Time to come out of your RSS readers and visit the site. In celebration of Spring, Summer, the new domain, and WordPress 2.5 I’m launching a new version of Photo Matt / Ma.tt. Here’s a before and after picture:
A couple of functionality changes you’ll notice:
- Thumbnails and photos are now much larger. (Especially photos, now 840px wide.) Imagine it like going HD, you’ll definitely enjoy it more on broadband.
- I’ve brought back the photo tech details like aperture and focal length.
- In addition to posts and asides, I’m now doing new post types: galleries, quotes, videos, and highlight photos.
- You can now click on a photo to go to the next one, making browsing galleries easier.
- The header is a lot shorter, so you get to the content faster. You can’t say I have a big head anymore.
- I’m starting to use the new taxonomy bits in 2.5 to tag people, places (geotagging), things, and concepts in the various photos. (More on this later, still a bit broken.)
- This is the first iteration of this site that is powered entirely by WordPress. (I know, 5 years late. The cobbler’s children go shoeless!) Before it was a cobbled together set of PHP includes and software like Gallery. Now 100% WP.
- Gravatars are much more prominent. I wonder if there’s a way to only allow comments from people with Gravatars? It looks so much better.
- Name has changed from Photo Matt to Ma.tt, tagline is the same.
The fine design was executed by Nicolò Volpato, the same talented fellow who did the last design. My concept was to evoke Spanish talavera, inspired by my trips to Spain and Argentina and pottery at my parents’ house like this, this, and this. It was a lot of fun to work with Nicolò on and I already have a few ideas for Fall.
I’ve been noodling on the implementation for months now. Last night I had just arrived from New York and it turned out the Jay-Z/Mary J Blige concert in Oakland got postponed so I found myself with a bit of time on my hands and decided to tie up all the loose ends. There are still a ton of things broken like the photo border on portrait images, I still have 15k old photos to import, and you may see the old design on some older pages, but I wanted to get it out there. There are also some weird things, like Firefox seems to back the background image blurry while it’s razor-sharp in IE and Safari. I feel like I’ve seen that somewhere before.
Finally I’m hoping to release a lot of the work I did here, including a version of the old theme, the plugin + script I’m using to resize all my old images on the fly, the taxonomy stuff, and some core improvements to WP to make some of the things I’m doing here easier. (I got lazy and did some direct SQL queries, etc.)
Matt Mullenweg is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web. 
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:11 am |
Whoops, comments were broken. Should be better now.
Matt J | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:12 am |
Looks fantastic. You are unnaturally good at web development. The logo in the top right is a little illegible though.
Vlad | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:12 am |
Congrats on the new look!
Blair Millen | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:14 am |
Loving the new design Matt
Great work.
Chris Meller | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:14 am |
Holy crap…
SE7EN | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:16 am |
Woa! it’s very stunning. (/^_^)/ Great job matt! \(^_^\) I’m sure it’ll be feautured in many web galleries (again)
stelabouras | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:19 am |
Nice one Matt! I really like it!
Cogratz to Nicolò too!
(Comments seem ok now
)
EricSchulz | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:21 am |
On Firefox 3 Beta 5, the comment box jumps when I hover over the Gravatar. Was this done on purpose?
Tore Darell | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:21 am |
Congrats from a random reader/stalker who happened to be browsing through the archives when it changed.. The colours made me smile
Spamboy | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:23 am |
Yeah, I like the new design also. It’s nice to see fresh looks, despite how much we enjoy our previous ones.
I’m interested to hear more about your use of the taxonomy for tagging individuals, etc. Very much looking forward to that when you get around to discussing it.
John Conners | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:23 am |
Very nice!
Too many people seem to be going down the minimalist or near-graphics-free route these days but it’s nice to see an original design with bold, vibrant colo[u]rs. It’s also great to see you showcasing some of the cooler new features of WP 2.5 for the rest of us to *cough* borrow!
Mike Robinson | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:24 am |
The design looks great, I like it more than your previous (which was still good!)
Joshua Goodwin | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:24 am |
Very very spiffy
But I personally dislike the way everything moves when Gravatars are hovered over. Also, you need to sort out the comments form: focusing on an element clears it, and that can mean that one loses what one has just spent precious time typing.
Sander | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:24 am |
Great redesign! But you forgot about & contact. Good luck!
Ibrahim Cesar | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:24 am |
Beautifull design!
