Man, I’m completely overwhelmed by the response Manji has received so far.

The critics have come back If this was a movie this post here by Chris would be considered a ‘GLOW REVIEW, THUMBS UP!'. Aaand my head’s just exploded. So I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who’s said really nice things about Manji, I truely appreciate it, honestly it all makes it worth while. I love how the he’s taken the mastheads and put them in the post, just makes them look oh soo much more pro.

How many times? At around 15:00 this afternoon (roughly since I checked the number of downloads around then), Manji preview had been downloaded more than 100 times. Again thanks to everyone for their interest. Just want to thank Chris for providing the tools to get a system to actually quantify the downloads, fantastic stuff, thanks Chris.

Clarifying the relationship with Root I would like to try and give a bit more information on the actual design process for Manji. On the 1st of October I contacted Root. I ended that conversation with this:

I see this project as a plugin that may eventually have it's own interface, or even because there are plugins I'd like to incorporate into the design.

I’ve come up with a name, which I’m more than willing to change if you’re on board and hate it :). The name I’ve chosen is Manji.Again this is a long shot, but if you’re up for it I think this could be something really cool.

I’m still keen on the own interface idea but I think the WP dev team has done pretty great job in sorting out the theme manager. Now bearing in mind that Root had only seen the previous version of my site, his response was this:

I am in 100%. Tell me what you need.

For the next two months Root would work absolutely tirelessly on the template with me. It was one of those amazing moments where I found someone that could match me for the amount of time we would spend on getting the actual design correct. The first Sunday we worked on the template from jpg to working theme (kind of) we must have spent 12 hours straight, and 60 comment posts later.

So from my point of view the man was nothing but an absolute joy to work with. Of course I was aware of what was going on with Micheal but I decided to stay away from that whole thing; in fact this is the first time I discuss it on my blog. I just want to say that I love Kubrick. I think it’s a great design, and I think Micheal has a great writing style. I believe the strength that Wordpress has over other software is the community. It’s the people in it and it’s the main reason I love it so much, and ultimately chose it over other software out there that do more or less the same thing.

Basically from our original e-mails it was originally thought that I would lead this and Root would come into it as and when that was needed. Once I started getting into the code it was pretty apparent that he should take care of that side of things. Root went in and I’d basically ask for something to be done and it would be done before my eyes in the most amazing way. He’d come up against a couple of bricks every once in a while and he’d have the resolution in a few hours at the latest.

I took care of how everything looked and would go in and tweak the spacing the typography, the colours the overall design while Root would make sure it validated and was easy to modify. I really hope I can recreate that level of collaboration in the future with other people.

On Flavouring Reasons behind a Flavouring system comes from the fact that I draw a lot. This also means I take pride in a something after I’ve finished with it and sign it. I think it’s such a saticifying end to a piece of work you slaved over. It’s not always possible on the internet. By naming a tweaked version of a template I think it puts your signature on it. Then show it off at What’s your flavour?

Future of Manji I might have some news on the coding front but I’m going to wait before I make any announcements.

• I want to finish the code for Manji off properly get it polished.
• There are a couple of annoying things that happen that I'm starting to see for myself like how it deals with Pings and trackbacks; amongst other things.
• Finish that manual I've been writing for a few weeks now out there (although as more questions start cropping up in the forum, I might wait until I've gotten a few more questions/problems fixed so I don't have to keep updating the manual)
• I've still got loads of plans for Manji. I've got another 3 flavours sitting on my hardrive ready to be released, when I get a change to skin them properly.
• Sort out a version for 1.2. Hopefully I'll get that done tonight, although testing is going to be a bit difficult.