We released a new free design skin that we hope you love. Part museum exhibit, part fashion spread, the Siggstein is designed to show off beautiful images and is ideal for portfolios, retail and anyone who wants a site with a lot of visual impact. The name is old Norse from "siggr" meaning victory and "stein" meaning stone. The design is clean, image-based, a little edgy and comes in 5 colors including an exceptionally sexy black version. Visit our design page to try the different colors.

Great news for those of you that lack grand Pixar-esque imaginations. We've revamped the Switch Design Skins page in the Admin, so you can see the designs better and choose color themes. We've also added a button that let's you preview the design on your site before you save. This lets you browse through your website and see how everything looks in the context of your own content.

One thing to note, is that there could be some elements that will need to be adjusted once you switch designs, because different designs have different module areas and image sizes. But that's easy to fix by reassigning module areas and uploading different images for the home page or shell header if necessary. Easy.

The preview mode will last for one day, and then revert back to the original design. Or you can click the big "Exit Preview Mode" button to return to your existing design. No one else can see the preview, but you could send the link to a friend if you were so inclined.

So... we redesigned the Design Preview controls so that they float on the top of the page. We're also showing the colors of the different themes for each design skin (it's more visual). Have a look and play around with the different designs. It's all kinds of fun. Once you find a design you like, you can click the "Make a Site Like This!" button and you'll be taken to our Start form with that design combination already selected.

We've add Design Preview controls on all our demo sites, which let you see the same website in different design skins. Some of our skins have several theme options, and you can toggle between these as well. This is a great way to imagine how your site might look in different designs.

We've done a ton of updates to old and new design skins, and released them as 2.0 versions that are now the defaults. But if you are using a version of the free designs skins from before 1 week ago, or you have an old custom design that is perhaps getting out of date, is not HTML5 compliant for mobile devices, etc., we really recommend that you switch the design on your site to one of our updated free design skins. They have been given a lot of attention to detail at ever level, e.g. the modules are styled to look good in every context, there are modules were they weren't availalbe before, the code is overhauled and more HTML5 compliant, etc.

You may have noticed, we've made some changes to our website design and organization. Over time, we've added a lot of great information on our site, but it has ended up cluttering the navigation and being overwhelming for first time visitors. So we're in the process of simplifying the menus and streamlining the design a bit. We're also updating a lot of pages, and adding links to some demos, etc.

We hope it's helpful.

We've just released a new free design skin called, "Oak Grove", named after one of our local streets here in Walnut Creek. It's a warm and inviting design, with rustic undertones, and a trustworthy ethos.

There are a lot of extra touches that make this design polished and allow for further customization for each client. There are 3 main image areas on the home page. The third image area can be swapped out with a promo module, so you could have it be an image rotator with links, or any other module.

The name automatically adjusts to fit in the area, but of course smaller names work best. If you have your own logo, you may upload it into that area. We recommend a transparent PNG file so that it merges with the background, or you can have us customize it to look nice.

On the secondary pages if you are writing an article, you can select a paragraph and mark it as a "blockquote" style. This will turn it into a nicely designed pullout quote that adds depth to the page.

All the promo modues have been carefully designed to match the style of the site.

The menu spans the title area in an elegant way, so we recommend 6 links to keep things balanced. If you put more than 6 links they will not display. So if you must have more, it's time to request a hybrid design.

There are a lot of other great features that we hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think.

We've got a great new free design skin that just launched called "Brockmann". If your site is ready for a refreshing new look, you should consider this new design. We'll be introducing a lot of new designs in the coming months, and retiring many of the old designs (you can keep using them, but they will be no longer promoted for new use).

The template is inspired by and named after Swiss graphic designer Josef Müller-Brockmann, who is known for clean and simple design, masterful use of typography, and for advocating the use of the grid system.

We've spent a lot of time making sure that all the modules are custom designed specifically for this template, and the template allows you to upload your own logo, in order to create a more finished look right out of the box without the need for custom design. The home page features a large promo area slideshow with controls and the ability for each image to link to a featured page on your site. We've given a lot of attention to detail, at every level.

We've designed specific versions of this template for different types of organizations, e.g. businesses, realtors, churches, etc. This modern design is flexible enough to be approprate for nearly any client, and it's free! Enjoy.

We are in the process of installing a new Admin Interface for Gutensite, which will be much cleaner, and hopefully refreshing to all our clients that have been editing their sites for years. One of the exciting new features that we will be implementing is a visual "Site View", which will function as a way to see and edit all the pages of your site in a more visual and hiearchical way. You'll be able to use drag and drop reordering and we'll be simplifying the way you add pages and content to your site.

Many people who first start building a site are overwhelmed by the task of organizing all their content, creating container pages (categories), etc. The new Site View Interface will make that process more simple, by automatically creating default categories when you add new content and streaming the content to those pages automatically. This will make things simple for everyone and advanced users who later need to add further layers of organization with additional categories can do so as they need to.

This is the first part of a broader redevelopment effort which will be making content management and publishing much easier. It's part of a strategy that will begin to help you think of your website as a stream of interrelated content. Whether it's a PDF File, Video, Blog, Calendar Event, Images, etc, it doesn't matter. If it's related to other content throughout the site, based on matching labels, it should be accessible to your visitors without a manual process of tedious linking one piece of content to another. This process can and should be more dynamic and automated, so that you can simply add content to your site, and let the site publish it in multiple places where it's relevant.

More to come on these changes.

We've tried for many years to keep our billing rate as affordable as possible. But despite our low overhead and efficient processes, it has become clear that our current billing rates are not a realistic reflection of the costs for paying a competitive salary for the excellent work our team does. When we were just a small design firm with the two co-founders doing all the design and programming work for a combined, below-market-value salary (in exchange for the long term promise of profit from the business), we could squeak by on peanuts. But as we have grown to meet the demands of clients who require dependability and support, and as we try to sustain the same levels of quality, we have realized that good talent is hard to find and it comes at a premium price.

Our niche has primarily been Small Business, and yet despite our client's limited budgets, we have taken great pride in being able to provide the same level of top quality design and meticulous programming that is traditionally out of reach for all but the highest paying businesses. We are committed to keeping this quality of work within reach of even the smallest clients. But we are also adamant about being innovative and creative in everything we do, and that means we must charge enough to ensure that we can attract and keep a talented team to work on your projects. So we've been forced to make some changes to our billing. In the end though, we believe this is a change that will benefit our clients by ensuring their projects are performed with excellence.

How Billing Rates are Calculated

We have analyzed each job type and calculated the minimum billable rate needed to pay a competitive salary for each specific job. Then we added on a percentage markup to cover the operational costs that keep everything running smoothly, e.g. project management, rent, insurance, software & hardware, marketing, art direction, accounting, support, etc. All of these things are indispensable parts of keeping talented designers and programmers doing what they excel at, and making our process reliable and dependable for our clients. Our rates are in-line or below others in our industry, so we are confident they are fair for the quality we provide.

Our new rates are as follows:

• Design: $150
• Programming: $160
• HTML & CSS Layout: $115

We're hiring. See our "Openings" page for for information. We need a really great web designer that can deliver. Is that you? Or do you know someone? Please check it out.