I really love it
Chantal | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:28 am |
Nice work!
Neil | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:30 am |
Great job matt, did you do it yourself? One question though…why you still using your old theme for archvives etc? yo
Glenda | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:32 am |
You more or less know my thoughts on the design but I just realized you’re using Arial instead of Verdana or Georgia this time around.
What is the world coming to?
Marc Fiszman | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:33 am |
Nice artwork, though the package is not very original.
Gabriel McGovern | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:43 am |
Defiantly digging the colors, patterns and hand-drawnish icons. You may still be working on it, but here are a few bugs I notice.
- Footer image has a bottom margin that is messing up the alignment a bit in firefox/ie.
- These input boxes clear when you click on them and not just the first time. I wrote a message, clicked outside the box. When I clicked inside again the message was gone.
Small things – looking good!
Weathervane | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:44 am |
Been eating extra Chinese food, lately?
...paul | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:46 am |
Really liking the vibrant new colours!
Mauro | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:47 am |
What about putting the comments number into the comments bubble from the top? Otherwise, i don’t know what is it doing over there
Stephen | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:47 am |
Love the new design; although, the old design wasn’t bad either.
Echoing some of the comments above, the Gravatar borders on hover and the comment box clearing onfocus are rather annoying.
Chris Thomson | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:57 am |
Wow, beautiful design. I love the navigation, the previous post/send comment buttons, comment form, comment layout, header, footer, sidebar.
Oh wait, it probably would’ve been quicker to say what I didn’t like … oh, but then my comment would be empty!
Haha, nice work Matt.
Ahmed | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:01 pm |
That’s defintely a great design !
Where did he find those patterns on the header ?
He created them from scratch or is there a stock of images like these somewhere ?
Jeffro2pt0 | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:01 pm |
Looking good Ma.tt. Some of the design looks familiar as some of us got to see a little bit of it at WordCamp Dallas
Syd | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:04 pm |
This must be influenced by the grunge style I’ve been reading about. I like it. I like the handdrawn elements. Did you draw and scan or find them web-ready. Nice layout matt.
daysies | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:06 pm |
looks great! i still remember when it was all yellow before your previous theme. now that’s dating it!
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:08 pm |
Like I said NIcolo did all the design work, I’m not sure how he created everything, maybe he could drop by the comments and let us know.
Alex | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:08 pm |
Nice design. Really like the new colors for spring.
Vivek | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:09 pm |
Beautiful design and concept.
Dimitrio | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:21 pm |
I love the new design!
Kelson | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:22 pm |
Hey! Don’t clear the box when I click in it! I had half a comment written, went to copy a sentence to quote, then clicked back… and my comment was erased! Now I’m writing this in an outside text editor so that I can copy and paste things like links.
Ditto on the latest Opera 9.50 preview. Maybe the margins are being collapsed on the non-hovered style?
I recently installed the Wavatars plugin to solve that. It automatically generates an cartoony face icon for each commenter’s email address, then uses it as the fallback for the gravatar call. There are a couple others I looked at, including WP_Identicon (geometric patterns) and WP_MonsterID (cartoony monsters).
Brad Touesnard | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:23 pm |
Props to Nicolò Volpato for the design. Reminds me of the Web Designer Wall’s design by Nick La. Similar style, different flavour. Great work.
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:24 pm |
Kelson, I forgot that Gravatar actually has an undocumented way of doing that. Just add default=wavatar or default=monsterid. Here come the monsters… Meech says the Identicon geometric thing will be around soonish, so I’ll switch to that when it’s ready.
Eric Stoller | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:26 pm |
Your head is smaller, but it’s still pretty big
horse with no name | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:30 pm |
re: your thoughts on gravatars and only allowing comments that use them…
I am not a big fan of all the nongravatar peoples having the same default avatar either. I’m not using the default unknown, but even that gets boring.
On one of my sites I dropped in 5 to 10 themed images (so I would know they are unknowns) and set it to randomly assign them to people without accounts.
People can get assigned multiple avatars during the same thread/post, but it doesn’t bother me enough yet to cause me to try to write something to correct it.
Heliologue | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:31 pm |
May I point out that the wp-stats .gif file is throwing off the alignment of the image/s in the footer? You might want to throw a display:none on that puppy….
Lisa | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:45 pm |
Really fantastic design, Matt & Nicolo – I’m really loving it.
