What started as a 5 minutes hack a few weeks ago is now a reality. I’ve put together a new gallery, and unlike many other galleries, you get to see all the existing themes for Mephisto as they would appear in a real Mephisto installation, because that’s where they all run. All sites show the same content, which makes it really easy to find out how each one treats sections, static pages, comments, sidebars, etc.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the most extensive collection of Mephisto designs to date! It contains 34 templates (and would contain more if it was not for the fact that the license did not allow for free redistribution).

Some may require extra Mephisto plugins such as the ERB, Erubis or HAML renderers. Speaking of HAML, I’m going to be releasing a new template within a few days to demonstrate how you can use the HAML renderer for Mephisto.

I’m also officially introducing a new Mephisto theme: Cutline, very accurately translated from the original Cutline Template by Chris Pearson. This is a gorgeous design, with a clean layout, plenty of white space and very precise typography.

I’ll be posting some more details in the following days about why that 5 minutes hack turned out into a much bigger project, but I think the result is quite impressive, and a hats off to Rick for creating an impressive blog engine.