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| 1 | +--- |
| 2 | +title: Announcing Gatsby Manor, themes for Gatsby 🎉🎊 |
| 3 | +date: "2018-02-09" |
| 4 | +image: "gatsbymanor.jpg" |
| 5 | +author: "Steven Natera" |
| 6 | +--- |
| 7 | + |
| 8 | +I am proud to announce [Gatsby Manor](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/), a gallery |
| 9 | +of themes for [Gatsby](https://www.Gatsby.org/). After 5 months of |
| 10 | +development, Gatsby Manor is now in public beta. Check out our |
| 11 | +[themes](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/themes) then use our [getting started](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/docs/quick-start/getting-started) guide to |
| 12 | +kickstart your Gatsby project. |
| 13 | + |
| 14 | +## Overview |
| 15 | + |
| 16 | +Gatsby Manor is built on top of Gatsby to provide a painless way of building |
| 17 | +websites with reusable React components we call themes. We even have a |
| 18 | +cleverly named npm module for theme management called |
| 19 | +[Jay](https://github.com/gatsbymanor/gatsby-jay) 😄. |
| 20 | + |
| 21 | +With Jay you can download a theme from our collection, and mount it as a default |
| 22 | +theme. Styles are applied instantly without server restarts or additional lines |
| 23 | +of code. Because of React, interactivity is supported out of the box. |
| 24 | + |
| 25 | +Want to switch themes? No problem. Jay can archive themes for later use in a |
| 26 | +themes folder in your local directory. Edit and swap themes as often as you want |
| 27 | +and Jay will manage the process. Want to learn more? Read our |
| 28 | +[docs](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/docs/cli/)! |
| 29 | + |
| 30 | +## How it all started |
| 31 | + |
| 32 | +The idea began when I decided to update my personal website. I wanted a way to |
| 33 | +rebuild my website with ease however the approaches were less than exciting. |
| 34 | + |
| 35 | +Building a new site myself would require a lot of time. My imagination often |
| 36 | +runs wild when it comes to web design and what is supposed take a day of work |
| 37 | +turns into weeks of site iterations. The joys of web development often causes me |
| 38 | +to over-engineer simple websites. Not to mention that building a development |
| 39 | +environment alone is the biggest requirement when starting from scratch. |
| 40 | +Therefore another option needed to be explored. |
| 41 | + |
| 42 | +[Wordpress](https://wordpress.org/) would be the fastest solution to build a |
| 43 | +website but I wanted to be able to rapidly prototype on customs themes. |
| 44 | +Unfortunately, understanding the architecture to develop themes on this stack |
| 45 | +would require additional time. Not to mention I dislike PHP (#sorryNotSorry 😅) |
| 46 | +therefore this option was a clear loser. I tried [Hugo](https://gohugo.io/) and |
| 47 | +[Jekyll](https://jekyllrb.com/). They gave me the right mix of speed and |
| 48 | +control. But their templating languages were unappealing as long term options. |
| 49 | + |
| 50 | +When I stumbled onto Gatsby, I found the golden goose. I already worked with |
| 51 | +React before, therefore I could prototype rapidly. The development environment |
| 52 | +gave me a tight feedback loop out of the box. And I had all the control in the |
| 53 | +world for enhanced interactive features. |
| 54 | + |
| 55 | +## The development process |
| 56 | + |
| 57 | +Once settled on Gatsby, I started working on my personal website. Within 2 |
| 58 | +hours I wanted to prototype with different design elements because I found |
| 59 | +inspiration from [html5up](https://html5up.net/) templates. However I did not |
| 60 | +want to discard my work so far. |
| 61 | + |
| 62 | +I decided to make a new directory to store my outdated work, like a true digital |
| 63 | +hoarder. A few more hours passed and I found myself yarning for |
| 64 | +my original design choice because the new design was too complex. I knew this |
| 65 | +situation would occur again (sometimes I can be indecisive 😅) so I decided to build |
| 66 | +a small cli tool to switch between themes easily. But first I needed a name, and |
| 67 | +Jay seemed the most clever since I was working with Gatsby. |
| 68 | + |
| 69 | +As I was debugging code one day, I stumbled onto a feature request for a |
| 70 | +[theme system](https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/issues/2662). At that moment, |
| 71 | +I decided I was going to build a theme solution for the community. Five |
| 72 | +months later, Gatsby Manor was born. |
| 73 | + |
| 74 | +## Final notes |
| 75 | + |
| 76 | +Gatsby Manor is in public beta until we reach v1. There are plenty of |
| 77 | +[Github](https://github.com/gatsbymanor) contributions to go around. To get |
| 78 | +started, try out a Gatsby Manor theme using our tutorial on [getting started](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/docs/quick-start/getting-started). Open an |
| 79 | +issue if you see an area of improvement. Follow and send us positive vibes on |
| 80 | +Twitter using [@TheGatsbyManor](https://twitter.com/TheGatsbyManor). |
| 81 | + |
| 82 | +TL;DR [Gatsby Manor](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/) is a place to get themes for |
| 83 | +your Gatsby project. Use our [getting started](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/docs/quick-start/getting-started) tutorial to use |
| 84 | +a [theme](https://www.gatsbymanor.com/themes) in your Gatsby project today. |
| 85 | + |
| 86 | +Cheers! 🎉🎊 |
| 87 | + |
| 88 | +[@StevenNatera](https://twitter.com/stevennatera). |
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