Who in the world is Richard Barratt?

“So is Richard next in line for papacy or the post of IMF chief?”

No. Not that I’m aware of. In fact, I know nothing about Richard except for the fact that he’s a Thesis developer.

“Sigh, you’re an affiliate, aren’t you?” Nope. Not even close. In fact, I know so little about him that I’m just going to point you over to his About Page

“This is some weird paean, isn’t it?”

Again, no.

To those even vaguely familiar with the Thesis framework,� it’s a tool. A railgun-like tool. It’s pretty awesome when you’ve got it nailed down. Regardless of how easy Chris Pearson makes it for a non-designer in Thesis 2.0, for most of us, Thesis is going to be this beautiful stick-drive that is impossible to master.

And that’s where Richard Barratt comes in…

A couple of days ago, Richard blogged about offering a Thesis mod to pretty much anyone who asked for it.

F-R-E-E.

He had a couple of conditions, of course, but none that involved you parting with any form of hard-earned liquidity.

His “conditions” are that…the mods are limited to Thesis. That’s it. Not a thing more. He’s got a few general directions in which he’d like the offer to go but hey…just read his post yourself.

Clearly, the man hast opened the Gate of Free. Thanks Richard! I sure ain’t gonna look a gift-horse in the mouth..

Now, why is this so cool?

In case you haven’t figured it out, Richard is offering to mod your website for you. Your site. This is hugely different from anything else out there.

And here’s why: most of the fantastic devs out there write a load of tutorials (Read: Greg Rickaby, Adam Baird, The Incomparable Kristarella,� Nick Reese, Gary Jones, Thomas Griffin). Now because their sites are so heavily trafficked they just don’t have the time to do one-off involved variants. It doesn’t make sense and I get why. When they do one of their ridiculously complicated posts which push the boundaries of Thesis, there just isn’t enough time to adapt the solution and trouble-shoot to individual specs.

It’s just more productive to put out a global solution. That said, it’s rare for someone not to get a reply from one of these guys. That’s how they roll.

From that perspective, Richard’s offer is just brilliant. He cuts through the maze of the tutorial. He just provides the solution. Tailored. Custom-fit like it’s from Savile Row. When’s the last time you actually wanted to go for a fitting?

Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

“Are you done? Is it done?”

I’m done. For real this time.

It…isn’t done yet. As in, it hasn’t been rolled out yet.

Richard plans on writing a tutorial about the modification he’s doing for me. It’s not a major mod i.e. it’s not visually major. But it’s an important piece to the puzzle and since I’m due a re-design very soon I thought I’d knock some of the easier pieces out of the way (Read: I’m not shameless enough to ask him to rework my footer).

So I’m not going to spoil the party for him by telling you what the mod is.

But this is me saying thanks, doing the backlink rubbish and maybe sending a couple of visitors over to his site. Whatever works for him.

Cos he’s working for me. For free.

Question: Why exactly aren’t you getting him to work for you?