BlogSchlager WebTech

Archive for January, 2010

Have you ever wanted to have a cool new web design for WordPress or Joomla and don’t want to spend hours searching through templates and more hours modifying it to make it your own? Well now you can create your own templates and not just for one platform but for multiple platforms, and best of all they look awesome. The secret is a new application called Artisteer and it makes creating a cool template for all of your sites quick and easy, but not necessarily cheap. Oops, I said it, Artisteer is not particularly cheap at $125 a license but if you are a budding blog professional or are a small business with a website and a blog this tool can help you brand it all.

I went ahead and bought a license because I have a blog and a website and I wanted to brand them both the same. So let’s look at what you get and what you can do for the $$. First take a look at the style of this blog site (http://blogs.alturavista.com/) and my main website (http://www.alturavista.com). I used Artisteer to create the original template and then export it as an HTML template for the website and a WordPress template for my Blog. 

As you can see, I was successful. I am able to incorporate my original photo of the Golden Gate Bridge and my logo and it was pretty easy to do. Artisteer features a very slick interface and it really is push button easy to use. The best feature is the ability to "browse" suggested elements like headers, footers, menu items, etc., in fact I found that just about every element on the page can be customized. But enough about me, the cool thing about this app is the out of the box experience.

The interface begs you to customize your template:

Click the "Suggest Design" button and watch as cool-looking template after template goes by. When you see one you like, that is when the fun begins. Now click the "Suggest Colors" button and watch you new template change color before your eyes.

When you find a color you like, try having Artisteer suggest a new header design? Click on the "Suggest Header" button and just that easily you have created a custom design.

Custom background images are also available:

You can even move the toolbar around, very cool.

So much for the design work, Artisteer not only makes you a design wiz, it also makes you a code wiz too. You can turn out designs for multiple platforms. This is serious cool if you want to maintain a uniform brand across your web properties.

Choose to "Export" your design for WordPress, as an HTML template, for Blogger, or Drupal or Joomla.

Choose your platform	Export for WordPress and Blogger
Export for Joomla	Export for Drupal
Export for DotNetNuke	Export as a folder or as a zipped file. Allows you to make templates available for sale. Watermarking is also available.

It may seem a bit pricey at $125, but when you consider what it can do for you or your company, I think it is a great bargain. You can find Artisteer at their website: http://www.artisteer.com/?p=home and they have a limited trial so you can kick the tires if you like.