Below you can see what Variant Fashion looks like (all four screens are taken from the included HTML examples, click the image to download the template):

I will soon write a tutorial on how to use the included layout variations and color schemes, as well as explaining how to make your own adjustments. Until then, you can look at the differences between the examples, for example how the sidebar and the content divs are marked up in the two left/right sidebar examples: Moving the sidebar to the right is simply a matter of changing the sidebar div ID from "sidebar" to "sidebaralt" and the content div ID from "content" to "contentalt". In a similar fashion, to use the light style you only need to apply class="lightstyle" to the body tag. The CSS will take care of the rest.

If you find any errors or things that can be improved, feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail through the contact page. I will add more visual styles and color schemes to this template in the future, this first version is just a basic release to see if this kind of code organization works well for template users.

As a side note, I have a request. If you post comments to a blog entry on andreasviklund.com, please use your own name or an established nickname rather than using keywords relevant for the site you write in the URL field. While I appreciate all kinds of feedback, I would rather get comments from people than from keywords!

And finally, two updates have been made to the site itself. The contact form is online again, feel free to use it if you want to get in touch with me directly. Just make sure that I am the right person to contact, I still get a lot of e-mails about content on other peoples (template-based) websites. And the music section has been removed, with the songs now available on my purevolume.com page rather than on this website. From now on, andreasviklund.com is all about topics related to web design.

Screenshots are below, click the images to download each template:

A few days ago, version 3.0 was released. I had tested pre-release versions of it for a couple of months but not used it to build any live website, and sure it looked good. But when I moved on from just testing and started building something more serious, I realized that WordPress has gone way past being just a blog engine. The new features in 3.0 includes a new way of managing navigation menus, and it didn't take long for me to realize that the new menu system is a tool that will cut down the time it takes to build more advanced websites dramatically. It will also make it a lot easier for site owners and bloggers to manage their sites and blogs. Justin Tadlock (creator of the brilliant Hybrid Theme) has written a great article about the new custom menu feature, and it is recommended reading for anyone interested in theme development and good inspiration for me.

Upcoming releases

The plan for the upcoming weekend is to upload two new free website templates. I will do the final fixing and testing of them during the next two days, and if everything works out well I will upload the first of the two on Saturday the 26th. I will also publish an article about the ideas I have for including mobile-friendly (and touch screen optimized) layouts in the templates, and then release the second template on Sunday. Look back in a few days to see new material!

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!

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 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.