Hammy | April 21st, 2008 @ 12:52 pm |
what a bad design
.. hehe jealous you see !
Brad | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:01 pm |
Looks good Matt!
Took me a minute to adjust to it but I like it. Good job.
Vixx | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:10 pm |
It looks gorgeous, Matt. Well worth delurking from my RSS.
V.
Oscar | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:17 pm |
A rip-off
http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:18 pm |
Oscar, Web Designer Wall is gorgeous, in fact I just contacted them about doing a theme for the WP.com marketplace, but I hadn’t seen it until today and Nicolo is a very upstanding guy and wouldn’t have ripped anyone off.
David | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:19 pm |
Great design!! It’s a css masterpiece!!
Bye
Thaya Kareeson | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:22 pm |
Lovely! How did you ever come up with this?
eddy | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:25 pm |
jesus christopher
Ben | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:40 pm |
Very nice!
Neil | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:42 pm |
I wouldnt exactly call it a rip off, actually far from it, if you have a closer look at webdesignerwall the design is different + the colours. Its a great theme this and when the bugs get ironed out itll be even better.
Runa | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:43 pm |
Takes some time getting used to, but I like it
Harsh | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:44 pm |
Love the new design!
For the Gravatars thing, maybe you could use a random image from about 10~ good default ones to be set for people without them? Would kinda look as if they do have gravatars.
Cyndy | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:51 pm |
Very sharp, Matt! I really like it.
Ngan | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:52 pm |
just wondering… any chance that you release the previous theme to the public?
TheTick | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:53 pm |
Very cool design, great colors. Reminds me to shrink the header a bit at my own page…
About Web Designer Wall: I bet numerous designers have thought of/created web site themes in a similar vein (handdrawn/collage type elements), no big deal.
Dan | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:55 pm |
Very nice. Makes me fell all summery.
Matt – I’m looking forward to more on the taxonomy side of things. I use the WP Movie Ratings plugin on my site at the moment, and want to rewrite that using the new taxonomy system, but there are preciously little examples out there right now.
Dan | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:56 pm |
Oh, and the About page still has the old design. Just thought I’d mention it…
dale | April 21st, 2008 @ 1:57 pm |
WOW! Eye popping color and movement in the header and design. Love it … I’d love to have the css for the body … now you should release the source
Kelson | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:11 pm |
Hmm, intriguing! I’ll have to try that out.
Ryan | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:13 pm |
Wow! A truly stunning design.
Daniel Richard | Winning Everyone | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:32 pm |
Nice! Looks very exotic and grungy I say.
Neil | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:35 pm |
Think its great that Matt has decided to release a version of the old theme, i think what everyone wants is the CSS for the body hehe
Ben | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:39 pm |
Cool! The footer is a bit misaligned, just letting you know.
jhay | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:45 pm |
It’s awesome! Clean and crisp, the little arrows are just uber eye-candy.
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:47 pm |
We now have Identicons! Yay Gravatar. A blog post about that coming soon.
Neil | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:51 pm |
Wow great job Matt, dont forget that category/gallery post you wanted to do. You still have a few people over on the forumz scratching their heads over that one.
Adrian | April 21st, 2008 @ 2:59 pm |
Nice to see you finally using 100% wordpress
Well done.
aag | April 21st, 2008 @ 3:00 pm |
Groovy.
I wish Gravatars would show a neutral image for people who don’t have an account.
Oh wait! Reading comments above!
Toddling off to install Wavatars now…
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 3:02 pm |
aag, you don’t need to. It’s built into Gravatar now, all of the geometric things you see here are from Gravatar.
Jenny | April 21st, 2008 @ 3:06 pm |
It’s a nice, but I think I liked the other one better. xD
Andor | April 21st, 2008 @ 3:06 pm |
yes,pretty good design~
Hanna Isabella | April 21st, 2008 @ 3:55 pm |
Wow! I want this theme!
Al | April 21st, 2008 @ 4:07 pm |
The masthead image is completely kickarse, different but I love it.
radio | April 21st, 2008 @ 4:12 pm |
Beautiful retro design
Gaudyspuds | April 21st, 2008 @ 4:28 pm |
Wow, that is crazy. If only I could do something as good as that! How long did it take?
Fiona | April 21st, 2008 @ 5:00 pm |
argh! change!
Marina | April 21st, 2008 @ 5:08 pm |
Very nice! Congrats for you and Nicolo.
