andreasviklund.com

The following free XHTML/CSS website templates have been updated with bugfixes, minor improvements and refreshed sample content:

(broken links removed - see the template page for correct links!)

All these templates are now hosted on OpenDesigns.org, which makes it possible to preview the templates live before downloading them. There are hundreds of other free designs to download from there as well, so I strongly recommend you to check the template gallery for the complete collection!

More updates and new releases from me will follow soon, I will upload a new set of updated templates tonight and add them to this list once they are approved by the OpenDesigns crew.

My previous post was supposed to put an end to my part of the OpenWebDesign.org sponsored links story that has been going on for two weeks now. The only thing that could change the situation was if the new owner of OWD would contact me, and after several weeks of waiting I didn't find that very likely to happen. The story would end in a way I didn't want it to end, but at the same time it had given me a lot to look forward too.

But this morning, I got the e-mail I had been waiting for. And now there is a good direct communication between me and Shay, the new owner of OWD. My OWD account is restored (except for the admin rights) and most of the templates have been added back. Not by me but by Shay, which is of course perfectly OK. The templates still have sponsored links in them and the links are still breaking the XHTML validation in two different ways, so there is still room for improvement. But with the ability to submit updated templates and edit my own user page given back I am still able to distribute my templates on OWD in the future as well.

I can't tell today if I will officially support OWD in the future, I'm too busy with other things to think about that right now. Work, the hurting jaw and the upcoming holidays are taking up more time than I really have, and I am still trying to get my new design and a new template series online soon. But I have supported OWD since it was launched, and my intention through the entire story has always been to see everything get back to what it should be. I am sure that things will work well once I get a chance to rewrite the plan, but until then the templates are still online on my OWD user page.

This does not change the plan to use OpenDesigns.org as the new primary demo and download location of my templates. But it is still good news since the main priority is still to provide as many people as possible with as good templates as possible, and OWD has built up a good reputation as a quality site over the last year. Thanks Shay for contacting me and giving this story a better end than it had yesterday. Now, I'll do my best to do something good out of this, even though it will probably not happen until the beginning of next year…

Several people have asked why I haven't uploaded my templates to OpenWebDesign.org again, now that the new site owner has removed the hidden links from the templates. The answer is simple: I am not welcome on OWD anymore. I have been punished with a ban, in the form of a locked door. My user login is no longer functional, so I am not able to login and update my own templates or my user page. I have known this for more than a week, but waited to see if it was just a temporary ban given when the discussions were most active. But a week later, I am still locked out so I can only assume that it is permanent.

Now, don't get me wrong. I actually don't mind that ban, it is great humor. But it makes it impossible for me to support OWD, something I have done all the way from its launch until this point. Starting today, I will put my energy on distributing the templates through my own website and through the new OpenDesigns.org where I have my own user page. I have lots of new material coming out in a few days, and even if my templates would automagically reappear on OWD in the future, you will not find any of my new releases or updated versions there.

I will write more about that in a few days, but with this post I put an end on my part of the "OWD secret links" story, and sadly also on my participation on OpenWebDesign. Thanks to the OWD community for a great year, see you on OpenDesigns from now on!

Edit (December 11th): Ok, this did not end the story after all. Please read the following post as well, which definitely puts an end to the story.

Rick Blalock of Beauty in Design will be porting a number of my designs into Joomla templates. The first port has already been released: andreas07 for Joomla. The demo looks really good, so it will be really interesting to see more Joomla versions. Thanks Rick!

In a sudden attack of inspiration, I built a new theme for WordPress last night. It is inspired by another of my own themes, 1024px, and the general layout is basically the same: 2 columns with the widget-enabled sidebar, a fixed width made for 1024px screen width (or higher) and a very simple but very functional structure.

Returning visitors may also remember the "Anvish" theme test some time ago. Anvish evolved into a customized and branded commercial theme for a client, so it was taken off the release plan. But this new theme has a similar layout, and even though most of the theme code is re-written from scratch I have used a few pieces of the original Anvish stylesheet. And I have spent some extra energy on making it accessible (WCAG AAA-rating) and SEO-friendly, and it seems to work pretty well.

Along with the WordPress theme, I will also release an XHTML/CSS template based on the same design in case someone wants to port it to some other content management system. Since this all happened so fast I have not had any chance of asking for ports before the template release like I did with andreas00. However, if anyone would want to port the design to any CMS and can do it quickly, send me an e-mail or post a comment and let me know which system you want to port it to. I will send copies of the template out to everyone who wants it, but only to one person per CMS to avoid duplicate ports. And I will of course add a link to your port inside the template so that it is easy for people to find.