Website Designs
Posted on 08. Feb, 2009 by Terry Reinert in Photography
I do not have to tell you how large of a role the internet plays in society today. I remember a time when people would ask “What is the internet?” and stare you at with that ‘you’re such a nerd’ look as you explain it. Just 13 short years later the question you hear is “What do you mean you don’t use the internet?” spoken in disbelief. From a business stand point it is almost imperative to have a great looking website or customers will go somewhere else!
The problem business owners face is that to get a really nice looking website that will attract clients you either have to be a graphic designer or pay a lot of money to one. But that is pretty much a thing of the past… with all of the open source content management and blog software that is available for free on the web, you can get a solid interactive website up and running for under $100 and with minimal mouse clicks. Web hosts like GoDaddy have all of the installers fully automated so you just click on the website software you want to run and in 15 minutes you get an email saying it is ready to go!
So now you have an interactive website or blog but it has the default theme active and looks quite bland. No company logo, no nice colors, and no fancy features that you will set you apart from your competition… so what do you do now? Enter Brian Gardner…
Brian is the founder of Brian Gardner Media, LLC and is a freelance web designer and internet consultant. I first learned of his business when surfing through the endless lists of WordPress themes trying to find something salvageable that I could use as a base for my blog. Nothing looked good enough to use as a front for my growing photography business. But then I came across Brian’s latest themes in the Revolution2 set and knew I found what I needed.
I know this post is starting to come across as an evangelism speech in favor of Brian’s work. But to be honest that is exactly what it is. If you go looking through the lists of WordPress themes on all the theme sites out there the majority of them are either crap or a derivitive of a crappy theme that closely resembles its original nature. None of them are good enough to use as a face for a business; especially in the photography or graphic design industry where the look of your website is going to reflect on the quality of your work in the minds of potential customers.
The great thing about the Revolution2 themes is that they are already done. They look great and provide a lot of additional features to the standard WordPress software to set you apart from the competition. So instead of paying a graphic designer a ton of money to create a theme from scratch and a programmer to add all the fancy features you want, you just hire someone to customize what is already done at a fraction of what you would have paid going the other route. Oh, and another great thing about the Revolution2 WordPress themes is that Brian’s company offers a low-cost support package so if you have any trouble at all they will get it straightened out on the fly.
If you hadn’t already guessed, all of my blog websites are running themes designed by Brian. In addition to this blog, you can check out another of the Revolution2 themes on my martial arts blog: The Martial Arts Blog. I am currently working on setting up another blog that will be using a modified version of yet another Revolution2 theme. Yeah, I really like those themes!
So you really like the Revolution2 themes but they do you no good because you are not running WordPress… no problem, hire Brian to create a website from scratch or a theme for whatever application you are running. The beauty of software is that many times components are reusable in other applications so start-to-finish time would be much faster going with a company that already has some great software put together. Faster time means you are online sooner and don’t spend nearly as much on the hourly charge of the designer.
And since I am talking about hiring people… if you just need your theme modified to fit your use then hire me. 
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