I finally finished this thing.
I could probably work on it another week or two and never be fully satisfied. It seems that every moment longer I work on it, I learn something new. I figured I’d better just go ahead and release this version, or I’ll be working for the next half year and many of you would not be very happy.
The title of this release is New Groove.
- Download & release page
- Support forums
- Theme documentation (update in progress)
Note: The official page for this theme is still at the original download page.
The new demos
I would like to thank Barbara for naming the newest style, Blue Danube. The Blue Danube, according Answers.com:
“A river of south-central Europe rising in southwest Germany and flowing about 2,848 km (1,770 mi) southeast through Austria, Hungary, Serbia, and Romania to the Black Sea. It has been a major trade route since the Middle Ages.”
There are actually some nice photos of the river if you do a little searching. Once again, thanks Barbara, not only for naming the style, but expanding our knowledge also.
Some new features
There are plenty of new features and fixes in this release.
- Config file
Look for theconfig.phpfile in yourappfolder. It’ll give you a few options to play around with. It’ll also be the first bit of theme documentation that I update. - Upload new stylesheets
You can now upload new stylesheets (following the naming convention of the others). So, users can share their styles with each other. This requires no editing. Just drop the folder into your “styles” folder and choose it on the theme settings page. - Gravatars
WordPress 2.5 users get the added benefit of post page and author bio gravatars. Users with versions below 2.5 only get to use comment gravatars though. - Advanced widget control
The ability to add multiple widgets with many of the widgets and many have their own control panels. (I haven’t tested the widget controls on WordPress versions below 2.5). - New sidebar tabs
I’ve updated the sidebar tabs with many more options. - Much more
There’s much more hidden away in this release that we’ll have to explore together.
Future features
From this point on, I’d like to continue developing the theme. First and foremost, the plan is to continue cutting back on code and database queries as much as possible as I continue learning better ways to do things with PHP.
The next goal is to add plenty of new goodies for the users.
- Revamped author archives
This is especially useful for multi-author blogs. I want to let each author showcase his or her best work and other things. - Category and archive styles
Since many users want to use this as a CMS, I’d like to give them a few more options with how their archives are displayed. - Sticky posts
These will be posts that have a longer lifetime than features. Mostly, they’ll be used for category and/or author pages for our CMS-type users. - Image and video galleries
I’m still toying with the idea of these features for this theme, so I’d like some feedback on this. - Image attachments
Image uploading just got a whole lot easier with WordPress 2.5, so I’m currently working out ways that we can better take advantage of post attachments. This may be a better/easier option to use than custom fields. Any ideas in this area are much appreciated.
Cleaning up
As with any new release, there are bugs, and I’m sure this release has no shortage of them. I usually run a bug-squashing week after all new releases, so I’m sure there’ll be a small update for those of you that help find bugs within the next week or so. Please report any you notice in the forums.
I’ll start updating the theme documentation in the coming days. For now, you’ll have to play around with it.
Play around with it. Break it. Ask questions. Blame me for ruining your WP experience.
Whatever you do, enjoy the theme and please be gentle with it.
Congratulations Justin.
I have been checking up for updates regularly … been waiting to see the new version …
I will be sharing my feedback of course.
Great theme already … cant wait to see the new OPTIONS
You are to be truly commended for this, Justin. I highly respect your innovation, and dedication.
Hi Justin,
Great & thanks a million for releasing the 1.1 version. I’ll update the same and let you know if I see any errors… but i dobt i will
Me
Amazing work Justin! You deserve a good rest now.
And then perhaps a Structure update.
I cant seem to locate the config.php file in the includes folder
Excellent work Justin, I have just downloaded it and will start playing around with it right now!
Are you planning on incorporating any of the Options features into the update of Structure?
I really like your work. Your design is way better than the so-called “premium themes”. Keep up the good work. The good thing here is its FREE!
You and Small Potato are one of my fave in WP Community!
congrats for the new version!
excellent theme!
Nice job.
I’ve downloaded it and goin to try it tomorrow.
Thanks again to you.
I will see to youmy work with your baby.
Excellent work Justin. The Options theme just keeps getting better and better.
Well thats Excellent I Really do like it …!
Are you planning on incorporating any of the Options features into the update…?
Hi Justine,
I’ll be working on this over the weekend and hopefully get you the Japanese mot file.
Great work as always!
Cheers
Something wrong with background of “post list tab” section.
Even in dark style background under text part of section – #F7F7F7/
Nice work. I’m ready to start digging in to the thing. Get some sleep!
Looks like the features gallery doesn’t work. 8(
Amir
Thanks. Please do share your feedback. As with most of my releases, there’s the inevitable
.1, and now it looks like there’ll be an Options 1.1.2 in the coming week or so.Armen
That definitely means a lot coming from you. Here I am thinking the same about your work most of the time.
Sucharith
Trust me. There’ll be plenty of bugs. It’s unavoidable with a project of this size and only little ol’ me coding it.
Bryan
The Structure update is coming. Sometime in the very near/far future.
Chris
Sorry about that. It should be in your
appfolder. I’ll update the post above.John Scott
I’ll probably port the widgets over when I know they’re working great. Of course, the widgets for this theme came from Structure originally. I might incorporate the option of choosing the type of category/post tabs display you want too.
Mostly, I want to take these two themes in very different directions. Structure is very much a three-column widgetized theme, and I want to continue building on that with WordPress 2.5′s new widget control panel. I want to pretty much widgetize everything with that theme. Options will only have widgetizable sidebars, so the features are going to vary greatly.
donalyza
Thanks. It’s too bad SP is saying goodbye to the WordPress community for the most part. I suppose I’ll have to pick up the slack.
