Custom Work

February 13, 2009

Hello, Hola, Bonjour, Hallo, ???? ???, Ciao, Olá!

In times like these, I truly wish I knew many languages. You folks in Europe are lucky to have so many languages right in your backyard where learning and using the language becomes more regular. I am envious.

Today I want to take a minute to talk about custom work. In the past, I have been very reluctant to do any kind of custom work with iWeb because we have absolutely no control over whether these themes are going to work after the next update. If I create custom themes for 50 people on top of the general themes I make, and we get an update that breaks the themes, I now have thousands of iWeb users with broken themes and 50 people who believe they should get priority service since they paid for custom work. That is not a fun place to be and frankly I think it’s irresponsible to even risk that.

iWeb themes still take a tremendous amount of work to create. I don’t think I’ve ever tackled anything in my life that required more patience. When the broke between versions 1 and 2, it took me more than three months to fix them all. It’s one of the reasons why almost no one else has done it. These themes have to be a labor or love really because there’s no other logical reason why a sane person would put themselves through the torture ;-)

Now with all that said, it’s looking like iWeb is probably in a fairly stable place in terms of the theme architecture. With iLife 09, nothing significant changed in the architecture and no themes had to be rebuilt. This does not mean we won’t have a problem with the next update, but for now, it’s looking promising.

I’m going to entertain some custom work for that reason. This would be simple stuff, like adding your own logo into the header of the theme, or changing the hyperlink colors, or changing the default font. It has to be a change where, if Apple releases an update that breaks the theme, reverting back to the basic version of the theme you’re using isn’t going to severely upset your ability to maintain your site. For example, if you had a custom version of Aerolite with your logo in the header, then using the standard version of Aerolite is not going to be a problem. You just add your logo to the header yourself.

This is how we move slowly into the area of customization, without being irresponsible. You have the opportunity to get some added features you want, but neither of us puts you in a situation where you’re unable to maintain your site when iWeb is updated.

The last thing to note here is that, iWeb customizations will be competing for my time. The bulk of my time is spent writing custom PHP, HTML and CSS for WordPress and RapidWeaver themes. I charge $80-$110 an hour for my time so any requests for iWeb work compete for that time as well. Very simple requests like custom logos in headers or hyperlink color changes should only take about an hour, but that can vary. If the change you want is that valuable to you, then send me a note with your thoughts and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Cheers!