I was reading this article by the hilarious and talented Speider Schneider this morning about using free WordPress themes to build portfolio sites for designers, photographers and other creatives. I started putting my response into the comments, but it turned into a book pretty quickly, so I moved it over to the blog instead.

He has a lot great points in the article about why WordPress as a content management platform is a good idea for designers. I’m a huge propenent of traditional designers moving to the WordPress framework because I’ve personally found it to be an invaluable tool in designing for both myself and clients.

I completely agree with what he says about building for your users and not the client or other designers, why an awesome plug-in architecture makes WordPress so powerful, and how in a perfect world the best sites are created by a team of people with expertise in everything from coding to copy writing to branding (although let’s face it…that team is usually you, a thesaurus and a crapload of internet tutorials to help you fake your way through the stuff you don’t know).

But the idea of using a premium theme (or, even better, a premium theme framework) is a single throwaway line about how they’re available. As someone who has worked with WordPress for a few years now, I would *strongly* recommend coughing up a few bucks for a commercial theme framework when it’s time to build your professional portfolio site.

My framework of choice is Genesis by StudioPress. When I was starting out with WordPress I tried pretty much every theme company out there, but after using Genesis on a few projects, I decided to use it exclusively, because it was the best one I’d tried. I could develop a Genesis site in about half the time it took for any other framework, and I could do a lot more with it.

“Sure!”, you’re probably thinking. “You frigging *make* Genesis themes…of course you want to sell me on them!” But take a look at the list of features, and then decide if $80 (or around $350 if you want an unlimited commercial license—that’s what, two billable hours at agency rates?) is worth a product with a list of features that, frankly, kick a free theme’s ass.

Support. When you purchase a commercial theme framework, you’re also purchasing access to the developer who made it. Bug in the theme? Something not working right? Log in to the support forum! Chances are someone has already asked your question. If it’s something really weird, you can submit your own ticket. There’s even a free eBook for absolute beginners walking you through everything you might ever want to do with Genesis. On free themes, there may be support…but then again, there may not be.

A huge community of users. Genesis has thousands of users. Users who develop child themes, write tutorials, create plug-ins and participate in the support forums.

Child themes. A theme framework allows you to create a custom child theme instead of editing PHP files directly. WordPress updates and a core function doesn’t work anymore? No problem, just update the core and your edits stay in place. You’ll never hose your whole site with an update. Even better, there are dozens of ready-to-go child themes available through StudioPress and community members. Want to make something entirely custom? You can do that too. If you’re not a coder, put a PSD together and have someone like Bill Erickson work his magic on it. One of my favorite features of Genesis is that there are limitless design possibilities.

SEO. Genesis is search engine optimized out of the box. You can tweak settings on a per page basis. Customize your doctitles, tweak your meta tags or enable cononical links from your WordPressdashboard. Genesis has also been fully search optimized by Greg Boser, partner and SVP of search marketing powerhouse BlueGlass Interactive.

Frequent Updates. Genesis is constantly keeping up with improvements made to WordPress. WordPress introduced custom headers and backgrounds, and they were immediately added to the Genesis framework. Responsive design comes to 2011? All new Genesis child themes are responsive, as well. With the exception of having to update a few lines of PHP code until a patch was released, I’ve never had a WordPress update take out a Genesis site.

Security. There are no guarantees that your free theme is secure. Or that when a security hole is found, anyone is going to fix it (or even notify you about it). Genesis has been built according to WordPress security best practices. Heck, it’s even been audited by security expert and core WordPress developer Mark Jaquith.

You just can’t get all of that from a free WordPress theme. Heck, a lot of times you can’t even get all of that having a site custom built for you. In the end, I think it all comes down to the amount of professionalism you want to show in your portfolio site. Your website is often the first impression you make on potential clients. You wouldn’t hand someone a free business card from VistaPrint at a Y Conference, so why would you use a free WordPress theme to present your best work to the public?

It’s late and I’m tired, so let’s just say it was awesome.

I think the best part is getting to hang out with people you wish worked down the street from you. It’s awesome to be surrounded by people who fly the same freak flag that you do. If it wasn’t so frigging exhausting, I’d wish there was a WordCamp every weekend.

