Custom WordPress Theme Design

That’s right, I am offering all new Custom WordPress Theme design clients 6 months of free hosting on my personal server - and you can be sure that since it is on my personal server if something goes wrong it will be addressed immediately!

The server is very fast ( your site will load as fast as ImJTk.com ) and has been tuned specifically to run WordPress sites.

So bounce on over to my contact form and get on my calendar so that I can design you a kick ass WordPress theme and offer you free hosting until next summer.

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.

Since things have changed somewhat since I originally posted this and since I still get this question allot from prospective WordPress theme design clients I decided to revise and repost:

My custom WordPress themes are $500 per theme with $100 of that down as a deposit. I do offer discounts for clients that send me repeat business and have worked extensively with a handful clients to create multiple themes for them and their clients. In one case I have developed literally a hundred themes for a client whom I continue to work with from time to time.

This is how the development process usually goes:

I’ll get some general info from the client such as suggested color schemes, colors to avoid, styles or sites that the client likes, number of columns, etc. I’ll do a mock up and the client tells me what he likes, doesn’t like, wants changed, etc. I don’t mind making changes, going back to the drawing board, whatever is needed within reason.

Eventually we get to a design that gets approved. I then cut it up and build a template on a staging site. Once we agree that the test site looks good we’ll settle up and I’ll zip up the theme and send it to the client so that he can install it on his installation of WordPress. If a client needs assistance setting up the theme I am happy to help with that as well.

All the WordPress themes that I create are valid xhtml with css layout assuring that my clients sites are created with the latest web standards, are highly accessible, and render correctly on the vast majority of platforms and browsers.

Turns out I don’t have time to take on any new work for a while, so unless we have already spoken about a project I won’t be able to take on any new jobs. I hate to turn away work but I have some catching up to do as well as some interesting longer terms projects in the hopper that need my full attention.

The only other alternative I have to to hire some folks to work with me and I have had varying sucsess with that in the past…

So, when I am available for hire again I’ll post and let you know. And if you are a kick ass css / xhtml monkey that is looking for some work let me know and we can at least discuss it.

In an effort to reduce the sheer number of domains and websites that we have accumulated over the years, we have decided to sell off a number of great domain names. Come on, you know that alt-news.com is a great domain - and it is easy to think of exactly what type of site you could run with this domain name…

Just bounce on over to Jtkconsulting.com and let us know that you are interested in buying alt-news.com and find out just how cheaply it can be yours.

Update: Judge to decide on AT&T spying suit

If your telephone company is one of the companies that decided to take financial compensation from the federal government in exchange for illegally proving your records to them it seems to me that they owe you $1,000. Now IANAL but this seems pretty damn clear cut to me.

The Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Access, Section 2703(c) outlines exactly five reasons that a phone company can disclose your records to the fed:

a warrant
a court order
the customer’s consent
for telemarketing enforcement
administrative subpoena

Keep in mind that the NSA does not have subpoena power and it is easy to see that not only is your federal government breaking the law by stripping you of your expectation of privacy in your papers and effects but that the Telcos are breaking the law by supplying this info to the Fed.

Section 2707 of the Communications Act says that the phone company are liable for $1000 per individual violation of the Act and outlines a private right of action to any customer “aggrieved by any violation.”

So there you go, a clear cut explanation of why your phone company ( unless you are lucky enough to be a Qwest customer ) owes you $1,000. If there is one thing that big corporations understand is profit and loss - I think handing out millions of thousand dollar checks will get their attention.

I had a client call me this morning, and I swear that she just wanted to bitch - didn’t really care if we fixed the problem, she just wanted to bitch.

She was trying to pop her email, but she said she was getting errors. All right, so what errors are you getting? “It says that it is locked or something”. Okay, so you can connect - “No, I can’t, it says locked or something”. But you can get to the server and…. “but I can’t get my email, I keep clicking on send and receive, and…” okay what is happening is that you are trying to connect again while you are already downloading your mail and it is locking the box.

“It is taking forever to get my mail, I just want to get my mail.” I understand that, but you are going to have to wait for it to downl.. “That is what I am trying to tell you, are you listening? I have been trying to download or whatever all morning”.

So that are you listening line pissed me off.

I shelled in, and sure enough she has this great big attachment to one of her emails, so I try one more time - You have a very large attachment to one of your emails, and you need to let it download, and not click send and receive while it is downloading… “It should not take this long, there must be something wrong with your server…..”

All right, we’ll look into it and get back to you.

Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

Bitch.

Tamara and I have gotten in to the retail game online - we are about to launch a new online store - Doc5.com - and have been selling on Ebay for quite some time with a 100% satisfaction rating.

So we have been looking at wholesalers for suppliers, and one of our first was evertek. Evertek is “the World’s largest excess Computer Distributor, closeout Computer Wholesaler, clearance Computer Supplier, and closeout Electronics Wholesaler. ” And that is all fine and well, except that, like all other businesses, you have to provide quality to service to your customers in additional to whatever else you are.

In our case, with Evertek, I think it is fair to say that we did not receive quality service. We decided to make one modest order from them for a test run. After investing all of the time it takes to become authorized to buy from them we made an order that was just over the minimum.

We patiently waited for our order to show up, and when it finally did, they had sent us the wrong hard drives. We ordered IDE and got SATA. The ATA drives were not going to work in the project that we currently are working on so we spent more time, got a RMA number and sent them back. Meanwhile evertek was sending out replacement drives.

When they arrived in a few days, guess what? Yes, the replacement drives were also wrong. I looked at the original order - yep I asked for IDE drives, I looked at the original invoice, and of course it had IDE drives on it - not my fault.

So I called evertek and got passed around from one employee that did not want to deal with the problem to the next employee that did not want to deal with it either until we eventually, inevitably, ended up at someone’s voice mail.

As this was obviously un-acceptable we continued to try and get a refund, but were summarily told that even if this was completely Evertek’s fault they were not going to give us a refund, but we could send back the ( 2nd ) wrond hard drives and exchange them for store credit! Store credit - that is only good if we are shipped the correct items from the store.

So I eventually decided to chalk this one up to experience and to just keep the ( wrong ) hardware they sent us so that I never had to deal with that company again. This is obviously just one guy’s experience with this company - but this one experience has made it damn sure that I will not deal with this company - or the other sites affiliated with evertek - again.