Custom WordPress Theme Design

Sometimes I still get to do very fun WordPress themes - in between the corporate WP theme design and the people that want a clean, minimal WordPress theme I get a client or two who wants something fun and gives me a little room to create something.

That’s exactly what Jeff over at People You’ll See in Hell did, he gave me some time and creative freedom and we created something that we both liked. His dedicated audience has been decidedly positive as well.

The WordPress theme queue is getting full, the turn around time for WordPress themes is now 17-21 days. So if you need it absolutely, positively, this fortnight I won’t be able to help.

For all my current clients - the backlog is just about cleared, we have just finished a number of very cool WordPress themes ( details to follow ) and are a couple days from being back on schedule.

The Heckerped WordPress theme is now stable and is available in a free creative commons attribution version as well as a licensed version for $35. This is my favorite of all of the 2 column free themes that I have done over the last few years.

A number of big-time coders like The Ninja have had a hard-on for the WordPress codebase. I cannot count the times that I have been faced with geeks explaining to me that WordPress, and even more so, WordPress MU were just not suitable for high profile sites….

I think times, they are a changing. CNN Political Blogs are now using MU, and the blogs at ZDNet are using some flavor of WordPress.

Silent Bob blogs with WordPress, that should be enough for the Ninja by itself. Yahoo is using WordPress ( I know because they asked me to work with them on a WP project once, but that is another story…) and Sony trusts the PlayStation blog to WordPress.

Rolling Stone, NewYork Times, Delta Airlines? Check.

I am admittedly biased, but I think if these big-timers can trust their sites to WordPress, we can too.

Anyone that does any kind of web design or development ( not just WordPress development ) learns early that some clients just suck - you just can’t make them happy no matter what you do.

WordPress development adds another dimension since you are turning over a front end to a platform to the client who plans to extend and add to what you have created for them. This often brings up un-anticipated issues…

But just when you think that all hope is lost ( okay, that might be a little overly dramatic ) you get several clients in a row that send you quotes like these:

It’s freaking beautiful.

It’s wonderful. You did an excellent job of taking my thoughts and vision and bringing it to life! This is exactly what I had in mind.

Yes yes yes yes yes. Oh you rock.

THANK YOU. It has been great working with you and I look forward to more projects in the future. If you need a quote from me for you portfolio/website, just let me know.

Quotes like these make it much easier to deal with the more difficult clients…