The main reason I’m posting is to get my slides up, though…I went old school with a plain old PDF, so they’re easy to open. You can download them here.

We knew there was a lot of Genesis talent out there, but man, we were overwhelmed by just how much we saw!

The level of design, development, illustration, logo design, marketing and copywriting talent we saw was amazing. After a lot of thought, we’ve selected ten members who demonstrate a huge variety of skills.

We’d like to thank everyone who participated…if you didn’t make it this round, we will have another recruiting session in September to add to the team. We’d love for you to expand your portfolio and enter again when you’ve had a chance to see what skills and styles of design we’re be featuring. So, enough stalling. Let’s introduce the All Stars!

*The team is in alphabetical order by first name

Angelica Suarez, Market St. Stamps

marketstreetstamps.com

I just totally fell in love with the Computer Cutie illustration Angelica submitted to us! We’re in love with her backgrounds, too. I’m *so* excited to get an illustrator’s perspective on blog design—hopefully we can get some stamping-inspired Genesis design happening!

Christopher Cochran, WebDev Studios

christophercochran.me

Christopher Cochran really needs no introduction – he’s a Genesis legend. Not only is he author of the indispensible Genesis Visual Hooks guide (among other WordPress plug-ins), he’s also an all-star designer at WebDev Studios, curator of a bunch of super-useful Genesis tutorials, apsiring chef, and all around nice guy. He clamis he dreams in code…when he actually sleeps.

Courtney Kirkland, Media Mom Creative

courtneykirkland.net

I’ve been watching Courtney’s work for a while, and have been really impressed with how far she’s come with Genesis in such a short amount of time. I especially love her color palettes! I expect to see some really great things from her!

Heather Jones, Viva La Violette

vivalaviolette.com

We almost fell out of our chair when we saw what Heather Jones had done with Family Tree over at Viva la Violette. She’s a recent Genesis convert, but we see sooooo much potential in her. This is someone you’re going to be seeing a lot of in the future—she’s got skills!

Jessica Barnard, The Pixelista

thepixelista.com

We think Jessica is the bees knees. She’s not only a great designer, she’s just an all around great person, and I’m really looking forward to collaborating on a Pinky and the Brain-style global takeover with her. Her first theme in the Marketplace is amazing–we can’t wait to see what else she has in store!

Lindsey Riel, Pretty Darn Cute Design

prettydarncute.com

Lindsey is another well-known Genesis designer. Her Modern Blogger theme has been a best seller in the StudioPress Marketplace, She’s the designer of the super-popular (and often emulaeted) TomKat Studio site. Her designs feature a signature use of bold colors and patterns–you know when something is Pretty Darn Cute when you first see it ;)

Ruth Harding, Windmill Words

windmillwords.com

I came across Ruth’s amazing work when she sent me a support ticket for a makeover kit. As soon as I saw the site she was working on, I knew she’d be a perfect addition to the team. Her illustrations are adorable, and she is an *amazing* writer. She offers virtual assistant, editing and proofreading services as well. I’m excited to hear what she has to say about the business side of blogging!

Shannon Dow, EightCrazy Designs

eightcrazydesigns.com

Shannon is a fixture in the Genesis design community, and we’re so glad she’s a part of the team! I’ve admired her work for a couple of years now. Her Genesis Marketplace themes are as amazing as her customizations! You always know you’re going to get something amazing from Shannon!

Susan Nelson, Auxano Creative

auxanocreative.com

The first time I saw Susan’s work I was just, like, “WOW!”. She does such beautiful work The fact that she does it on Genesis is just a bonus. We can’t wait to see what she’ll be doing next! Her personal site and two StudioPress Marketplace themes are fresh and fun with a focus on type–our favorite combination!

There are still two people we invited who didn’t respond with a confirmation by our deadline…so we may be adding a member or two if they get back to us in the next few days. Anyways, we hope you’re as excited as I am to see what this talented team has in store—we have a feeling Genesis isn’t gonna know what hit it ;)

After a week of anticipation, our spiffy new business cards are here! Yaaaaay!

Back in February I saw Jacob Cass of Just Creative showing off his awesome new Luxe business cards from Moo.com. I started lusting after my own right then and there.