I think you should come again to Argentina to get more inspiration for upcoming designs
daus | April 21st, 2008 @ 5:20 pm |
but it reminds me of Webdesigner Wall though.
Sam Bauers | April 21st, 2008 @ 5:36 pm |
Aesthetically and functionally this site is very different from Web Designer Wall.
They share some features, like an organic header design and some “hand-drawn” and “torn-paper” elements. Enough to be evocative of each other, but not enough to be called similar, let alone calling this one a rip-off of the other.
Patrick Havens | April 21st, 2008 @ 5:49 pm |
As usual a nice design. As for the hover over, it must of been fixed by the time I got too it. Now I’m curious what all you could do with a hover over and the gravataar…
BTW the only suggestion I could think of, for the design is perhaps introduce a slight alternating colors… I am liking how your comments are offset.
Natán | April 21st, 2008 @ 6:08 pm |
Really nice Matt
Dino | April 21st, 2008 @ 6:08 pm |
The designer did a really good job Matt. I’ve seen those background patterns from Adobe Illustrator and I haven’t been using them. This is the first time I saw them implemented in a website. The new skin kicks ass. I love it!
Zim | April 21st, 2008 @ 6:34 pm |
Looks very nice, it has it’s own style!
Robert Accettura | April 21st, 2008 @ 6:57 pm |
Nice work. Seeing this makes me wonder about perhaps hiring a graphic designer to spruce up mine. I can code, but I can’t design well, hence the minimalist looks.
Lee Doyle | April 21st, 2008 @ 7:12 pm |
So sexy! I love it
Kathryn | April 21st, 2008 @ 7:22 pm |
Very nice Matt. I like the new style. I’m edging closer to going self hosted…
chaoskaizer | April 21st, 2008 @ 7:38 pm |
loving it, two thumbs
Khairil | April 21st, 2008 @ 7:55 pm |
The design remind me of my dad’s collection of Santana CDs.
iJohn | April 21st, 2008 @ 8:13 pm |
LOVE the new design!
purposeinc | April 21st, 2008 @ 8:14 pm |
Holy mother of god. I was showing some of my patients your site, and expected to see the same old , same old, and whooo… that is quite a difference.
It is lovely, organic, fun, San Franciscoish, and cool.
Good to break some new ground!
dk
Fath | April 21st, 2008 @ 8:22 pm |
Awesome design!
Gelay | April 21st, 2008 @ 8:41 pm |
As soon as the site loaded I thought http://www.webdesignerwall.com/
Jonathan | April 21st, 2008 @ 9:46 pm |
Nice fresh look… a whole lot easier on the eyes
Brendan Falkowski | April 21st, 2008 @ 10:09 pm |
Nice footer.
Boris H | April 21st, 2008 @ 10:11 pm |
Looks better than before
PChere | April 21st, 2008 @ 10:15 pm |
The new design is beautiful… truly amazing!
tdhedengren | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:34 pm |
Looks good, Matt! I like the little arrows going here and there, as well as this comment box. Kudos to the designer.
One thing though. Tabbing from the textarea box when writing comments should go to the send button. Maybe someone already said that though…
milo | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:51 pm |
Looks fresh, it’s built up on the code of the old one or completely new?
Matt | April 21st, 2008 @ 11:52 pm |
Milo, I coded up the theme from scratch based on the HTML + CSS Nicolo had done.
Id | April 22nd, 2008 @ 12:05 am |
Impressive new design! =)
Robert Scoble | April 22nd, 2008 @ 12:11 am |
Very nice!
Kate | April 22nd, 2008 @ 12:30 am |
Beautiful!
daniel | April 22nd, 2008 @ 12:35 am |
Nice new layout spring really i like
Mjke | April 22nd, 2008 @ 12:36 am |
wow, it looks very nice templete, I love it so much.
Ben | April 22nd, 2008 @ 2:44 am |
wow! excellent design! I like it
m.o.m. | April 22nd, 2008 @ 3:07 am |
Nice, nice..
Benjamin | April 22nd, 2008 @ 3:08 am |
Y’know, it’s very interesting this latest wave of web designs incorporating natural elements like handwriting and scribbles to serve functions where everything prior was all intentionally made to look artificial. It’s almost like web pages have become annotated (hey, that’s actually a pretty cool idea now I think of it…) by their authors as an afterthought to convey a more relaxed attitude or whatever.
