Metafluence

Metafluence.com realigned with a new custom WordPress theme called “Conversation”

It has been about 9 months in the making, and I’m happy to finally announce the release of my new blog design. My new WordPress theme is called “Conversation” because it was designed to reflect the conversational nature of blogging.

What’s new?

I think this realignment addresses many organizational and aesthetic issues that have been bugging me for some time. The big idea was to make it appear like I was saying something and then people were responding. I wanted to encourage and call attention to conversation on my blog. I decided to keep the color palette and a few of the conventions I began with my last design for continuity. Here’s a list of what’s been updated with this design:

• Single post on the home page. I wanted to keep my home page clean and simple. It also let me put the Microposts below the latest post.
• Subscribe to comments via email. It’s a handy function for me when I’m on other sites, so I thought I should offer it to my readers as well.
• Expanded footer. As some of you know, I love a good footer. I decided to use mine to house links to the other sites I belong to online, an explanation about my blog, and recent readers from MyBlogLog. I’m thinking about it as a place for all things social (like my most recent Tweet).
• Gravatars. To me, gravatars make a site feel more social, and that was the whole point of my theme.
• New archives page. I decided to try something a little different. Rather than clutter my site with an unruly sidebar, I opted to place the categories, featured posts, and monthly archives on a single archives page. There are many ways to browse through old posts, and I thought giving them the main content area of the page made them more desirable to use.
• Links page. I decided to do a links page instead of a blogroll in the sidebar. It’s part of my commitment to not use an unruly sidebar.
• Consulting! I’m now offering consulting, so I created a page to describe my offering.
• Updated about page. I trimmed down my about page, added an FAQ, and added a bigger pic. Yay!
• Metafluence logo page. I’ve had people ask me about my logo, so I thought I’d add a page to explain the Metafluence logo.
• Updated my WordPress install. After too much teasing from Sean for running v2.0.4, I decided I would upgrade my WordPress installation to the most current version. I’ll likely stay on top of this now that I know how easy it is, but we’ll see. ;)

Is this theme available?

Since I was able to use Michael’s beautiful K2 for a year while I got my blogging feet wet, I’m going to release this theme for free. I want to take the next 30 days to work out any kinks that come up and I’m going to do the unthinkable—I’m going to create documentation! That’s right, not only will you be able to download the Conversation theme for free, but I’m going to offer detailed directions about how to customize it for yourself. Not everyone is a programming ninja (myself included), so I figure a few tips should help make the theme accessible to everyone. I’m also going to make any graphics I used available in layered PSDs.

Oh, man. It must have been painful to live with your previous design for so long when you are capable of design like this! — Marshall Kirkpatrick

What took so long?

I think Marshall said it to me best, “Oh, man. It must have been painful to live with your previous design for so long when you are capable of design like this!” Yes, Marshall, it was. I even blogged a few times about my plans to update the site design and that I felt a custom design would give me more respect in the blogosphere. My plan was to have a custom theme up 90 days after I launched my blog, but other priorities continued to put the project on the back burner. I sketched the concept for this theme approximately 9 months earlier. Then about two and a half months ago I mocked it up in Photoshop over the course of about a week. Then about three weeks ago I started in on the XHTML/CSS and refining the Page content. In total, I spent close to 100 hours working on it (including content). I’ll likely spend another 20 hours cleaning it up and creating support documentation to get the theme ready for public distribution.

Acknowledgments

A BIG thank you goes out to Sean who took my XHTML/CSS and created a base theme I could work off of. I also want to say thank you to Kyra for offering some good critical review. Christine, my girlfriend, also provided critical inspiration to continue working on it in the face of all of my other responsibilities.

I’m going to spend the next 30 days perfecting the theme for public distribution, so please give me your harshest reviews and let me know about anything that either feels or is broken. Your feedback will make this a better theme for everyone! ;)