Ben
Thanks.
arthurgogol
Make sure to get the version 1.1.1 update if you’re using WordPress 2.3. There are some widget issues.
PremiumWP
I only hope to continue building upon it, so look out for future updates.
Rehan Ahmed
This is the Options theme, so the Options features are already included.
Yoichi
You don’t rest when it comes to helping out with translations, so thank you for that. Let me know if I missed anything. There are so many files, that I’m sure I forgot to do something correctly.
brainsolid
I don’t see what you mean. I’ve ran it with all three styles and can’t find a background color problem.
Sam
If you can’t get the features gallery to work, just stop by the support forums, and we’ll try to help. It’s usually a JavaScript conflict somewhere.
Impressive! Now I’m going to jet over to the forum as I have some questions about integrating some of these features into my Structure Theme (another theme which I have fallen in love with). Awesome Justin.
Thanks for listening to all our feedback and making it happen! This is a timely release and edges things forward at just the right pace. My only (slight)concern is the number of queries as these features increase. Keeping the code clean and efficient is so important for a busy website. I would love to see a a way to take a snapshot of all the static processes and convert them into an HTML file that serves without unnecessary queries. Of course there are many dynamic calls and these must be maintained for site running, but there are many others that are repeated every time page loads and they never change, once the options have been set. You could say that this issue belongs to a caching management process and nothing to do with the theme, but caching has its own problems, especially if you use a shared server. Anyway, a conversation for another time maybe …
Oh.
I try to play with active/deactive some plugins and understand that background problem in “post list tab” section because of some incompatibility with Brian’s Threaded Comments. Hm…
Wow, thanks. I’ve been waitin’ for this. Well done!
Justin – totally awesome!!! now only one more update to wait for (official 2.5 WordPress) and I will be happy!!! I am off to play with the theme more and personalize it and make it my own
Also thank you for looking forward to more CMS-type functioning with your theme; I will be managing one in a few months and would love to use your theme for it – it is so versatile and so easy to use.
I have been using this theme on my online literary magazine for over a month now. While writing the editorial today, I finally rememberd to thank you, Justin, for this wonderful theme. http://libremagazine.com/editorial/editorial/
I will be putting up a small banner for it on the site soon.
I also found some discussion going on about 2 sidebars … whenever that is implemented, I all for it
I’m using blue danube but the header is showing “Options Theme what wordpress themes should be like”
I can’t figure out how to change it to my blog title! On the light style it doesn’t do that.
any help is appreciated
btw, thanks for the awesome theme!
ok, duh. nevermind. I found the image. It didn’t appear as an image on my site, but I figured it out. Thanks!
Is it ok with wordpress 2.5 RC3 ?
Yo! Yo! At last , the greatest themes are coming out now!! I’ve been waiting for it. Thank you so much Justin! You’re the MAN!
I love Blue Danube, but the others 2 are Awesome too! I’ll write a special post on my blog about these themes!
Thank in advance Justin! Cheers!
To everyone
In case you missed it, make sure to get Version 1.1.1-a instead. There were a few glitches with widgets (especially for WP 2.3 users).
Chad
The Structure and Options themes are taking very different paths in the future. I am however, going to include a custom section in the next update of the Structure theme, so maybe you can use that.
groovy
You’re right to be concerned about database queries. I’ve cut back on some of them for sure this time but will be continuing to find ways to cut back as much as possible.
My advice here is to not use every single widget/tab/section available. The theme wasn’t really made for that, and I sometimes regret allowing users five home page sections because of this very reason. I figured they’d find a way to do anyway though.
I’ll definitely keep building upon it. At the same time, I want to continue cutting back on the code and queries as much as possible.
If you find any areas that could be changed, feel free to let me know in the forums, and I’ll add it to the next release.
brainsolid
Thanks for letting me know. I don’t know why a comment plugin would effect the post list tabs though. Interesting…
m
Thank you. Let me know how things go.
Kim
Well, it looks like 2.5 is out, so make sure to get your copy. Unfortunately for me, I have to make sure bbPress is running with 2.5 before I can upgrade this site.
I’m currently rewriting the code for the theme settings page. If I can keep the code light, I’ll implement a lot of this into the administration panel in the next release. I think there are many people that would like to see some more CMS-type functionality for more than just the home page.
I’m glad you’ve found it easy. That’s the goal — to allow as many people as possible and as easily as possible to show off their sites in a variety of ways.
Amir
Thanks for the link back to your site. The two sidebar discussion that’s happening is about making the single sidebar a double sidebar. I don’t plan to implement this or two sidebars into future releases because it would make the CSS files even bigger, and I’m trying to cut back on those.
Christine
I’m glad you figured it out. If you have questions though, ask them over on the forums.
arthurgogol
Yes, it works with RC3, but WordPress 2.5 is now officially out. Things seem to be working fine.
MhawSayar
Thanks for the compliments. I’ve fallen in love with Blue Danube too. I was tired of looking at the Dark stylesheet for so long that it was a nice refresher to work on something else.
Justin, tell me please, what i must cut if i wish hide thumb images in “Full Posts” section?
I am dropping by to give my thanks for your wonderful themes. I have used Facebooked and Structure. Now I am using your fabulous Options theme.
Thank you!
hi,
when i use translation file the theme doesnt work!
someone knows where is the problem?
regards,
Excellent work! One of the best themes out there. Where do I pay?