Interesting layout, sir. Though, I must ask, is the ~5px difference between inside and outside backgrounds at the bottom intentional? (I’m on Firefox 2.0.0.14 on Vista if that helps)
Carabus | April 22nd, 2008 @ 3:19 am |
Very professional, very neat… this is the way I like sites to look!
Jean-Baptsite | April 22nd, 2008 @ 3:23 am |
Waouw, it’s beautiful !!! You do a good job
Pingback: Vos Virtual Network » Earth Day 2008 Spins - As the Priviledged Planet Turns
bingu | April 22nd, 2008 @ 3:46 am |
I like the paint
MarkB | April 22nd, 2008 @ 4:01 am |
Very cool
much prefer it 
note: is the footer supposed to be kinda offset?
Iva | April 22nd, 2008 @ 4:50 am |
Your designs always look like mine and viceversa O_O And we’re not even related.
In other words, I like it.
John | April 22nd, 2008 @ 5:00 am |
Nice Matt. Well done. I love also what I assume are random Gravatars for commenters without them.
Cheers.
giovanealex | April 22nd, 2008 @ 5:09 am |
Astonishing! And thanks in advance for the sutff you will release here, like your wonderful old theme, plugins and improvements!
Charlie | April 22nd, 2008 @ 5:29 am |
Holy dang. It looks good, Matt. How might we extract photo details like aperture, focal length, etc. I remember you saying something about a PHP array…
Mike Steinbaugh | April 22nd, 2008 @ 5:42 am |
Awesome new design. I really like the new header and footer. And now on to check out the redesigned photo gallery…
kim | April 22nd, 2008 @ 7:03 am |
holy smokes!
thought i woke up on a carnavale float or some 60s funkadelic type show
me gusta
es hermoso. bien hecho
Nick | April 22nd, 2008 @ 7:29 am |
Wow… looks really great. I love the different styles for posts, asides and galleries!!!!
And I can’t wait for:
George Pearce | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:01 am |
Nice design Matt, I really like it
Quick question for you, how did you get your blog to redirect /year/month/day/postname to /year/month/postname? I saw it when you moved from Photomatt, but I never saw how
Cheers
Matt | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:03 am |
George, I just changed the permalink structure and WP did all the redirects automatically!
Saeb M. | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:25 am |
Good Job.
It’s good
Banago | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:29 am |
A very nice design I would say. I love the colors. Well done Matt. Is this your work?
Banago | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:32 am |
And my Gravatar is not working, unfortunately.
Kris W. | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:36 am |
Sweet!
Matt | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:38 am |
Banago, as I said in the post it was done by Nicolo.
Feanare | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:45 am |
Wow, you nearly gave me a heart-attack here. Something which is quite hard to do, considering me not being older than 18… Anyway, congrats with the new look. It’s amazing, as I am sure you’ve noticed
Bryan | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:50 am |
Holy WOW! I dig the new design Matt…excellent work as always!
Bart-Jan Verhoef | April 22nd, 2008 @ 8:55 am |
Just ran into your redesign through screenfluent. Looking great! Too bad you’ve missed a Jay-z concert, but the outcome might be well worth it
.
Bharath | April 22nd, 2008 @ 9:34 am |
Any chance of sharing the secret matt. The design looks great.
Matt | April 22nd, 2008 @ 9:40 am |
I still went to the Jay-Z concert, it was just the following night.
Christina Warren | April 22nd, 2008 @ 9:53 am |
Very, very nice — kind of reminds me of Nick La’s Web Desginer Wall site (in a good way).
Very sexy!
Mistah P | April 22nd, 2008 @ 10:54 am |
There are a lot of things I like about the new design, but I haven’t yet decided if the header is one of them. But of course the important thing is how much you like it, yeah?
Cheers!
BB | April 22nd, 2008 @ 12:15 pm |
It looks pretty good!!!
Pingback: Ma.tt Has a New Design for Spring! | grandmasterb.com
adam | April 22nd, 2008 @ 1:42 pm |
for the gallery posts – are you choosing the “cover” image, or is there a way to automatically call those?
Björn Olsson | April 22nd, 2008 @ 1:55 pm |
It looks absolutely amazing! Great work!
Matt | April 22nd, 2008 @ 2:19 pm |
Right now it’s just using the first image from the gallery, in the future I’ll have it use one that’s tagged a certain way.
