Here is a demo link with examples of a couple different menu options.  You are free to copy the code from the demos or I will be explaining more about the code below.

First, I will explain how to add a single drop down menu to your site.  Here is an example of what the code will look like.

<form name="Demo">
<select style="margin-top:10px; margin-right:20px; margin-left:10px;
font-size:12px;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-family:verdana;
background-color:#ffffff;"name="menu" onChange="location=document.
Demo.menu.options[document.Demo.menu.selectedIndex].value;">

<option value=" ">Drop Down Menu Demo</option>

<option value="http://">Demo Link</option>

</select>

</form>

There are a couple aspects of the code that must be addressed so it will work correctly.  The form can be named anything, however you can’t use spaces (BaseballCards = yes Baseball Cards = no).  Also make sure you include the form name in the two other locations that I highlighted in red.  When using multiple forms you will need to name them different for the menus to work correctly.

The first <option value= is going to act as the ‘title’ of your menu, I don’t usually add a link here.  You can add as many links as you wish.  The scrolling kicks in after 20 links are added to the menu.  The width of the menu is determined by the longest piece of text you include.  So if the title of your menu is Socks but you include a link for White Stripped Knee Hight Basketball Socks, you will have a really wide menu.  There are various options, such as font color and margins, that you can tweak to make the menu fit your site.

Have multiple menus is pretty easy to do.  Like I said above make sure you name each one different or it won’t work correctly.  To create multiple drop down menus in a column you simply recreate the code for the number of menus you want.  If you take a look at my demo link you can see it in action.  This would work great on siebars where horizontal space is at a minimum.

Having the menus in a row takes a little more code.  Here is what the code will look like for two menus in a row and here is the demo link.

<table>

<tr>

<td>

<form name="Demo">
<select style="margin-top:10px; margin-right:20px; margin-left:10px;
font-size:12px;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-family:verdana;
background-color:#ffffff;"name="menu" onChange="location=document.
Demo.menu.options[document.Demo.menu.selectedIndex].value;">

<option value=" ">Drop Down Menu Demo</option>

<option value="http://">Demo Link</option>

</select>

</form>

</td>

<td>

<form name="Demo2">
<select style="margin-top:10px; margin-right:20px; margin-left:10px;
font-size:12px;color:#000000;font-weight:bold;font-family:verdana;
background-color:#ffffff;"name="menu" onChange="location=document.
Demo2.menu.options[document.Demo2.menu.selectedIndex].value;">

<option value=" ">Drop Down Menu Demo</option>

<option value="http://">Demo Link</option>

</select>

</form>

</td>

</tr>

</table>

The two menus are wrapped in a <table> <tr> and a the menus in a <td>.  If you would like to add aditional menus to this you will need to copy from the <td> to the </td> and pasted it before the </tr> at the bottom.

If you have any questions or problems feel free to post any coments below or contact me directly.

Revolution Lifestyle BANS conversion can be found here.

This is a modified version of the Revolution Church template converted to work with BANS (Build A Niche Store). The template is designed for WordPress to be installed in the root and BANS to be installed in a subfolder.

I have modified the ‘headline’ section of the home.php file in the Revoltuion Lifestyle theme. I liked the look or the Lifestyle ‘headline’ feature but was looking for something a little different for my BANS sites.

To create a post for the ‘headline’ area you need create a category named Headline and apply it to your post. To add an image to the Headline story you need to use the Custom Fields section. You will need to name the Key “Image” (with a capital “I”) and the Value will be the file name of the image. There are a couple parameters to follow in order for image function to work properly. First the size of the image must be 300px x 200px. The image must be uploaded into your theme’s image folder, in this case it will be /church_10/images. Here is an example of the Custom Fields section and how to configure it.

Here is a demo link for the blog and one for the store for this template.

I will answer what questions I can for the Revolution WordPress theme. Here is a link to the Revolution support forums, you need to be a member to access them. However, I can answer any questions regarding the conversion of the theme. Installation instructions for the template are included with the download.

Download Revolution Church

Note: This is a full installation of the template no further downloads are required. Installation instructions can be found here.

I recommend that everyone reads the post for the Arthemia WordPress theme, there is a lot of good setup information on there.

After installing your template and creating your first ‘Headline’ post, without an image, your site might look something like this.

Notice: I am just using the ‘Headline’ story as an example.  Any post you create without an image would look the same way.  The posts in the ‘Featured’ section, to the right, would also have a blank space for the images as well.

There are a couple steps we need to add an image to our posts.  First we need to upload the image.  Just a quick not here, just because you upload the image doesn’t mean you need to use it in your post.  Whats nice about this code is it allows you to use and image for the front page even if you don’t use it in your post.  However if you want to use the image in your post too go right ahead.

To upload an image you will click on the ‘Add an image’ icon above the section where write your posts.