So after our recent re-brand, and knowing I didn’t want to pass out our *very* pink, *very* old business cards at WordCamp San Diego, I finally ordered some pretty, pretty new cards of my own! While I was at it, I grabbed one of their too cute sticker books with wee little logo stickers to give out! So far I have stickered my computer, phone, message board, and a package I sent out yesterday! I need to slow my roll so I have some left!

Want to check them out? Here are they are in all their glory:

These cards are such *luxurious* paper stock. I can't stop touching them!

The outside cover matches my logo! How nice!

Seriously. Who doesn't love stickers? Especially teeny-tiny ones?

I am so in love with these things that I joined their affiliate program. It’s rare that you get something as good as you imagined…it’s even rarer when they surpass your expectations!

We’ve taken installing Bluebird Skies down to a few simple steps—and you won’t have to touch a single line of code!

We want to ensure our Makeover Kits are as easy as possible for you to use. So, even though we only launched it a week ago, when we discovered a plug-in by Nick the Geek (a Genesis coder we respect and admire) that would make the installation process ridiculously easy, we re-created everything and re-released the files.

We’ve also created a brand new video showing you every step of the process. It runs about two minutes (and most of that is watching the image files upload). We think you’ll jump for joy when you realize you don’t have to edit functions.php, styles.css, import new Google fonts, or otherwise touch a single line of code.

Don’t want to sit through the screencast? Here are the new simple steps:

1. Make sure Genesis and Lifestyle are both installed, and Lifestyle is activated

2. Install and activate the Genesis Style Select plug-in by Nick the Geek

3. Upload BluebirdSkies.css to the main Lifestyle folder (you’ll need an FTP client)

4. Upload the ci-bluebird-skies folder into Lifestyle’s images folder

5. Choose BluebirdSkies.css from the style selection in Genesis Theme Settings

It really is that simple. It probably takes longer to watch the video than it does to actually install everything yourself.

If you’ve already purchased Bluebird Skies, just use the download link we sent with your original receipt to get the new files (the old files won’t work with this method). If you’ve misplaced your receipt just email us and we’ll send you another copy.

Next week we’ll post a tutorial on how we pimped out our revised demo with several other cool plug-ins, including the Dynamic to Top, StudioPress’ Simple Social Icons and FancyBox Gallery plug-ins.

I wasn’t totally happy with how many files you needed to edit when I launched our Bluebird Skies Makeover Kit. It seemed like there should be an easier way to do what we needed to do.

Luckily, I ran across a plug-in from Nick Croft that allows us to significantly simplify the process—and you won’t have to touch a single line of code.

We’re currently hard at work updating the Bluebird Skies files and recording a new video showing you the three short steps you’ll need to take to get the Makeover Kit installed and activated. If you’ve already purchased Bluebird Skies, you can download a new copy of your Makeover Kit using the link in your receipt starting at 9am PST 1PM tomorrow (I want to have time to test the new stylesheet–it’s getting late and I’m starting to make mistakes). If you’ve misplaced it (I understand, I’m sooo notorious for that) shoot us an email and we’ll send you another copy.

We’re also using this new method developing RealPro for AgentPress. We’re elbow deep in CSS today, and can’t wait to launch this one—it’s been sitting on my hard drive for a while now, so it feels great to finally be coding it!

Check back in the morning for our new video, as well. We hope you’ll love how streamlined and simple the new process is, but would love your feedback on which method you prefer!

I’ve mentioned it on Facebook and Twitter, but haven’t gotten around to mentioning it here, yet. I’m really excited to be speaking at WordCamp San Diego this year.

I’m even more excited that I get to talk about IA, one of my favorite subjects. I just submitted my summary, so as soon as I get the green light, I’ll post a more complete summary. Until then, here’s a general idea of what we’ll be yapping about:

IA is the organizing stage of the web design process. There are a variety of tools and techniques you can use as a designer, to make a site functional as well as visually pleasing, and give you a concrete metric you can use to judge whether a site is a success. Basically, I’ll just be sharing my personal process for getting there with you.

Unfortunately, if you don’t already have a ticket, you’re out of luck. This year’s WordCamp sold out in about eleven hours, which is CRAZY! (Check out the whole speaker roster, though, and you’ll see why) If you do have a ticket, it’s looking like an awesome weekend! I’m *really* looking forward to the Sunday event at Co-Merge and seeing friends I’ve met at other WordCamps. That’s always kind of the best part—the being around other people who get not only you but what you do for a living, lol. (Seriously. Most people look at me like “If I nod and act like I understand, will you stop talking?)

