I remember clearly the realization hitting me. Like a wet fish up-side my head. ManaNation had become one of the uglier Magic sites on the web. In the past 18 months I had worked, reworked, massaged, shoved, squeezed, and changed ManaNation v2 as the needs arose and as I added features and sections and new pieces to the site it became worse and worse.

In that time, while improving the quality (admittedly with some bumps) as well as adding more information to the site, other Magic sites which were better looking popped up. StarCityGames did their facelift and I kept soldiering on, telling myself, "function over form."

Only, it wasn't true.

A few weeks ago was the final straw and I began looking for a new idea, a new design which would stand out among the blog and magazine layouts with the rotating images and cookie cutter styles. I found it. What you see is a theme based on a design by the company "ElegantThemes." I used their theme and then set to work on ManaNation's needs under the hood.

What you see now is, in my opinion, one of the best looking Magic sites on the web. Is it different than v2 of the site? Yes, about as different as you can get.

Is it perfect? No. There will be fixes, and changes required in the coming weeks, but they should be few and far between. If you find a glitch, please contact us on the Contact page.

I've included a number of new functionalities, things you'll notice in the left hand column on article pages, such as font size control as well as the ability to hide the left column altogether for those who enjoy a wider reading space. The integrated deckbuilder on the frontpage for CoolStuffInc's Deckbuilder.

I am eager to hear your feedback on the new design, love it or hate it, or if you have other ideas, then please leave your comments below!

Update: - I neglected to thank everyone who helped me with this redesign. I had a number of people provide input and give me feedback on the design. From random twitter followers to friends and my wife. I want to especially thank Mike Linnemann for extensive input (several emails with over 50 bullet points of thoughts and ideas.) He also came up with the concept for our new subtitle, "Teaching Over Kitchen & Tourney tables Since 2007."

-- Trick