Manji Introduction. The first time I talked about Manji was in this post right here. That was on the 28th of September. The name of the theme changed to Chameleon, however I quickly realised that the name was common in it’s use on the internet for various programs, so I had to rethink my name, and in the end Manji just sounds better.

What is Manji? Manji is a template for the Wordpress blogging software. Effectively it’s a skin for your website, that is easy to modify and while you customise it to your own needs will hold down the fort in style.

Flavouring System. One of the first ideas that came to me as I was doing the design was to actually have something called a flavouring system. Since I always intended Manji to have a GPL license, I thought any derivatives could have their own unique name as well, chosen by the person who did the mods. That way people could put their own signature. So when eventually you download the theme and change it around a nice and uniform way of naming would be “Something” Flavoured Manji.

Manji History I originally contact Root (an active member of the wordpress community and all round CSS and XHTML guru) on whether he would like to work on a template together. I would do the design he would do the coding parts. This was back on 1st of October 2004. At that point in time I’d actually made a draft copy of the final design. I knew it would change significantly but the original thoughts that I had would remain throughout the design.

We talked about the logistics of working in completely different cities (same country) and eventually I set up a secret installation where we begun work in ernest. It became pretty clear to Root earlier on that in terms of coding I was a complete monkey and that he best take over completely from that side of things. The way it would work is that I would draw mock ups in freehand and photoshop and he’d set everything up for me, I’d then go back in and tweak the colours, fonts, text sizes etc.

We completed around 85% of the template before he disappeared off the internet. None of this would have been done without him and so he is credited completely for contributing to the design. I can’t put xhtml and css by Root, because I’ve made a mess of it since he left, if/when he gets back we’ll release an updated version of the template that will incorporate how you’re meant to do code it correctly. Any validation errors you get are of my construction as Root left it validating 100%.

I will admitt with Root gone, my motivation and confidence in the project did fall. Thankfully David Prince stepped up for both moral support and helping out with the code whenever he could. Without him I might never having finished what we started. So thanks David.

Reason behind Manji. The reason behind Manji is to provide a template under a GPL license that is both asthetically pleasing while at the same has valid xhtml and css and is as accessible as possible. I decided to do this because I wanted to give something back to the wordpress community. I love to support open source projects and this is one that I’m very proud to be a part of. In my mind this is the only way I can contribute to it constructively. The main draw the wordpress community had/has over other open-source blogging software is the community that surrounds it; at least this is how I came to my decision.

Philosophy. The main idea behing Manji is as simple as it’s mark up. The most important aspect of a blog should first and foremost be the content itself. It should take centre stage. All additional elements can be considered a distraction. The issue is however that these elements are generally useful if they are required. That issue is addressed by having links to these main important aspects right at the top in the navigation section of the template.

I’m also a firm believer in less is more, at least with respect to design. In terms of words I do find it more difficult.

Manji Version 1.0 Beta will go live on Sunday, and I’ll update and tweak it till I get the perfected version 1.0 sometime down the line. Hopefully with feedback and ideas it’ll grow bigger and better. Of course you could just copy the css etc, but have patience and you’ll have everything in a tidy little download in a few short days.