Andrés | April 22nd, 2008 @ 2:42 pm |
Matt: Why aren’t RSS feeds style-enabled?
At least WordPress should offer that feature
It looks great!
Jauhari | April 22nd, 2008 @ 5:18 pm |
Look cute and just perfect Matt
Dawn @ My Home Sweet Home | April 22nd, 2008 @ 9:46 pm |
Very cool. I like the scribbles.
Kym Huynh | April 22nd, 2008 @ 10:30 pm |
Hello! Just wanted you to know that you were mentioned this week on WordCast episode 9
http://www.wordcastonline.com/2008/04/22/wordcast-9-kym-flies-solo/
Ryan | April 22nd, 2008 @ 11:19 pm |
That new wavatar function is great. My forum is now covered in monsters
xeroxaven | April 22nd, 2008 @ 11:41 pm |
all i can say is “wow!!!” beautiful matt…
Joachim | April 23rd, 2008 @ 1:13 am |
WOW Matt … looks good to me!!
Dave | April 23rd, 2008 @ 2:15 am |
Now this is what a Blog is supposed to look like..crazy funky and thought provoking. Cheers
The Dentist | April 23rd, 2008 @ 2:27 am |
Erm, what’s with all the a**-patting? This grunge-Indian (not Native American) look with an A-Team font really isn’t very becoming…
matthias | April 23rd, 2008 @ 2:34 am |
Hi there is a small error in your footer, I am referring to the streak on the left and right side.
The rest looks pretty good.
Michel | April 23rd, 2008 @ 3:50 am |
Cool design!
A short note, though: When I resize browser window to be less than 1024px in width, there comes a background vertical line in the right part of the main content (the text). I guess this can be fixed easily, but just wanted to point it out…
Kevin Paquet | April 23rd, 2008 @ 4:06 am |
Hey, the new design looks cool. I thought I’ve gone to the wrong website at first!
The new gravatar function is really cool! Keep it up Matt!
Luus | April 23rd, 2008 @ 4:30 am |
This new look is great Matt.
Erik Stell | April 23rd, 2008 @ 5:48 am |
Great design, nice blend of lighter colors and grunge…
Erica | April 23rd, 2008 @ 6:44 am |
Love it. so gorgeous!
Joern Kretzschmar | April 23rd, 2008 @ 7:10 am |
Arrgh, your site looks fantastic.
Especially the use of the Wordpress Gallery is outstanding.
Some questions:
1. How did you do the random image in your sidebar?
2. Is there a function to query the first image of a gallery?
3. How did you add the back to gallery link?
4. Why is clicking the gallery category showing such a beutiful gallery page instead of the archive? HOW, HOW, HOW?
Arghhh, I want to know how to be so good. It’s amazing. Fantastic. Please tell us (or just me):
How?
Lori | April 23rd, 2008 @ 7:32 am |
Beautiful new design! Extra cool that it is all WP powered now too. Still, that new domain name is the best thing of all.
While I am here, I would like to add more praise for the WP-MonsterID and Wavatars plugins
BoltClock | April 23rd, 2008 @ 7:40 am |
This looks so much cooler and more personal. I like it. You rock, Matt!
Pingback: Photo Matt’s new Spring design » BoltPress
Beth Norman | April 23rd, 2008 @ 8:53 am |
Wowzers. I’m currently working on changing my blog over from blogger, and boy this is a tough go. I’m going to Michigan on Fri. to get Wordpress for Dummies (my little city doesn’t have it). If this theme of yours was a choice in themes, I’d definately pick this one; it’s so me. I love this look emmensely!!
Martin | April 23rd, 2008 @ 9:13 am |
Hey Matt, the new theme is fantastic. I love it
Joern Kretzschmar | April 23rd, 2008 @ 10:00 am |
Question 2 and 4 already answered through google. Yippieh!
Espacially question 1 should be of bigger interest. Would be nice to have a widget for it (with the ability to exclude galleries or limit the random image to one or two galleries.
Pingback: BloggingBox » Matt schmückt sich neu
Matt G. | April 23rd, 2008 @ 12:07 pm |
Wow! Did Mention wow? Your site design is kicking! Talk about some color on it.
ProBlog | April 23rd, 2008 @ 1:13 pm |
It looks pretty good, but i think, there is an error at footer… 5pix down !
Sam Jones | April 23rd, 2008 @ 3:10 pm |
Great design Matt. Also the top level domain is awesome.
