WordPress Art & Science

Hello Adrian,

I hope you are doing well.

I was searching the topic "website hostage & child theme" and came across your honest post "Lies You May Have Been Told About WordPress".

Yes, I agree with your comment, “The person lying to you simply wants your money. So do I.” The difference here is honesty. When you are honest with your customers, they will always come back to do business with you.

I have a Website Development Agency that developed a website for my company and did not use a Child Theme. Since a Child Theme was not created, this means the only team who knows enough to update or change the theme will be them. Not using a Child Theme and only modifying the Parent-Theme makes things so complex and convoluted that only the agency team knows what’s going on when updating the Parent Theme.

That being said, I found out the hard way that the developers didn’t want to create a Child Theme for my website to keep my website hostage. This way, the development team is the only one who can update the WP theme and keep milking money for doing nothing. If a Child Theme was created, updating the parent theme should not cause any issues with the Child Theme's custom work.

I am currently trying to resolve the issue with the current developers, and I just wanted to send you a note to thank you for your honest article.

You can publish my email, but please remove my contact info and company name. I am currently in the process of filing a big lawsuit against the previous Web Development Firm.

Another important thing you might need to add to your post is is something I learned the hard way: “Do not trust your Web Development Firm with your credit card.”

Always ask your Web Development Firm to send you an invoice and a payment link. NEVER EVER TRUST ANYONE WITH YOUR CREDIT CARD!

In my case, the Web Development Firm charged our corporate credit card over 40 thousand dollars for things I never ordered or agreed to, and I didn’t catch it until it was too late.

May God Bless you for being honest.

The Process Technology and Operator Academy and Your Mentor highly recommend Adrian at WordPress Art and Science.

Really “Like” and big, meaty “Thumbs Up” in Facebook speak.

Adrian is a professional and will save you valuable time.

Adrian tells your up front he isn't WordPress "expert" because there is always something new to learn. Yet the benefits of his years of experience are directly passed down to his clients. During the initial interaction with Adrian, Your Mentor learned that the theme that had been painstakingly chosen over a month long search was not compatible with other goals of the Process Technology and Operator Academy. Other ‘webmasters’ considered for the project were unaware of this detail. Adrian is also well versed in the optimal readability mechanics (fonts, colors, layout, etc) and, in summary, just knows what will work.

Adrian is a creative techie artist.

The Process Technology and Operator Academy is a complex technical blog. Adrian’s expertise enhanced WordPress to incorporate the diverse range of PTOA features which include a chronological (book format) blog structure and site registration options of varying levels and authorizations. Adrian either has the experience working with the precise plugin for the application or will take time to research and evaluate the best options.

Adrian listens to the customer.

New blog creators or blog creators that are considering upgrade can rest assured that Adrian “gets” the concept you have in your head; the process of observing the visualized website come to fruition is really quite amazing. Your Mentor suggests that future clients draft out even the scantest of story boards … Adrian has sufficient expertise to inquire where he needs more detail to fill in the blanks. Then go back to writing content while Adrian deals with the nuts and bolts.

Adrian is an excellent teacher.

Adrian interacts with clients via individualized audio and video files. These highly entertaining instructional aides which quickly teach even the marginally computer-savvy among us how to take control of their website in record time.

Adrian offers a sustained relationship.

WordPress Art & Science offers an ongoing relationship after the website is completed. For a very reasonable fee, Adrian will take care of the constant WordPress core, plugin and theme updates plus creating and storing regular backups of your files and WordPress database. Alternatively, Adrian’s instructional aides teach you how to handle the upgrades yourself. The choice is yours. Either way, you will not be left with a site that only works until the next upgrade goes wrong.

Your Mentor / The Process Technology & Operator Academy

I had a problem with my WordPress site I needed to fix.

I was tired of trying to use a bunch of remote people to make content and design changes. They were always too busy or unresponsive. I also wanted to find someone whose face I could see in person - someone who could teach me a thing or two.

I value personal service and face-to-face contact a LOT. I also value talent, responsiveness and amazing people.

Adrian fit the bill perfectly.

Not only did all of my content and design issues get fixed quickly, I've made a friend with an amazing guy. It was important to me that he “get” me and my business. I wanted more than a coder - I wanted someone to bounce marketing ideas off. Again, Adrian was there.

The results I've seen are a definite uptick in website traffic and client applications.

Spending some money with Adrian has resulted in clients spending more money with me.

And that's all I got to say about that.

