Custom WordPress Theme Design

That’s right, I’m not taking any new work until after the first of the year. If I have already started your project - have no fear, I am clearing the decks before the new year and will have your custom WordPress theme completed before then.

If I haven’t started your project, think about getting your project on my calendar for after the 1st of the year. I am offering first come, first serve booking for projects scheduled to start after January 1 2008.

I hate to have to do this, cauze anyone that knows me knows that I hate to turn away any potential work, but from this day forward I will not create any WordPress themes for anybody that is in the get rich quick industry.

Up until this point I have been agnostic as to what my client’s profession or niche was but I can no longer pretend that there is not a segment of the population that attempts various schemes that promise to let you in on their secret that requires little skill, effort, or time - and that if you just fill out the form on their landing page they will teach you how to work from a hammock on the beach and earn more money then you have ever dreamed of.

If you are one of these guys, don’t call me. Don’t email me. Don’t fill out my contact form.

No WordPress for you.

Allright, maybe not your mom, but one day my mom was doing her etsy thing and she read an article that was talking about how blogs can be an excellent marketing vehicle to get more people interested in your auctions and etsy sales.

I think this prompted her to get interested in what exactly I did for a living My mom sells a ton of stuff on ebay and etsy and has her own store here on the square in our little town, and now she wants a blog - and knows at least that I do something for a living that has something to do with that word.

So one night I went over and gave her the 30 minute WordPress tutorial and she caught on rather quickly and started writing some pretty good content. She was being very patient but I could tell that she wanted the custom theme that I had promised her done because she was so excited about WordPress.

So even though I am very busy creating custom WordPress themes for paying clients, I worked her theme in - I think it turned out well.

The Sarchasm WordPress theme was always one of my favorites, but it was created so early in my WP career that the functionality left allot to be desired. So I decided to update it - it now plays nice with WordPress 2.3.1, tag and widget support included.

The original version was so old that I cannot begin to list all of the changes that I did for version 1.3, suffice to say that it is all but rebuilt from the ground up - and remember what the ninja said about originally:

This theme reminds me of the first time I ever skinned my knee. Wow, what an intense feeling. I can�t remember ever feeling this way. Electricity is flying through my body. Where did my Frisbee go?

So, if you want a nice, original, clean but colorful, free WordPress theme, download Sarchasm 1.3 today.

Note: This theme is now hosted and maintained by Doc5

I think that one of the hardest things for new designers to learn when they try and make a living doing design is that it really does not matter what you, the designer, think is good.

It really only matter what the client wants - you can try and use your knowledge of form, function, color, and creativity to nudge the client in the right direction, but in the end a for hire design job is only really successful if the client thinks that they have gotten a good value and are happy with the results.

Take, for instance, my latest project for an awesome photographer out on the left coast named melissa schwartz.. She is a WPJA award winning wedding photojournalist and has a distinct style - and a design style that is not exactly what I would do if it were left up to me.

But her custom WordPress theme is not about me, it’s about her. So after being warned that she was an artist and had strong opinions about how the blog should look I tried to remove my own bias from process and created her a mock up. This is what she said:

i’m kind of shocked…i love it! i’m usually really difficult to please =)

I admit that I was kinda shocked as well, I was prepared to have it ripped to pieces and heading back to the drawing board. I went ahead and starting cutting it up, helped her install WordPress and got the theme set up and she said:

i think it’s amazing, it looks awesome, you rock.

Not bad coming from a client that told me up front that she was going to be hard to please - but, I think, that by trying to remove my ego from the design process that she actually became easy to please.

Last week I whipped out a cool blog theme for a great guy named Marc over at My Credit Group. While this design is not necessarily my favorite style is is exactly what the client wanted, and therefore, a successful project.

I normally don’t blog each WordPress Theme I create ( otherwise that is all this blog would be about ) but this blog may be special - but not because of anything that I’ve done. I think this blog has the potential to have the best content created by the client of any theme that I have ever designed.

Marc has some great credit related content over there, not just the standard fluff, and it looks like there is a nice discussion building around his timely topics.

So if are interested in this type of thing, I highly recommend that you check it out.