Tarun | April 23rd, 2008 @ 4:11 pm |
This is a totally retro Indian look!
Nice design though.
Munnday | April 23rd, 2008 @ 11:59 pm |
I must admit at first I was a bit taken back, unsure if I like the new look. But after a couple of days I am glad to say I love it! Great work by the designer Nicole!
George | April 24th, 2008 @ 2:20 am |
nicely done but like others I can’t help feeling I’ve seen it before
Ryan | April 24th, 2008 @ 2:49 am |
Matt – I tried to link to your blog comments to show someone what the identicons look like and discovered that you don’t have any anchors on the comments. Perhaps it would be a good idea to add them?
If someone wants to link to a specific comment they won’t be able to without the anchors in place.
Larry | April 24th, 2008 @ 5:02 am |
Fantastic Design!
Zair Abbas | April 24th, 2008 @ 5:37 am |
Wow! nice design.
I am loving it
Greg | April 24th, 2008 @ 5:59 am |
Nice design, i like!
danu | April 24th, 2008 @ 6:22 am |
nice template,simple but eye catching
Danny | April 24th, 2008 @ 6:31 am |
Awesome design man. Good stuff
darker | April 24th, 2008 @ 7:13 am |
ITS JUST WOW!!!
Yvo Schaap | April 24th, 2008 @ 7:26 am |
Really nice style. A! Y
erica | April 24th, 2008 @ 8:26 am |
Love it! The new one is extremely gorgeous!
Jon Phillips | April 24th, 2008 @ 11:18 am |
Awesome design, nice use of colors! The grungy look seems to be really ‘in’ these days
)
It does have some very strong similarities to http://www.webdesignerwall.com/ though (hey it’s a kick-ass design anyway
Thomas Arie | April 24th, 2008 @ 1:25 pm |
Nice, Matt. Anyway, can we have “comment permalink” here?
Nelson | April 24th, 2008 @ 5:12 pm |
This looks good. The footer background of the container doesn’t seem to align with the wrapper’s though. Viewing in Firefox 2.0.0.14 BTW.
juler | April 24th, 2008 @ 10:53 pm |
Elegantly made… This theme really really rocks..
ansel | April 24th, 2008 @ 11:59 pm |
Beautiful design. (Ugly favicon.)
Adieska | April 25th, 2008 @ 4:07 am |
Very fantastic design matt. You have a very unique style. Thanks for all your great jobs.
FuuK | April 25th, 2008 @ 4:22 am |
Probably the best blog on earth…
chloe | April 25th, 2008 @ 9:18 am |
this is so pretty!!! =D
Neil | April 25th, 2008 @ 10:24 am |
any sign of that old theme Matt, or an ETA on its release? Will it have all the same functons etc?
yo
Jeremy | April 25th, 2008 @ 11:55 am |
Lovin’ the new layout/design.
Ardhi | April 25th, 2008 @ 8:47 pm |
I think..you like etnic design…..like oriental art
but so far it’s a good design i think…
let me introduce my self…i’m blogger from west borneo…west borneo is a state in indonesia that have a dayak etnic …maybe you can try dayak etnic design. i’m proud using the wordpress….hope you come to my blog…
patricia | April 25th, 2008 @ 9:44 pm |
it’s beautiful. i’m quite jealous.
Usayd | April 26th, 2008 @ 10:51 am |
Good stuff matt, wasn’t expecting a new design so soon
Viviane | April 26th, 2008 @ 4:22 pm |
Great new design, I love it. Also awesome URL! (I know it isn’t quite as new.)
Pingback: Steve’s Space » Blog Archive » New Look Site
Mathias | April 28th, 2008 @ 1:27 am |
Looking fresh, Matt. I hope the tools will be back soon!
hobbsy | April 28th, 2008 @ 5:00 am |
Have you considered making the navigation in the gallery, so the left half of the photo takes you to the previous image, and the right half takes you to the next image? (rather than all of the image taking you forward)
Joe | April 28th, 2008 @ 1:59 pm |
Very nice design. Too similar to http://www.webdesignerwall.com
Austin | April 28th, 2008 @ 6:33 pm |
I like your nick nack graphics, good background color, but the logo seems if’y…
But still awesome..
duane | April 29th, 2008 @ 10:54 am |
I think that this is the best blog theme I have ever seen. Wow. Totally jealous!