Once you click on the icon a pop-up window will appear with your options to upload an image. The default option to upload is set for Flash and this has never worked for me. I always click on ‘Browser uploader’ to upload my images. After you upload your image you will be taken to the options screen. This is where you can edit the title, caption and description of the image as well as choose to insert the image into the post. Along with all that information this screen will also have the url of your image. Take this time now to copy the section of the url you will need for the ‘Custom Fields’ section. In my example this is what my portion of the url looks like: wp-content/uploads/2008/08/apple1.jpg. Notice I don’t have htt:www.mysite.com/ included in the value, this is very important.

Once you have copied the portion of your image’s url it is time to enter that information into the ‘Custom Fields’ section. To find the ‘Custom Fields’ section scroll down near the bottom of the page where you write your posts. For the Key value enter ‘Image’ (make sure you use an uppercase ‘I’) and in the Value box you can enter or paste your image’s url. After those have been added you can click on ‘Add Custom Field’.

After you finish this step you can Save or Publish your post and check your work. It doesn’t matter which section of the site you are adding the post and image to the steps are all the same. You are not required to edit the image before uploading it, the template uses an automatic resizer for each section. However some image sizes work better in some section than others.

Note:
If you go through all the steps and your images still don’t show up please make sure your scripts and cache folder permissions have been set to either 755 or 777.  On my sites with HostGator I use 755.

Revolution Church BANS conversion can be found here.

This is a modified version of the Revolution Lifestyle template converted to work with BANS (Build A Niche Store).  The template is designed for WordPress to be installed in the root and BANS to be installed in a subfolder.

I have modified the ‘headline’ section of the home.php file in the Revoltuion Lifestyle theme.  I liked the look or the Lifestyle ‘headline’ feature but was looking for something a little different for my BANS sites.

To create a post for the ‘headline’ area you need create a category named Headline and apply it to your post.  To add an image to the Headline story you need to use the Custom Fields section.  You will need to name the Key “Image” (with a capital “I”) and the Value will be the file name of the image.  There are a couple parameters to follow in order for image function to work properly.  First the size of the image must be 300px x 200px.  The image must be uploaded into your theme’s image folder, in this case it will be /lifestyle_10/images.  Here is an example of the Custom Fields section and how to configure it.

Here is a demo link for the blog and one for the store for this template.

I can’t offer much support for the Revolution WordPress theme.  Here is a link to the Revolution support forums, you need to be a member to access them.  However, I can answer any questions regarding the conversion of the theme.  Installation instructions for the template are included with the download.

Download Revolution Lifestyle

Note: This is a full installation of the template no further downloads are required.  Installation instructions can be found here.

This template will cost $25 and be available as an install only, this is a great deal with all the added features.  There are too many customizations to make it available as a separate download.  The template is setup to work with WordPress in the root and BANS in a subfolder.  If you want this installation and currently have BANS in the root please contact me.

Here is a demo link for the blog and one for the store for this template.

Arthemia v2.0

Here is a list of available options for the Arthemia v2.0 conversion.

• Space for header logo - 960 x147
• Traditional header with space for affiliate ad - 468 x 60
• Wigetized ‘Featured’ area to use for videos
• ‘Browse Categories’ area can be used for links to store categories
• Content area has been transformed into a store front - all content is controlled from a WordPress page
• BANS search on WordPress home page and content pages
• Fully customizable sidebar can be used to include adsense, affiliate ads, PHPBay and videos.
• Customizable colors - I can tailor the site to meet your needs

This is a list of customizations I made to my sites or sites I have done for other people.  If you would like to add something to your site that you don’t see on the list please contact me and I will try to accommodate.

If you want a customized header logo or images for your site please contact me; I can work out a deal if you are getting the template installed.

Please contact me if you want the template installed on more than one domain.

The way it works is actually pretty simple. Get the PageRank of a site, get the Technorati backlinks and Alexa rank, run a custom algorithm, weighting each of the three metrics and there you have a list of the Top Niche Store Blogs!

So far there are only 10 sites on the list, I’m 10/10, but I would imagine that number will grow by the week. If you have a niche store blog visit his site and sign yourself up.

Go into your Dashboard > Manage > Post, Page or Categories (depending on which number you need) and hover over the post, page or category that you need the ID number of.  As you are hovering look at the bottom left corner of your browser and you will see a url and at the end of the url will be your post, page or category ID number.  Here are some screen shots to better demonstrate.

Find Post ID Number

Find Category ID Number

To find the page ID follow the same procedure as the post but go to Manage > Page.

Arthemia v2.0 conversion can be found here.

This is a magazine style WordPress template converted to be used with BANS (Build A Niche Store).  The template is designed for WordPress to be installed in the root and BANS to be installed in a subfolder.

