Can You Believe This? + Who's a Really Good Custom WordPress Theme Designer?

[JasonParker]

Can you believe this? I've been working with this website designer for several months... I hired him create a custom WordPress design. I said to him, "Can you make the columns look like this site?" What I get from him a week later is a WordPress theme anyone can get for free online, that wasn't designed by him, and it's a complete replica of a copyrighted theme on an authority blog.

lol... Sheesh.

Anybody know of a really good custom WordPress theme designer?

[Steve Diamond]

Hi, Jason. Very unprofessional behavior!

I'd be happy to work with you. You can see part of my portfolio here. (Those examples are mostly theme adaptations, but I do fully original work also.)

Steve

[Swastik]

For a designer, I'd recommend these people -

Creating Gorgeous User-Interfaces since 05'

FantasyCreative.com

Affordable Blog and Web Design from Staffordshire, UK; by Onvo

James (#1) is a very good friend of mine and comes up with some really nice designs.

For a coder, you can go with Gary at PSDtovB - PSD to vBulletin Skin Coding

[mariner7]

There are many talented kids to be found on gumtree.com

I sent a guy once a web layout as a jpg and he turned it into CSS/html. Also worked with one to tweak a WP theme also.

[CliveG]

If you are looking for a custom WordPress theme use a specialist. A regular website designer probably has little experience of producing custom WordPress themes. If you find one who claims that they do make sure that they show you at least four or five that they have produced.

Also a tip that may save you a huge amount of hassle in future. If you have a custom theme written for you ensure that the copyright in the theme is assigned to you.

[Asher]

Originally Posted by JasonParker

Anybody know of a really good custom WordPress theme designer?

Hi Jason,

Sorry to hear that... hope you got your money
back or something.

Anyway, I'll send you a PM for a recommendation.

Asher

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Steve Diamond

You can see part of my portfolio here.

Steve

Checked it out. Excellent work, Steve!

Adam

[mhkamci]

Hi Jason,

Please check your PM.

Hakan

[jasonl70]

I would think any web developer could put a WP theme together for you with out much trouble.. It's pretty straight forward. It took me weekend to figure it out and build one from total scratch, and that included learning php.

[JeffMitchell]

I would Highly suggest Robert Dickson, he is a fellow warrior, he has great work at very reasonable rates.

Here is His site and Some of his work..

Porcupine Website Design
Enjoy

Jeff Mitchell

[JasonParker]

This is all excellent information. Thanks a ton. ...You never know who to trust from a Google search, but you can almost always trust Warriors.

[Quentin]

Why not just get Artisteer and then you can customize your own and own the copyright. My students have been making some great themes and lots are now making them for their own customers so all in all a good investment.

YouTube - Creating Wordpress Themes With Artisteer

Quentin

[thunderbird]

Here's my humble take on it:
I personally would not reccommend Artisteer. It is just about designing cosmetic appearance at the front end, but not about creating versatile and easy to use themes. For example, while most themes work just fine pasting category code like <?php
wp_list_categories('exclude=10,7,8&title_li='); ?> in the menu bar, Artisteer won't without losing the formatting you came up with. You end up having to work write code in functions.php and style.css to do that or resort to using some plugin to do it. Quite a hassle.
On the other hand themes like Thesis or Hybrid, the brilliant (and free) theme by Justin Tadlock, and others, are far superior to Artisteer in functionality, allowing the user to easily have an array of desired effects and flexibility of appearance, be it magazine style or whatever. However, if you're a programmer and comfortable adjusting complicated code, and happy to add basic functionality from scratch, then sure Artisteer might be something to consider. If you want a site that you can easily adjust with lots of functionality, Thesis or Hybrid Theme are better than Artisteer.

[Steve Diamond]

@thunderbird, I agree with you completely. Artisteer is okay for quick and dirty, but it's not good enough for a site that really matters.

I've used Thesis in the past, and I've recently switched over to Hybrid. I'm glad to see another Hybrid enthusiast here. I believe it's going to be the basis for most of my new sites.

For those who don't know, Hybrid is a free, open source WordPress theme framework. It's not a full-blown theme. Out of the box it gives you no graphics or colors. What it does give you is very flexible layouts with many templates and many sidebar positions.

It's intended as a platform for building child themes, and boy does it make that easy!

Steve

[Lisa Gergets]

Originally Posted by Steve Diamond

It's intended as a platform for building child themes, and boy does it make that easy!

Steve

RSQ (Really Stupid Question): What's a child theme? Is it simply a theme you've built and customized from a basic theme?

I think I just answered my own question. LOL

[Karen Blundell]

Jason, I too am a WordPress specialist, consultant and coach and can design custom themes or customize a free theme to suit.

[thunderbird]

It's actually a good question:
With Hybrid, a child theme is a theme that you upload and activate after uploading (but not activating) the main theme. Some of these are child themes of Hybrid (the first one is the main theme):
Themes

[Lisa Gergets]

Originally Posted by thunderbird

It's actually a good question:
With Hybrid, a child theme is a theme that you upload and activate after uploading (but not activating) the main theme. Some of these are child themes of Hybrid (the first one is the main theme):
Themes

I apologize for the questions, but I've recently become insanely, nearly hopelessly interested in theme design. LOL Who knew?

So then, with Hybrid, you have to upload but not activate the main theme for the child theme to "work"?

[Steve Diamond]

Originally Posted by TinkerAndPo

RSQ (Really Stupid Question): What's a child theme? Is it simply a theme you've built and customized from a basic theme?

I think I just answered my own question. LOL

Generally yes, but not precisely. WP provides (since version 2.7, I believe, though the feature was introduced in 2.5 with limited capability) a particular method for creating a child theme that's based on a parent theme without changing any of the files that make up the parent theme. You can add to the parent, substitute for something in the parent, override something in the parent, simply by creating a new file in the child. This goes for functions, templates, styles - all the elements of a theme.

For lots more about this topic including links to other great resources - Theme Frameworks WordPress Codex

Steve

[Steve Diamond]

Originally Posted by TinkerAndPo

So then, with Hybrid, you have to upload but not activate the main theme for the child theme to "work"?

Exactly.

And now that we've thoroughly hijacked this thread, we should take it over to the Website Design section for further discussion. If anyone wants to start a new thread there...

Steve

[Lisa Gergets]

Why wouldn't someone simply create and name the new theme, zip it up and upload that to WP? I think I must be missing something.

[ecoverartist]

Hi Jason,

If you still need help with a custom WP theme, let me know. I design them (did my own at www.ielectrify.com and everyone keeps asking me where they can download it - haha)

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by TinkerAndPo

Why wouldn't someone simply create and name the new theme, zip it up and upload that to WP? I think I must be missing something.

It is a little complicated to get one's head around the concept at first. Here's an article that nicely explains it:

Advantages of working with Wordpress child themes

A child theme takes whatever features you want from the parent theme. Customizations you make in the child theme override those of the parent theme. It allows you to play around with changes without worrying about mangling a theme.

Also, when themes are upgraded and modified a theme, you need to put the customizations in again if you want to upgrade a theme (sometimes upgrades on Wordpress make this necessary). Not so with child themes.

[thunderbird]

Originally Posted by Steve Diamond

Exactly.

And now that we've thoroughly hijacked this thread, we should take it over to the Website Design section for further discussion. If anyone wants to start a new thread there...

Steve

Agreed. If we continue with this discussion, we really should take it there.