I would like to take the opportunity today to wish my nemesis, Darrell Ridley a very Happy Birthday.  Why, you may wonder would I ever wish the snake that steals $40000 from me, cancels a hosting account that I had purchased in response to an offer made on the Semiologic forum and then refused to pay affiliate earnings on business that I sent his way during the time when I thought he was a decent guy.

Darrell now takes every opportunity to degrade me both professionally and personally and calls me a liar for making statements that he says that I can't prove regarding his involvement with Cleverbridge Proprietary Limited and the websites it controls.  These websites include semiologicreloadedskins.com,  semiologictutorials.tv, cleverbridge.biz,  hostingprimetime.inc, and of course maxxkremer.com.

But wait, Maxx Kremer claims that Cleverbridge Proprietary is his company and even states the following on their tutorials website:

We were stunned at how Vanosdol could even tie us with the likes of Darrell Ridley.

Wow, imagine, Maxx Kremer basically distancing himself from Darrell Ridley.   Well,  if I owned a company that Darrell Ridley was thought to be a participant, I would take the same stance.  Who to believe?

Anyway, the purpose of this post was to wish Darrell a Happy Birthday.   Tomorrow is another day. 

As you know, I am an avid user and promoter of Semiologic Pro.  Sometimes though, Semiologic  isn't quite right for a particular job.  For those instances, I now use Artisteer.

I created this site as an example of just how easily you can create a site.  I have since restored the Semiologic theme, but you can see an example of a site created using Artisteer at Jellybean Computers.  Without any experience, you can quickly get enough feel for the progran to create a perfectly acceptable website;  one that is better than 95% of the themes you see offered in the theme directories.

In fact, it rivals many of the premium themes, and combined with the Semiologic plugins already in your arsenal, the result is just remarkable.  This particular installation is just an experiment and I plan to change back to my Semiologic Custom theme at some point.  But will definitely keep Artisteer in my toolbox for when it is needed.

If you are interested in creating only WordPress themes, you can get started for only $49.95.  For $129.95, you can also create themes for Drupal, Joomla, and html sites.  For the extra charge you receive a library of  Textures, Glares, and Gradients along with additional Photo Objects and Color and Font Schemes.  For additional information from the Artisteer website just click on the ad or any of the links.

I do not consider Artisteer as a replacement for Semiologic.  Rather, it should be viewed as a supplement which when used with Semiologic plugins provides some variety for those sites where Semiologic just doesn't fit.

Try Artisteer by downloading the free trial.  You may try either or both versions and decide which one fits your needs.  The trial is fully functional, but inserts a "trial" watermark all over the skin, making it unusable for a production site.  You can create, upload and test as much as you wish.  Enjoy.