Have you ever wanted to create a Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal theme, but just did not have the coding knowledge to do it successfully? Are you a web designer who needs a tool that will help you flip websites quickly and easily? Artisteer is here to help.
I have been using Artisteer for a couple of months now, and all I can say is that I am impressed. I can [literally] sit down, spend 10 minutes tinkering with the layout, and export a template to Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, or HTML. In case you are wondering why this is such a big deal, let me explain.
How Artisteer Saves Time and Money
I own a site call Shop Surprise Arizona. The site uses Wordpress for News, Joomla for the directory, and custom php for the rating system and Real Estate Portal (uses smarty tpl). I have made MANY design changes to that site, but the time it takes to go from site to site, and edit themes and layouts, it gets exhausting. One tiny modification takes hours of work across the board, and it is sooo annoying tinkering through several CSS files and image folders. Artisteer actually eliminates this situation, and makes things very easy to update. For me, the only way to go is professional, but if you are only using Wordpress, or if you just need a templating system that exports to HTML, then the home edition is great.
Ok, so you’re waiting for a comparison, so here you go.
Version |
Home & Academic
|
Standard
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$49.95
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$129.95
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| Free upgrades for 1 year |  |
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| Design Suggestions | |
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| Design Features | |
|
 Export as XHTML+CSS |
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|
 Export as Wordpress Theme |
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 Export as Joomla 1.5 Template |
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 Export as Drupal 5/6 Theme |
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 Export as ASP.NET Application |
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 Export to CodeCharge Studio |
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| Custom Value Dialogs | |
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| Library of Textures, Glares and Gradients | partial (75%) | |
| Number of Color and Font Schemes | 50+ | 70+ |
| Number of Photo Objects | 200+ | 300+ |
Ok, so this comparison is directly from the Artisteer website. Like I said, the home edition is well worth the money for wordpress developers. You can add your own color schemes and images, and header images, so it is very robust if you think beyond the basic installation.
Try it out:
2. Right-Click then Copy
3. Paste the HTML code into your webpage
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You can now make artisteer themes without buying artisteer. Just click on my name.
We bought a license and tried it out. The theme breaks in IE6. It breaks to the extent that it freezes the browser and nothing works. PNGFix did not help either. Paul Hudson over at Artisteer has been less than eager to help, and belligerently points out that Drupal sucks for implementing the CSS and JS aggregation feature under ‘Performance’. Rather than treat us like a proper paying customer, he’s suggesting I prove to him that Artisteer themes are obliged to work with these performance features switched on. He thinks Drupal should fix the issue.
Bottomline is this: If you use modules such as ubercart that push the number of CSS over IE’s limit, you need to have CSS aggregation turned on, and this means Artisteer will cause 20% of the world’s browsers to freeze. Support at Artisteer will spend their time trying to prove you and Drupal wrong rather than fix the issue or treat you with any respect.
The first thing I have to say is, who cares if it doesn’t support IE6? There is no valid reason for anyone to keep using that browser. It’s not compliant, it’s riddled with bugs, it’s a security risk, it’s slow and it’s stopping development of new web technologies. The sooner companies stop making products that support IE6 or hacks or workarounds the better off we’ll be.
I have just started working with the Artisteer demo and find it very useful. It can’t customize everything, but it gives you about 90% of what you need to make a really nice and functional Wordpress theme.
I agree with RottenOne, the issue with IE6 is that it is 10 years old, and doesn’t work well with today’s standards, however, it still has heavy marketshare, so we can’t rule that out completely.
If you know CSS, you can find out which elements are breaking, create a reset file and fix everything in a matter of minutes, so I would probably take a little time to figure out the basics of CSS.
There are a million and one blog posts about making css work with ie6, so it’s not a very difficult task.
Thanks for the comments!