New Design at Manifest Development

My freelance company, Manifest Development, has a new face! Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working on a new website that accomplished a few specific goals: have a cleaner design that integrates the new logo, have a theme that is more general and easier to update, and be more blog friendly. I think I’ve managed to hit all of those goals.

Objective One: Cleaner design that integrates the new logo. Back in January, friend and affiliate Andrea Aldridge offered to design a new logo for Manifest Development and I gladly accepted! It’s a lighter, much cleaner logo that can also offer branding with recognizable icons. This new design was created to fit the color scheme of the logo. I also wanted something that looked a bit cleaner. The old design was nice but I feel it didn’t utilize all of the screen space very well. Most of the left column was taken up by navigation and the news was an after thought under it. The information also wasn’t very dynamic. This design presented the important stuff in a better fashion.

Objective Two: A more general theme that’s easier to update. This theme (currently called “New Manifest”) utilizes more of WordPress’ customization options. In the old theme (called “Manifest”), things like the pages had to be updated in the actual theme files, and the sidebar was not dynamic. In New Manifest there is a bit more freedom due to some utilization I made with WordPress features, as well as a nice list of plugins. The important ones are:

• NextGEN Gallery: A robust photo gallery plugin that I use to control my portfolio.
• Exclude Pages: A plugin that allows you to check off whether or not you want a particular page included in the wp_list_pages() template tag. Perfect for controlling the main navigation of the site without having to modify theme pages.
• My Page Order: Similarly, this one allows me to change the page order without having to modify any theme pages. This plus Exclude Pages is a winning combination when doing a WordPress work for a client.

That’s not the complete list, just the ones pertaining to the new design. I also wrote a plugin for this new design, but I’ll write about it when I release it to the public.

Objective Three: Make the site blog friendly. When I was coding up the Manifest theme, I had no intention of having a blog. When I started the newsletter, I realized that I could elaborate more on the topics of each one in a blog, and hacked one together quickly. New Manifest has better category management, archive pages, and makes use of WordPress’s awesome sidebar widgets.

All-in-all I’m very happy with the design and appreciate all of the feedback I got from friends and family- it was very helpful. If you notice something that I might have missed, feel free to contact me and let me know. (And comments on the new design are welcomed too!)