I was trying to decide between two different site designs recently. I build & maintain my site with RapidWeaver (as you May recall from a post or two about it), which is theme-based to make my life easier.
Anyway, I was looking at some for-pay theme designs from RapidWeaver Themes and having trouble deciding between two close-calls. I emailed him and explained my indecision, and asked if he could give me some specific information on one of them so I could compare mo’ better, and be happy with my decision. His response was short and very much more than necessary; he sent me links to the themes for free so I could try them both out and decide!
I know places don’t stay in business by giving the store away, but I cannot stress enough how cool I think that was of him. I played with both, modding them to do about what I wanted out of them more-or-less, and really had trouble deciding, but eventually went with the theme you see on the site now. The other option was almost as good and almost the same, really, minus a few small touches.
It’s really nice and in fact I prefer some things about it still and find that visually I’m quite drawn to it. Who knows, maybe in the near future I’ll switch it over? I can’t tell the future! But hey I’m indecisive, so it’s a possibility, right?
In any regard, I just wanted to put an official “thank you” out in public for this guy. And also perhaps recommend him to you, if you’re in the market for a new site theme. Sweet.
My Thanks to Yourhead Software
I was also looking for a way to make navigating my photo galleries much smoother. I had been keeping the list small, mostly due to the fact that before theme it was hard to navigate the submenus to each of the galleries, and a long list becomes daunting.
Well the theme change helped, but I still wanted a unified “home” for the photo galleries that gave them thumbnails so you could easily see a sample pic, and put the navigation right in your face, without a huge, long, daunting (there’s that word again) list to try and scroll through.
Plus, you navigate pictures by looking at them, not them, right? So gallery thumbnails seemed like a good idea.
I stumbled across a plugin that seemed like a good start, but it wasn’t as automated as I had wanted, or so I thought. I emailed the makers – YourHead – to see if what I wanted could be done with their program, and they said rather plainly that no, it could not be done like I wanted, but that a free alternative existed that would do at least 90% of what I was after.
It turns out that I already had that free page plugin installed, as it was the same “rapidalbum” plugin that I had decided to use to make my slick new photo pages, as you May or May not recall.
So even though it meant that I would not be buying software from them, they went ahead and candidly told me that there was free software that I could get to do what I wanted. And while it did mean no sale now, I definitely remember them, and already have my eye on some of their other goodies that look interesting to me.
Lesson to be learnt?
Doing things like this wins you customers. Doing business like it’s a hold-up is not the way to endear friends, family, or strangers even. These guys (and maybe girls?) went out of their way to help me, and for that not only will they get my gratitude, but I am actively looking for ways to become their customers.
Except for RapidWeaver Themes
That one’s easy; I will be going back to pay for the theme I actually used later tonight.
:-)
So yeah, if you read to here…. THERE’S NEW PHOTOS UP!
Traipse on over to my new photo pages home, and see for yourself; now you can see thumbnails of the galleries, of which there are already more (thanks to slicker navigation), and the number will only grow, I hope. And thanks to Mr. Byrd over @ RWT, it’s all wrapped up inside a nice little theme.. :-)
Peace.
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