It turns out, that I am able to touch base with you every other month. Therefore, I’m renaming our Monthly Theme Updates Report to Bi-Monthly Theme Updates Report. Are you OK with that? Let me know in the comments below. But anyway, we have quite a lot to cover in the report for the August and September.
11 themes received updates in the last 2 months, altogether we’ve rolled out 20 update releases. You can see, we’re not slacking 🙂
Notable Changes That Landed in Multiple Themes
There have been some bigger changes that landed in most of the themes. I’ll list them here first, avoiding to repeat them in each of the individual theme updates.
Improved Theme Registration and Updates Functionality
For some time now, all our themes come with the theme registration functionality where you have to unlock the theme with the license key. Since we’ve changed our pricing, we had to implement some changes in the functionality which handles automatic updates.
Changed the Minimal PHP Version to 5.4
PHP 5.3 has reached its end-of-life more than 3 years ago. We encourage every user to use the latest stable version of PHP available. We develop and run in production PHP 7.1. Because we’ve started using some functionality that is only available since PHP 5.4 (which has – by the way – also reached end-of-life 2 years ago), we’ve dumped the minimum required version to PHP 5.4 in most of our themes.
Fixed WooCommerce Chrome Issue
A zoom feature for the WooCommerce products was causing strange rendering issues in the Chrome browser. We had to disable that functionality in many themes. We’ll keep an eye on the WooCommerce releases when the issue is resolved, so we can add it back.
Individual Theme Updates
Adrenaline
Version v1.6.0 – According to one support request, we’ve added additional class to the slider captions container, which now allows you to change the appearance of the captions depending on the slide number. French and Spanish translations have been improved. The issue with embedded Vimeo videos in the slider has been fixed. We’ve removed the default padding for the logo which makes that part of the theme more customizable and allows for the logo size which fills the entire area.
Auto
Version v1.6.0 and v1.5.2 – We’ve improved WPML compatibility for the Featured Page widget and the German translation.
Beauty
Version v1.5.2 – Beauty received notable updates from above.
BuildPress
Version v5.3.0 – The whole customizer functionality has been rewritten from the ground up. Now it’s much more reliable than it used to be. The legacy favicon setting has also been removed, because for some time now WordPress ships its own customizer control to upload the site favicon.
CargoPress
Version v1.11.2 – CargoPress received notable updates from above.
MedicPress
Version v1.6.0 and v1.5.1 – We’ve added a setting to the customizer for changing the slider text color. The issue with the Vimeo videos in the slider has been resolved as well. The IE 11 compatibility has been improved, we had to fix the flexbox in the header. And the bug, where the active link in the sidebar was not highlighted, has also been resolved.
MentalPress
Version v1.9.2 – MentalPress received notable updates from above.
Readable
Versions from v2.0.0 to v2.0.7 – Readable got our full attention for the whole August and the result is the complete face-lift. Shipping version 2 of Readable was like shipping a totally new theme. We’ve got a ton of positive feedback when we’ve launched it on ProductHunt and DesignerNews.
Some of the things we’ve changed are:
- We’ve added support for the Page Builder and added a new page template for the Page Builder layouts.
- Added Readable styles for our Mailchimp Widget plugin (you can also use them together with any other theme).
- Switched from legacy OptionTree settings framework to much better customizer + ACF combo (automatic settings migration script for users who update the theme is provided).
For the complete overview, it’s best to check out the Readable demo or even try it for free.
RepairPress
Version v1.4.2 – RepairPress received notable updates from above.
Shaka
Version v1.10.0 – We’ve improved the compatibility with WPML for the Featured Page widget. Support for the WooCommerce 3.0 product galleries has been ensured and tested. Some improvements on the slider: better resource handling for embedded YouTube videos, fixed bug for Vimeo videos, fixed bug with slider buttons on mobile. And some other minor visual fixes. 🙂
StructurePress
Version v1.9.2 – StructurePress received notable updates from above.
These are all the updates of the themes we made in the last 2 months.
Lastly, later today we’re announcing the online marketing theme, suitable for selling digital products, SaaS, or for the agency website. It’s called GrowthPress and it’s our theme I’m most proud of to this day!