Neil | April 29th, 2008 @ 3:36 pm |
I dont see why people are comparing it to designer wall, that site is totally different, totally different background and the idea is different. Matt has usued his imagination with this one and created a blog theme that is personal to him…rock on i say!!
Dave | April 30th, 2008 @ 11:36 am |
@Neil – fyi, site was designed by Nicolò Volpato, not Matt.
Still, its a lovely design, and is going to be of a style that we will see a lot of over the next 12 months.
Fubiz | April 30th, 2008 @ 12:32 pm |
Beautiful template!
David Strader | April 30th, 2008 @ 1:54 pm |
I agree with Neil! I feel this site is completely original and totally reflecting Matt’s personality and style. Great job Matt!
Becca | April 30th, 2008 @ 3:39 pm |
I love the new background.
They make talavera here in Puebla, too, ya know. You should come buy some.
Neal G | May 1st, 2008 @ 5:27 pm |
I actually navigated to your site from the web designer wall. (there’s a link at the bottom of Nick’s site that goes to his gallery site that links to your site) Imagine that?
Anyways I was quite suprised to see the similarities between your designs. I understand that you did actually design this yourself…but I have a feeling that guy who did, has seen the web designer wall and at least drew some inspiration from it.
The first thing I did when I saw this site was look under the hood, I mean you have a lot going on and it was difficult to understand how it could be done with today’s techniques, But then I saw this image – bg_container_2col.jpg that pretty much explained it all – a CSS Zen Gardens-esque background image. That’s clocking in at 135k! Anyways your site looks awesome although I loved your previous look just as much.
Gracio | May 3rd, 2008 @ 5:41 am |
Nice Template Matt and….
complimenti vivissimi al grande Niccolò
My Code is So Much Better Than Yours | May 3rd, 2008 @ 8:57 am |
You could consider this a bit mean Matt, but it has to be said because so few people are saying it.
The WordPress code is an absolute disgrace. There is no real structure or continuity to it. Its just a load of botched, mangled and mixed PHP, HTML, CSS, JS and XML.
I have worked with PHP programmers as young as 20 and their code and standards of programming absolutely put you to shame. WordPress looks like it was built 10 years ago and whenever a security bug (of which there have been so many) or any other bug has come up you have just forced in a disgusting fix.
Come on Matthew, if you are going to be ‘the guy that made blogging’ get rid of the current disgusting WP code and start again. DO NOT mix HTML, PHP, CSS, XML or JS in the same file. These should always be in separate files. Get some architecture. People don’t want to have to look through 20 files in a ridiculous loop of functions to find one line of your botched code, cut your queries down – 30 queries to load a single page is an absolute disgrace, use a templating engine – preferably XSLT – having PHP templates is not acceptable in this day and age, get rid of your disgusting XML concatenations and replace them with PHP’s DOM class, stop putting “powered by wordpress” and other discernible markings on WP. I can type in “powered by wordpress” on Google and I will have 1000 blogs I can get access to because of your security flaws, make EVERYTHING object oriented and either make your own database layer or use PDO – don’t just steal someone else’s insecure db class and rename it wpdb.
PS – stop using the phrase ‘Code is poetry’ until your code is actually anywhere near half decent. Right now its only place for any expert PHP programmers is the bin.
Austin | May 3rd, 2008 @ 11:14 pm |
Think I already said “cool” so, “nice”
Swap | May 7th, 2008 @ 12:19 pm |
Love the new design Matt, Web 3.0 ish
Giovanny Tarifeño | May 8th, 2008 @ 1:01 pm |
Very nice!
congratulations, this really nice redesign.
Toby-D Tomlin | May 9th, 2008 @ 10:59 pm |
Top effort Matt! I just love the rustic, kinda textile like feel it has.
Stefan | May 10th, 2008 @ 1:15 am |
This is a great improvement over the previous design, I really like it! The look fits the season perfectly.
Congrats!
Neil | May 11th, 2008 @ 8:32 am |
speaking of the old theme, have you made any progress in making a release version?
Iso | May 13th, 2008 @ 6:22 am |
New design is great! Really summerish…
Though…
You wouldn’t believe it, but I miss the old one.
The coffee cup used to soothed me
Neil | July 12th, 2008 @ 7:19 am |
still no release version?
Areep | July 12th, 2009 @ 2:59 am |
Great view, nice design