So is Artisteer worth it versus downloading one of the millions of free themes out there? In my opinion yes. Artisteer allows you to create Wordpress, Blogger and Joomla templates quickly and easily. If you take the defaults and suggestions, you literally could have a new template on your site in less than a minute. However, if you get the Standard Edition you can take control of the reigns and craft a very unique and custom colored theme to suit just about any need. The Standard Edition lets you get into the Options dialogs where you can control Saturation, Transparency, blending options, create custom sizes and control a huge array of settings. One thing to keep in mind, the trial version is the Standard Edition. If you get the cheaper Home Edition a lot of the extra options you may be used to using will disappear. Also, Home Edition doesn’t have all the Glares, Textures and Graphics. I think there should be a trial for each version, but that’s just me.

Since Artisteer can be over $100, why would you buy it instead of a free theme? Well, in some cases you get what you pay for. Mind you, there are plenty of great free themes out there and the people who make them take a great deal of time and care in putting them together. However, there are some right bastards out there who embed malicious code and links within their themes that send users to some pretty nasty sites. I’ve seen plenty of authors embed some junk code in their files all in the name of preserving the footer. Those themes are bloated and who knows what else lies in that encrypted data. Conversely, you can buy a theme for $10 and be perfectly happy with it. Personally, I like to change things around. I like to make my own stuff. I just don’t have the depth for building Wordpress themes on my own. Most of the themes I find have 90% of what I want, but the elements I don’t like are too glaring too overlook. Artisteer lets me build what I want.

It may not be as sophisticated as hiring a graphic designer, but it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. Plus, Wordpress changes on a regular basis, is the theme you just paid for going to be updated again? Where can you go to find a good theme for a Blogger blog? Like I said, I’ve had Artisteer for three years, right after version 2 came out and I’ve been very happy with it. I don’t make new blog designs every week, but when I want to make something new it’s there and waiting for me. You are going to have to shell out some cash, but what is the time and frustration saved worth to you?

For me, Artisteer is a keeper. It keeps getting better with each revision. My complaints are few. I wish Textures and Glares wouldn’t keep disappearing between versions. I’d like more documentation on making my own textures and backgrounds. I’m not a huge fan of the built in templates for version 3. I think the previous ones were better. But no matter, it’s an excellent app and if you work with Wordpress or Blogger it’s definitely worth checking out.

In searching around for a solution I came across multiple sites (all related I’m sure) that wanted to rip me off for $50 to $150 for a plugin that would solve the problem. Egad, are you serious?! They wanted to make some sort of user level management system within Wordpress that would allow me to charge users or fleece people for money in some other way. That’s not quite what I was going for.

I did however discover a very simple and easy to implement solution that is also free. I tested this out on Wordpress 3.0+ and it works fine. It requires a simple change to the Wordpress files and uses the MORE function to hide the secondary text with a password. So basically everything before the MORE tag everyone can read. Everything after it requires a password. And this should work from any blogging client.

First off, find /wp-includes/post-template.php in your Wordpress install directory.

Find the following text:

$output = get_the_password_form();
return $output;

Replace it with this:

$content = $pages[$page-1];
$content = explode(‘<!–more–>’, $content, 2);
$output = "";
$output .= $content[0];
$output .= get_the_password_form();
return $output;

That’s it. Now you can write your post as you normally would and then if there’s a section you would like to restrict to specific people, just add the MORE tag and then give the post a password. I tried this with Windows Live Writer 2011 and it worked just fine.

I have to say this is a pretty simple solution and unless you have some greater need this should work very well.

This idea was taken from the instructions at this page:

http://www.dagondesign.com/articles/show-the-intro-to-password-protected-posts-in-wordpress

The plugin is called Search and Replace and when activated gives you a simple screen of checkboxes on where you want to look for your search string. You can change the content of the post, the title, the Author and several other criteria. And then as you would expect you enter the string to search for and what you want to replace it with. Boom it’s done.

This directly changes the database so the changes are permanent. As the instructions say, make a backup before you make any changes. But wow, does this tool work like a charm! It took mere minutes to make the changes.

Normally this level of trickery should be done by a DBA, but what if you don’t have access to one, or what if your data is stored on someone else’s server? This is an easy to handle the job and it saved a lot of manual labor. I’ll be keeping this plugin at the ready, I’m sure it’ll be needed again.

Search and Replace for Content

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/

There is a lot of yellow, but it’s subtle and somewhat subdued so I think it looks pretty good. Feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think. As always this theme is free to use and you can modify it as you see fit. Drop me a line and tell me what you think of the theme. And if you do make changes, let me know, I’d love to see what you’ve come up with.

The theme is widget ready and was tested with Wordpress 2.9.2.

Enjoy!

Download Springtime Yellow

Download Springtime Yellow 2

As always this theme is free to use and you can modify it as you see fit. Drop me a line and tell me what you think of the theme. And if you do make changes, let me know, I’d love to see what you’ve come up with.

The theme is widget ready and was tested with Wordpress 2.9.2.

Enjoy!

Download World Travel Theme for Wordpress

Personally I think the colors look great and have a gentle but rich earth tone feel to them. The header image isn’t specific so you could easily layer additional images into it and adapt this theme for any purpose. Personally I think it would great as a writing blog, will really make pictures stand out, and will certainly look impressive no matter what the topic. I kind of based it on writing, but there’s nothing that says you have to do that.

As always this theme is free to use and you can modify it as you see fit. Drop me a line and tell me what you think of the theme. And if you do make changes, let me know, I’d love to see what you’ve come up with.

The theme is widget ready and was tested with Wordpress 2.9.2.

Download Parchment Theme for Wordpress

Download Cityscape Blue theme for Wordpress

Download BikeBlog theme for Wordpress

And the best part? The theme is free. You don’t have to pay a cent to have a blog as good looking as mine. So take it for a spin and see how you like it. If you like it works, leave me a comment. If you don’t, well, just remember, you got it for free.

Download CityScape Theme for Wordpress

Did I mention they were free? You are also free to modify and alter the theme as you see fit. Unlike other free themes there are no encoded or encrypted portions of the PHP files or any other kinds of trickery. I do ask that you keep the footer in place since it contains credit to the author who provided the banner graphics.

I think these look pretty good. Please feel free to drop me a note and tell me what you think.

Download Christmas theme in Green

Download Christmas theme in Red

Download Christmas theme in Blue