andreasviklund.com

I am currently working on the last details on the next free template release, a fixed-width design that I originally built a few years ago but which I didn't release at the time. Atleast not as a basic XHTML/CSS design. Two alternate versions I made of it was included in MODx CMS, but the original templates never got out of the "future releases" folder. While I was working with refreshing the code, I realized that it could be a good idea to ask if there is something special that you would want to see for future template releases. Is there some kind of design or feature that is missing that would be useful to include? Including variations customized for different screen widths is a common request, as well as including source images for easy image editing. But is there something missing in terms of layouts and designs? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas and help me build a better selection for you.

After a long, long time without visible updates but with a lot of things happening behind the scenes, it is now time to bring andreasviklund.com back to life. There are lots of stories to tell, lots of templates to release and lots of plans ahead. As you may possibly have heard during the spring, andreasviklund.com has been sold and is now running under new ownership. Instead of handling everything myself, I am now a part of a team of people who share my interest for functional and standards-compliant web design and whom I will work together with to make the site and the templates even more useful to you. I will continue to run the site and release my work here, free for everyone to download as always, but from now on I will do it as an employee for the new owner. In other words, running this website is now my full-time job and I will be able to put a whole lot more time and energy into the site than I have for the last few years.

I will write more about this in a future post, as well as sharing some of the ideas and plans that the team has for the future. Feedback will be very welcome, and so will any ideas and suggestions you may have. The whole idea with the free templates is that they should be as useful as possible for as many people as possible, so all kinds of input from template users is good. The main plan is to make it easier to learn about XHTML/CSS and how to edit and build websites from the templates. Among other things, I will start writing guides and tutorials and share a lot of tips and tricks. I will also write about more advanced topics, such as how to use website templates as starting points for making themes for different content management systems and blog engines, and how to get your information out to the world. I have done a lot of work with WordPress, so WP-themes will probably be a common topic as well. It will also become easier to get help from me if you run into problems with the templates, and to find answers for common questions about my templates. Again, I will write more about plans and ideas in the next couple of posts!

For now, I just wanted to let you know that I am alive and well, and that you can expect new material soon. For real, this time. You will of course also get the full story about the site affair, the new owner and the team which I am now a part of.

Finally, I'd like to send a bunch of big "thank you!"-greetings to those of you who have sticked around despite the long silence, and of course also to all of you who have sent encouraging messages. Now it is time for me to make it worth the wait, and I honestly think that many of you will want to stick around in the future as well!

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!