The rise of so much high caliber goodness available for free never ceases to impress me.  Some of these are themes I felt were verging on premium or just themes that were simply special because they met a certain criteria. Whether you need a theme for yourself or a client, these free Wordpress themes are worth a second look.

Portfolio Wordpress Theme by Sorel Mihai

Portfolio Wordpress Theme by Sorel Mihai

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Designed by Sorel Mihai, this theme is everything you need to start showing off your work.  It’s got a slick color palette and clean lines that will have you looking like a modern service provider in no time. Great work Sorel.

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So today I’m chippin’ away at a redesign for my rusted art website.  Like most sites I develop, I rolled it out on Wordpress. I seemed to have run a into a bug though, and I’m not sure if this a localized me thing, or a legit gremlin.

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Looming stock market crashes. Government bailouts. Rate cuts. Recessions. Depressions.  These are all words gladly being thrown around by the mainstream media of late. And we all know the mainstream press loves nothing more than selling us doom by the truck load.

Photo by lefthand.

Recession got you bummed? Fear not, there is much you can do.

I’m no economist, but it seems only natural that markets should correct themselves (level off and perhaps retract) after consecutive years of positive domestic and global growth. In any case, the situation is what it is. So what’s a freelancer to do amidst leaner and tougher economic times? The answer is: Be even more valuable to your clients.

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One of the best and arguably easiest ways to generate good faith with your clients is via the customer service you provide.  I’m an advocate of providing killer customer service wherever possible for many reasons.  A large part of that killer service is how fast you get back to your clients.

Photo by marinacvinhal.

"I got the answers I needed and my boss loves me."

Yep, speed is important!  The old cliche is that “time is money” and when your clients consistently get super fast responses to their queries, your stock with them invariably goes up. It’s also important to understand that as a freelancer one of your greatest strengths is your mobility. Studios and development teams aren’t generally able to respond as quickly as you are.  So get guerrilla and leverage that competitive advantage to the max!

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Users of Wordpress 2.6 will know that you can insert captions underneath photos and images within your posts. If any of you have tried to add hyperlinks within a caption, you’ll also know that Wordpress will strip that link faster than a suspected terrorist at LAX when you hit save.

Photo by superbomba.

"Baby, I know how to add hyperlinks to Wordpress captions."

Now, I’m not techy enough to know exactly why Wordpress strips links from captions but it does. I do know that with some fiddling about, I finally found a fairly straight forward workaround that doesn’t involve custom fields or plugins.

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With the US Presidential election coming up, I got to wondering about the political tendencies of my freelance brothers and sisters. Are we freelance web designers and developers a tight flock that predominantly lean one way when it comes to our politics? Or are we scattered and varied in our political beliefs. Let’s find out!

Photo by pgoyette.

Which way do the politics of freelance web nerds lean?

In the spirit of democracy and elections, tell us who you’ll be voting for in Elite Freelancing US Elections Poll which is over to the right on the sidebar. If you aren’t American, close your eyes for a sec, pretend you are, and cast your vote. And don’t worry, the voting is anonymous and no one will be able to tell that Joe Frankenwiener at 378 Pewpew Rd., Boulder, CO. voted for the Green Party or anything like that.

At the time of writing this, job giant SimlpyHired.com claims to have over 5.8 million jobs in their database. According to their web design and development job data, the salary range for a typical position in the US web industry is $55k to $74k. This spans general web design and development through to specialist niches such as user interface design.

Job data by Simply Hired

Average salaries in web design and development for September, 2008.

What surprised me the most was that flash design and development jobs have a lower average than general web design and development positions. I’d always assumed that the niche skill set of working with Flash paid better, not worse.

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