with other Investment Dominator users.

To create a custom theme you need to know a little about HTML and CSS. If you are not familiar with what that is, we recommend that you find and hire an HTML/ CSS developer (also called a Front End Developer). You can find front-end developers on websites like Fiverr.com or Upwork.com that can take a visual design that you have in mind and code it using HTML and CSS. Also, an important part to keep in mind is that If the developer wants to get a free sandbox account from us, the developer should contact us and we can get that set up for them.

To obtain a sandbox account for your developer, open a ticket and provide us with your developer’s name and email address. We will then create a free sandbox account for them to utilize for testing purposes throughout the development process.

Ok, Let’s Get Started

1. Download one of these Sample Buying Site Theme templates listed below which will give you, or your theme developer, a good idea on how to use our merge codes/ webhooks to develop a custom look/layout for your buying website.

Sample Buying Site Themes:

2. Use basic HTML and CSS to design your layout, use merge fields (listed below) as needed within your HTML to utilize the built-in functions of the Investment Dominator.

Your theme should include the following files (required):

  • header.html
  • footer.html
  • index.html
  • preview.jpg

Common files and directories include (optional):

  • contact-us.html
  • sell-your-land.html
  • sell-your-house.html
  • img/
  • src/
    • styles.css
    • scripts.js

NOTE: You can define a Custom Page Theme within your Custom Theme files by using the [custom_page_template name=”Custom Page”] merge field.

It is best practice to include all website elements and resources within your theme folder so that it is a self-contained directory with no external references.

Paths should be relative to the theme path which can be referenced via the below merge field:

[buying-theme-path]

For example, you can reference a custom scripts.js file by placing the following code into your header.html file.

<script src="[buying-theme-path]/src/scripts.js"></script>

Another example would be if you would like to display an image that has been uploaded as part of your custom theme you would use something like this:

<img class="my-custom-class" src="[buying-theme-path]/img/my-custom-image.png" alt="Image description">

3. Compress your theme files into a .zip file (that does not exceed 15MB) then upload that file under ‘Customize> Website Settings – Buying> Select Your Buying Site Theme‘ and click the ‘UPLOAD CUSTOM THEME‘ option.

After the custom theme is uploaded to the system, it will appear below the built-in theme options like this:

NOTE: The filename of the .zip file you upload will be the name of the theme when it is uploaded and a screenshot of the theme is automatically generated based on your index.html file. So for example, if you name your custom theme file My-Custom-Buying-Site.zip then when you upload this to your system, the system will display the new theme option as “My Custom Buying Site“.

4. Click the custom theme to highlight and select it, then click the blue ‘Update Site‘ button at the bottom of the page to save the change.

Buying Site Merge Fields

Here is a list of merge fields you can reference in your custom theme files.

[buying-theme-path]

[buying-site-menu]

[buying-site-footer]

[buying-title]

[buying-logo]

[buying-home-text]

[buying-description]

[buying-banner-text]

[buying-banner-image]

[buying-banner]

[sell-your-land-banner-text]

[sell-your-land-banner-image]

[sell-your-land-banner]

[sell-your-house-banner-text]

[sell-your-house-banner-image]

[sell-your-house-banner]

[sell-your-land-page-text]

[sell-your-land-form]

[sell-your-house-page-text]

[sell-your-house-form]

[contact-us-page-text]

[contact-us-form]

[current-date]

[popup]PUT YOUR POPUP CONTENT HERE – (DO NOT USE MERGE POST DATA)[/popup]

[popup-link]POPUP LINK[/popup-link]

[my-company-agent-firstname]

[my-company-agent-lastname]

[my-company-agent-phone]

[my-company-name]

[my-company-phone]

[my-company-email]

[my-company-address]

[my-company-city]

[my-company-state]

[my-company-zip]

[my-company-site]

[my-letter-ps-line]

[my-firstname]

[my-lastname]

[my-email]

[my-signature]

[my-agency-disclosure]

[offer-phone]

[offer-email]

[company-fax]

[contact-us-form-custom]

[sell-your-land-form-step-one]

[sell-your-land-form-step-two]

[sell-your-house-form-step-one]

[sell-your-house-form-step-two]

[buying-site-menu-json]

[buying-theme-path]

[custom_page_template name=”Custom Page”]

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