andreasviklund.com

By now, the DNS carousel ride should be over, and my site is now running live from my new host. The next step will be to reboot the blog completely, delete all outdated posts. As a temporary solution, I have moved all old posts to a new category called "old posts", but I will most likely delete all those posts very soon in order to get a fresh start.

There are a lot of things happening right now, and a lot of plans that will lead to changes. I will incorporate all template design work into Ileva, the company that my girlfriend Johanna runs. Ileva will offer my free templates (and release new ones as well), and offer customization and support packages – something I have been planning to do for years. Within a few months, Ileva will have an own website running for this purpose – and we will also move our business location out of where we run it from today. This will be a major project, currently codenamed "V.I.", something I will write more about in the future when all the details are sorted out.

The templates will of course still be available from this site. I have considered selling this site, after getting a couple of offers that has been very interesting. But so far, I have turned down all such offers. The current plan is to refresh the site, add new free templates and themes and get back into business again after years of not doing very much at all. As some of you may know, my health has not been the best during this time. I have had anemia and is still troubled by a chronic digestive disease that has had a significant impact on both my energy level and my inspiration. But the target of the "V.I." plan is to find a path through those challenges – and for the first time in years, the future looks really bright.

I know I have said it before and failed to live up to the promise, but I'll say it again: Expect some good stuff coming up soon. If I don't manage to deliver this time with the current circumstances, I probably never will. Thanks to everyone for all encouraging words and for not giving up on me even though I have deserved it. It has meant a lot, and still do. I owe you!

I had hoped that I would never need to make a story like this public, but since some misunderstandings appear to be more difficult than others to sort out, I will do it this time.

I have been accused by a blog owner for stealing her content and re-publishing it on another blog. I won't post the URL to the other blog since it is obviously a spam blog, but I would want all of you to read the e-mail correspondence posted by the original content owner. She has decided that I am the owner of the spam blog, or at the very least, personally responsible for the blog – which is of course not true.

So why would anyone get the idea that I run a spam blog? Well, simply because the spam blog is using the WP-Andreas09 theme by Ainslie Johnson, and my name can be found in the footer of the theme. The original content owner has completely ignored the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of blogs and websites out there that I should be "responsible of" since my name can be seen on them. This is a common misunderstanding, but it has never gone as far as getting out as a public story where my reputation and my business is threatened and where I am being called a criminal.

The simple fact is that I am a website template designer, something that anyone can find out by spending a minute on my website. The original andreas09 template is easy to find, and there is a text on my contact page that explicitly explains that I am not the right person to contact about other sites than andreasviklund.com.

This kind of misunderstandings happens to everyone who works with website template or WordPress theme design. I have done my best to avoid it, and I continue to answer about 10 e-mails every week from people who have mistaken me for being the owner of a site that uses my template designs. I am sure that this story will be sorted out soon as well, as every similar misunderstanding has been. But I can't help feeling annoyed about having to spend working time on situations like this just because people who get their content stolen doesn't spend a few minutes on basic research to make sure that they are attacking the right person before they go into attack-mode. That is just rude.

Edit: For further information, see the comment from signature DWK (who is the content owner) and my replies in the this post. The legal threats came after I wrote those replies, and after I sent an e-mail telling DWK that I had replied to her comment. I sent that e-mail to make sure that the misunderstanding was sorted out.

Edit 2: Situation solved and sortened out as for my part. See the comment by DWK to this post. I will not write more about this specific situation on the blog since it is none of my business, but I will very likely write more about this kind of misunderstandings in the future since it affects a lot of template designers every day.

This site is currently being moved from one web host to another. If you see this post, you are looking at the site hosted on the new location. The site may look a bit messy and contain a number of broken links and errors, but I will do my best to get the site fully functional within a few days!

Here is a screenshot of the single column template mentioned in my previous post. Click the image to go to the template demo and download page:

Coming up next: Daleri Document – a multi-layout template in the same simple style, but with the possibility to use 1, 2 or 3 columns in the layout. To be released in a few days.

Activity will be low here until I get the new design up. It is actually going well, even though other design projects take up a lot of time right now. In the meantime, I want to share a couple of links that may be intersting to you.

First of all, the 1024px, Daleri Selection and Daleri Mega templates have been ported into Drupal themes by Nick Young. Since I don't use Drupal myself I haven't been able to try the ports myself, but the live demos look very interesting. For one example among others, the 1024px theme includes the left/right sidebar option that is included in the original template. Nick also writes that he has got requests for more ports of my templates, and that more Drupal themes are underway – including one theme that will include all andreasXX (00 to 09) designs in one theme package using subthemes. I'm looking forward to see that!

Second, I've released a new template called Daleri Single. It is a simple one-column design, made with simple code that is easy to understand and easy to work with. It is currently only available on GetFreeWebDesigns.com, but I will add it to my own template gallery soon.

And finally, the 1024px theme for WordPress is moving into an interesting direction! It has been adopted by Matt Martz, who has given it a massive and very promising update with numerous new features. More about this soon!