James Wilding's Weblog

Looking for a simple WordPress theme recently, I stumbled on Manifest. Well, I love it. There are so many WordPress themes out there that (in my opinion) go overboard on the graphics, but Manifest  takes the opposite approach: content comes first (as you can see: I’m using it right here on my blog).

Jim Barraud, Manifest’s creator, describes the theme thus:

A clean and streamlined theme that focused on the content and not the distractions. It utilizes a single column, 500 pixel wide layout. No sidebars. No widgets.

There’s so much to love about that quote. Single column. Focus on content. No sidebars. No widgets. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.

I’ve always loved websites and blogs which are pared right back to the bone — nearly too simple — for the simple reason that I spend so much time on the web! After surfing through websites which bash me round the head with flashy graphics, it’s such a relief when I come to rest at a site designed by someone who knows the meaning of negative space and subdued (if any) graphics.

And aspiring writers: this is the kind of presentation that you should be wrapping around your lovingly crafted blog posts: let your language speak for itself.

So: a beautiful, simple, elegant theme: download Manifest here.

While my real house languishes without hot water, I’ve lit the log fire and done some work on my blog!

I’ve been wanting for a while to get Derek Powazek’s Depo-Skinny theme (which I love, and have modified quite a bit) to show excerpts instead of full posts on the home page. This was inspired by John Nunemaker’s railstips.org, which does a nice job of showing an overview of posts on the home page.

I’ve always thought that full posts on my home page is too much, because I tend to write a lot (long, boring, geeky stuff mainly — that’s boring unless you’re a Ruby or Rails developer!). Up to now, I’ve been avoiding digging into Depo-Skinny’s PHP code because, well, I don’t like PHP :)

This morning though I jumped in and spent some time writing excerpts for recent blog posts, and fixing the theme to show them on the home page (I used WordPress’s the_excerpt()). I think this is a big improvement: you can scan the home page and easily see what I’ve been writing about recently.

I’ve also replaced the old header photo with a Wordle, which is another idea I’ve stolen from elsewhere :) This time, it’s from wordpressfoundation.org which, by the way, uses a new theme called “2010″. Looks nice.

So, a little bit of redesign work and I’m much happier! Check out my home page — what do you think?

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