Four Companies with Great Customer Service You Should Know About.

The new year introduced me to new vendors and reinforced my belief in 2 old ones: crossbrowsertesting.com,  browsershots.org, polurnet.com, and arthemis premium wordpress theme. This is a story of great customer service.

Arthemis Premium Wordpress Theme

Some time last fall, i decided that i wanted to change the DigitalAppleJuice theme to Arthemis Premium wp theme by Colorlabs Project. I am still a huge fan of the Revolution- Studiopress themes- all my client themes are based on them including all previous Digitalapplejuice themes. for my clients, i have incorporated an auto thumbnailer code i culled from the web. that autothumbnailer code would not work for digitalapplejuice since we have been using dean’s fck editor plugin- bypassing the built-in wordpress image handler. The process of posting a new article used to be every story has to have an “articleimg” custom field containing the url of the 250×250px image and a “Thumbnail” custom field. I had heard wonderful things about the latest timthumb thumbnailer code which has recently been incorporated into a number of Studiopress themes – Agent and Magazine to name two. a recent install of the agent theme made me realize that i would be trading in 2 custom filed headaches for another one so i began looking for other themes with autothumbnailing capabilities when i ran across the Arthemis Premium wp theme.

The Arthemis’ top featured story section is an impressive alternative to the Featured Content Gallery slideshow  plugin incorporated in the Studiopress themes. The only real question for em was whether the integration of the timthumb code would make the Arthemis theme a viable choice for us. After I found a huge discount offer for the Arthemis Premium last fall,  I decide to make the purchase knowing that, if it didn’t work for DigitalAppleJuice,  I could at the very least use it on a client’s site and re-coup my investment. Then I got booked on 4 projects back to back and testing Arthemis on DigitalAppleJuice was quickly forgotten.  Months later, right after Xmas, I decided to tackle the Arthemis Theme tweaks and install when I realized I had no idea where I had placed the Arthemis Premium Theme zip. I emailed the designer and within hours had a response. I was very happy to find that the Arthemis Premium Theme  was able to render thumbnails and preview images from the first image within a post with very few exceptions. The choice was made.

My quick list of tweaks:

1. Ad Column: 125px ad bar to the right of the main body – normally an easy tweak: 2 additional DIVs and 6 lines in the style sheet. Add a thumbnail for the latest tao and desktop theatre
2. Author’s Page: change code author img
3. Change coding from Adsense to Adbrite.
4. SIngle.php:  widening of the single post to 600px so i wouldn’t have to resize every image in 700+ posts archive. Add tags, add link to author’s profile.
5. Footer.php: replacing the video in the footer gallery with the latest panel of The Tao Of IT Al, resized to fit

time to check the browsers

i have learned so much about CSS in the last year or so, embracing the doubling of margins in certain IE circumstances and tricking DIVs to expand without content. Even so, browser checks are a must.  Way back in 2008 before I knew anything, I wrote about the consequences of a non-conforming web and suggested Browsershots.org and NetRenderer as solid resources. I have been using Browsershots regularly these last 18 months – even signing up for priority service when booked on more than one job a month. So it was only natural that when it came time to check the Arthemis Premium tweaks I should turn to my old standby- Browsershots.org. I spent two days trying to get screenshots for IE 6, 7, 8 on any Windows platform with no joy. I thought I would have better luck if I signed up for priority service (at $29.95/month). Still no joy. I emailed Jack Zhao from Browsershots to ask if there was a problem with the renderers.

In the meantime, knowing that at any time one of my bids could turn into a solid job with a deadline, I googled for an alternative. I found Crossbrowsertesting.com I signed up for Crossbrowsertesting almost immediately as it  looked very attractive at $19.95/month with a 7 day trial. As luck would have it, the system was resistant to my  screenshot requests – implying that i would have to provide a url ending with .html. If .html extensions were required for an URL, then this service would incompatible for any wordpress sites (which are the bulk of my gigs). I cancelled my account and contacted crossbrowsertesting’s support to confirm that this was the case. I received a response from not one but two people- tom and kenneth- within hours.

The Polurnet Blacklist

In a flurry of emails  and checks and tests we determine that the Crossbrowsertesting.com and Browsershots.org  server IPs were blacklisted. Polurnet’s tech support kindly volunteered to remove them from the blacklisted. This was easy enough when it came to Crossbrowsertesting.com but Browsershots.org was unable to provide me with IP addresses since it has more than 100 factories around the world (most in US and Europe) taking screenshots which are then uploaded to a central server. They suggested we change webhost.

My issues with Browsershots were isolated to the Windoze IE renderers but I wasn’t going to push the point. I don’t know how and why these particular screenshot factories ended up on Polurnet’s blacklist. It could have been just a security response triggered by the number of screenshots I requested in such a short time, but I was NOT going to change webhosts.

Polurnet has set the webhost standard for me,  especially since not a single one of my clients hosted on Polurnet was hacked during the great wordpress 2.7 hacking season of 2008. All my clients hosted on Hostgator were infiltrated.

I decided to stick with Polurnet and asked for a refund from Browsershots. It was done immediately. No question asked. Thanks Mr. Zhao.

Customer Service In A Nutshell

crossbrowsertesting.com

• immediate response from support; answered questions quickly, took an honest appraisal of the situation and proposed ideas & solutions
• during discussion of my problem, offered to extend free trial due to issues and offered a refund in the event i was unable to cancel service in time

browsershots.org

• quick response to support request
• refunded fees without argument

polurnet.com

• I love these guys. I could go on and on about what great service Polurnet provides
• quick response to any email request for support
• i have yet had an instance where they told me “not our problem” as so many other web hosts have been known to do.
• not a single one of my clients have been hacked

arthemis wordpress theme

• their integration of timthumb code meant that i didn’t have to do anything to get most of the thumbnails for our articles to work.
• customer service is responsive and the theme is well documented and the forum is available for additional questions.

Disclaimer: Madbadcat and DigitalAppleJuice are in no way associated with Colorlabs Projects, Crossbrowsertesting.com or Browsershots.org, nor have we received consideration for this review. Madbadcat and DigitalAppleJuice are proud to be part of Polurnet’s affiliate marketing program and standby our endorsement of Polurnet.

UPDATE:

I received this note from Polurnet Tech Support offering a solution to issues described in this article:

“By the way, if you needed us to disable the firewall temporarily while you process your screenshots, that’s fine. Also, while Browsershots don’t need to provide the exact IP addresses they use, if they can tell us a range, we can whitelist it as well.

Hope that helps

Regards,
Administrative Representative
PolurNET Communications”

And that is why I love these guys.

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