So how bout you—will *you* be there? Make sure to find me and say hi! (I’ll have stickers!)

I know. Wow, right? It’s a pretty huge change—take a few minutes to get used to it.

But our business has changed a lot since we originally branded our company and designed our site. Originally, Creativity Included was supposed to sell custom wedding invitations. Then we discovered WordPress, and Genesis.

So we started doing client projects using Genesis. That led to creating themes for StudioPress. And that led to teaching classes, which led to writing eBooks, recording videos and teaching classes…we were no weren’t even in the neighborhood of where we started any longer.

The long and short of it is our brand just didn’t fit who we were any more. We were having to force things to work instead of them flowing naturally. So about six months ago we started kicking around the idea of undertaking the huge task not only a redesign, but a full-on re-brand.

We took our own advice on this project, too. We filled out a Creative Brief, completed a Brand Survey, put together User Personas and Site Maps and Wireframes. I think the “Bible” I used when coding this thing was around 50 pages—and I have to say, it really kept me on track and in line with designing for the site’s goals instead of my whims.

I’ll go ahead and go into more detail on how we did this in the days to come. We’ve used so many great tools we can’t wait to introduce you to, and are really excited to share our process. We’re personally pretty stoked with how everything turned out!

Oh yeah, one more thing! Starting tomorrow we’re launching a new product called a “Makeover Kit”. We’ll tell you more about them when we launch tomorrow, but we really think you’re gonna love being able to add on styles to themes you already own! We’re planning one for every day of the week starting Valentine’s Day with a Wedding Planner makeover for Family Tree. We’ve got kits coming for Lifestyle, Bee Crafty and Generate as well, and each day there will be an awesome deal, so stay tuned!

In 2010, 8% of all websites on the internet were built on WordPress. In 2011, that number more than doubled to 17%. If you look at newly registered domains, that number jumps to an astounding 22%.

Want to get in on the future of web design? Then you won’t want to miss this evening with Chris Ford, Creative Director of Creativity Included as well as a WordPress/Genesis theme developer, educator and evangelist.

In this introduction to WordPress and Genesis, Chris will demonstrate a variety of tools that can help you do less repetitive coding and more designing (which is really what you want to be doing, right?).

Why WordPress?

Chris will talk about the benefits of using the WordPress platform as a content management system. If you thought WordPress was just for blogging, it’s time to take another look! Recent additions like custom menus, post formats and post types have made it a powerful tool for managing all types of sites.

Why Genesis?

Chris will share with you why she works exclusively with the Genesis framework–including it’s excellent security, built-in SEO options, consistency in coding and flexible layouts. It’s also incredibly easy to update, and thanks to the parent/child relationship, you can update the core without worrying about losing your changes!

Why Premium Plug-Ins Rock

It used to take a team of coders at least a week to build something it takes 15 minutes to put together using the premium Gravity Forms plug-in. If you want to show an amazing product demo, video gallery or portfolio there’s no slicker solution than SlideDeck Pro. And you can use Cart66 to integrate e-commerce capabilities into a site for a fraction of the cost of a custom solution. Premium plug-ins free you from having to code custom solutions to common problems, so you’re not reinventing the wheel on every new project.

We’ll cap the evening off with a brief Q+A session.

Be sure to bring any questions you might have so Chris has a chance to answer your real-world concerns.

Registration for this event has been closed

Work, photos, iStock purchases…everything. I had been so busy with getting ready for the move that I told myself “It’s a brand new drive – you’ll be fine!” (Cue music of impending doom.)

Saying that pretty much guaranteed I’d drop it. Total rookie mistake that I’m embarrassed to admit I made.)

Thank God that I had the hard drive I transferred from three months ago safe in a snug neoprene pouch, and that I was too lazy to clean up my desktop, so all but one chapter of the Branding 101 book was saved. And the pictures of my niece’s first birthday were transferred to the old drive right before the switch. So it could have been worse. Much, much, worse.

But yeah— go back up now anyways ;)