As you can see this post is titled Arthemia v1.0.  This is a straight BANS conversion of the Arthemia WordPress theme.  However, I have plans to release other conversions of this same theme in the near future.  I use a heavily modified version of this theme on my BANS sites but haven’t put anything together for download.

Here is a demo link for the blog and one for the store for this template.

After uploading the files please visit this post to get information on configuring the WordPress theme.

If you have any questions regarding the conversion of this template please feel free to ask away here or use the contact page to email me.  You can also post any questions you have on using Arthemia theme.  However, I would recommend reading the post associated with this theme first.  There are a lot a features to this theme and his post does a good job describing how to set it up.

Download Arthemia v1.0

Installation instructions can be found here.

The Arthemia theme was created by Michael Jubel .  Since this is a free template please keep all credits intact in the footer.

Note:

If you are having trouble getting your pictures to show up on the front page try setting your scripts and cache folder permissions to 755 instead of 777.

I have recieved some questions on how to find post, page and category ID numbers.  I wrote a post here on how to find these IDs.

Register With eBay Partner Network

I would recommend registering with EPN as soon as you decide to you want to setup a BANS site.  Lately they have been slow in their acceptance of the US applications.  The sooner you get them in the better.

Find Good Hosting

This is probably one of the most important steps in creating a BANS site. You may be thinking to yourself that you want to setup a site for cookie jar auctions and wont don’t need to change your hosting. Once that first sale goes through you will be chomping at the bit to set up your next 10 sites. I had GoDaddy shared hosting and it ran ok for what I was doing before BANS. I had a personal site for family pictures and I was a web noob when I bought the hosting about five years ago. After setting up my BANS site I was having problems with GoDaddy and noticed my sites were loading terribly slow so I decided to make the jump to HostGator. Switching to them was the best decision I made. GoDaddy was easy to use but HostGator was just as cheap and my sites loaded a lot faster. I also like to the use of cpanel which you don’t have with GoDaddy.

If you are currently under contract with a hosting company give BANS a shot with your hosting and see how it runs, you could always change later.

Choosing Your Niche & Buying Your Domain

I’m not going to give a lesson about niche researching; heck I’m still learning it myself. However, I want to highlight some pointers to use when choosing your niche and finally buying that all important domain. First, it seems success in the site may depend on how interested you are in the niche store you choose. If you choose a to start a niche store on Precious Moments, but don’t have a clue about them and don’t really care about them, how often are you going to update that site and how much time are you willing to put into it? I’m not saying people don’t have success with niches they aren’t interested in or don’t put the time into niches they are unfamiliar with. In order for a BANS site to flourish it needs content. So decide how much time you are willing to put into a site about Precious Moments and how much content you can create.

Once you have have your niche picked out its time to buy the domain. My favorite place to buy domains is GoDaddy. What they are lacking for in hosting they make up for in domain purchasing. Also look around the web for GoDaddy domain discount coupons. When buying a domain it would be nice to find one with some keywords that match your niche store. If you have a watch store you probably want to find a domain that includes words such as watches, cheap, discount, store, shop, bargain, outlet…etc. In some if not most cases, especially for popular niches, your first .com choice will probably be taken. If that is the case try a .net or .org of that same sequence. Most people try to avoid buying a domain that isn’t a .com, .net or .org. If you can’t find the domain with those three try a different sequence. For instance if discountwatches.com/.net/.org are all taken try buydiscountwatches.com. Try taking multiple sequences of the same words and mixing them up or add additional words to the same domain.  Another thing to avoid is adding too many dashes to the domain. There are different theories out about this. I wont register a domain with dashes and those who do say don’t have a domain with more than two dashes in it.

One final WARNING! don’t register a domain that you think may have trademark issue.  Basically anything that is a name brand can’t be in your domain name.  Lets take the watch store for example.  You can have watchstore.com but not rolexwatchstore.com.  If all else fails just ask someone.  Nothing worse than not being able to get a refund on a domain you can’t use.

Buy BANS

Yes, you have to buy it but it is well worth the money.  If you are skeptical, type BANS into google and see how many people are praising it.  For some it is the first affiliate they have actually made any money with.  How many people have google adsense on their page just to get a few pennies per click?  With BANS you pay the $97 and you can setup as many sites as your heart desires.  Many people couldn’t believe how easy it was to setup their first site.  I find many people on the forums whose first site ever was a BANS site.

Setup Your Site

This is a very important step in your BANS creation. Having a site full of good content, the right keywords and proper meta tags is the key. A thin site may take a long time to get indexed or may never get indexed. There is a ton of great information on the BANS forums that discuss the ins and outs of creating and marketing your site.

Have Fun

Until the money starts rolling in this is the only thing you have to hold on to. BANS is a great affiliate software program that gives users an opportunity to finally make some money online.