Custom WordPress Theme Design

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.

I know, I know, back to back WordPress plugin posts, but the incomparable Phil Gerbyshak turned me on to yet another WordPress plugin that I managed to overlook somehow.

ilfilosofo’s WordPress Database Backup Plugin is very cool - you can schedule WordPress to email your database to you, save it to your server, or download it to your computer. I know that you can backup your database yourself but you have to remember to do it - this plugin relieves you of that responsibility.

I used to use ilfilosofo homepage plugin before WordPress decided to make that a core function, but I missed this plugin, which makes me wonder, what other great WordPress plugins are out there that I have overlooked…

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.

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.

Since I had a user of my Independence Day WordPress theme ask me to update the theme to take advantage of WordPress 2.3’s tagging feature I went ahead and did the complete over haul and I am calling it version 1.4 and it is ready to download.

Some of the things that I did this time around:

• Addded Dynamic title tag support
• Added tagging support
• Updated widget support
• Small changes to the sidebar css
• Added CSS support for the calendar widget
• Added CSS support for the tag cloud widget
• CSS tweaks for Safari compatability
• cleaned up the form code

If I haven’t gotten around to updating your favorite JTk theme, I promise to get to as soon as life permits. If you want it sooner rather than later, bribes are happily accepted.

Just a quick note to let anyone that is interested know that I have finally updated the WordPress theme design portfolio. It has been quite some time since it has been updated, but, hey, I’ve been busy creating new WordPress themes…

My work status has been a little crazy for the last few months but it looks like everything is now everything and I am back to working for the public at large developing new WordPress themes every week.

So if you are interested, click on over to the contact page and get in touch.

Test

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.