Adrian is extremely patient and kind, and he’s an excellent Word-Press teacher. This was important to me because I wanted to learn how to manage my own website not just have someone do it for me. Additionally, he’s just an all-round great guy.

Who knew working on a website could be fun? Thanks, Adrian for all you taught me and for being a model of authenticity and integrity in this sometimes crazy world!

There are several wonderful things about Adrian as a web designer, and one of them is that he rarely says no.

For example: I first contacted him four days before I wanted to have a blog up and running. Not knowing anything about setting up a blog, I thought I was giving him plenty of time. Instead of letting me know I was nuts, Adrian just made room in his schedule for us to get started. He said we’d have something up in four days. He was ready to pull some late hours to make that happen.

This story has a happy ending because when we met, Adrian tactfully filled me in on some questions to think about: Who was the audience for my blog? What “look” was I after? What tags and categories did I want? Where would the “search” window be? It was obvious I needed to go look at a bunch of blogs and get back to him with what I liked.

A few weeks later, after a collaboration with him that was always smooth, I had a blog that is fun to work with and perfectly matched to my creative vision.

The only time I can remember Adrian saying “no” was when I broached the idea of using Comic Sans as my default font. Even then he didn’t completely rule it out, he just pointed me to sites such as ihatecomicsans.com and comicsanscriminal.com to point out that, of all the fonts in the world, Comic Sans is the most despised. Good to know. I went with Arial. (By the way, he’s also very opinionated about Squarespace.)

Because of what he knows, Adrian saved me a lot of trial and error. He also got me to shoulder my part in the creative process. Then he brought my ideas to life. We were partners!

I also like that he’s a responsible businessperson. He has you sign a contract. He’s prepared for and on time to meetings. (I haven’t always been, but he has.) He’s responsive – if you’re waiting to hear from him, you promptly will. For me, who knew nothing about this game, Adrian has made the process of launching a blog as fun as possible.

Let’s recap: As a web designer, Adrian knows his stuff, he’s accommodating to your schedule, he’s on time to and prepared for meetings, he’s encouraging and interested in bringing your vision to life, he’s friendly and he gets back to you fast. What a pleasure to work with! Email me if you need more details about Adrian, a true advocate for your website.

Tracey Seltzer / Throwing Mom Away

I came to Adrian for help with a complex problem with my WordPress setup. I had been dabbling in the back end of WordPress and had painted myself into a corner with some of the mistakes I had made.

Adrian sat down with me and and he explained very clearly and patiently about how we would go about tackling the problems with my website. He then guided me step by step through the process. I walked away empowered with a great deal more knowledge and confidence than I had before.

Stacy Gardner / Stacy L. Gardner Photography

From Cyndi, to Adrian

My name is Cyndi. I'm a beginner who has viewed a few tutorials about creating my own website and made quite some progress. The problem I got into was that I started with one tutorial using a theme called Vantage, which was good in blogs and galleries. After I posted all nice pictures and spent TREMENDOUS time on it, I found in horror that that theme is not the one for E-commerce.

I then installed WooCommerce plug-ins on top of Vantage, but it doesn't work the same way as the WooCommerce Theme's tutorial says.

For example, all I want was for customers to be able to buy products, but my product page doesn't show the button "add to cart". I'd like to base on the Vantage theme that I'm using current , since I've spent a lot of time on it, and add some simple E-Commerce tools.(I don't need fancy stuff.) I can take care of the rest (like orders and payments) through other standard tutorials.

Is this the kind of problem that you could help me solve? If so, please let me know how much time you believe it is necessary to get this problem resolved. We'll probably have to do this online sharing screens, as I'm no where near you.

Let me know! Thank you!

From Adrian, to Cyndi

Hi Cyndi;

There was no "add to cart" button for your product because you product was marked as "out of stock". If you change it to "in stock" and give an inventory number then the "add to cart" button automatically appears.

I just did this on your site and it's working fine.

Take a look and get back to me.

From Cyndi, to Adrian

Oh WOW Adrian! Yes it worked! Thank you sooooo much!

The consultants I reached out to so far quoted me from 30 minutes to 2 hours for making this to work - No one told me this is actually not a real issue. Thank you for your honesty and you have earned my trust on my journey in WordPress. Kindly allow me to start from here and explore around. I'd very much like to continue to use your service for the "real" issues, which I'm sure I will find as I go deeper. (Let me know if you actually spent quite some time before spotting this trick. I'll pay you for the time you spent on this.)