Category: WordPress

WordPress 2.8.1 is Available

WordPress 2.8.1 has officially been released. The update contains a number of bug fixes (over 50). You can read more about all the changes and updates that went into 2.8.1 if you are interested. You can also see all the bug fixes as well.

Download the latest versions of WordPress: WordPress 2.8.1

Lucidity Catalog WordPress Theme

Lucidity Catalog Theme
Lucidity Catalog Theme
Lucidity Catalog is an easy to use, intuitive WordPress theme that is highly customizable by any level of user. Lucidity Catalog has all the functions and features of Lucidity – with the addition of a “catalog” feature. Lucidity Catalog is perfect for people that are looking for an easy to use, set up, and maintain catalog on their blog within their content management system. This theme also supports threaded comments and sidebar widgets by default.

Simplicity is King

Sometimes setting up a eCommerce site or plugin is over the top, too complicated, or just too involved for people. With Lucidity Catalog – you can easily set up your own catalog or store using WordPress categories and a few custom fields. You can offer a store on your web site in a matter of minutes by following these simple five steps:

  1. Create Your Store or Catalog Category. Create a category within WordPress that you want to use for your store or catalog. You can just use one master category or you can create sub categories as well to offer several “types” of products.
    Create the Category
  2. Select your Store or Catalog Category. Go to the Lucidity Catalog Settings and choose your category.
    Select Your Category
  3. Create a Post Announcing or Highlighting Your Product. Create a post that highlights your product and add in the extra information that will be used for the store or catalog view.
    Create a Post
  4. Categorize Your Post/Product. Add your product to either the store or catalog category or one of the sub categories.
    Categorize
  5. Sit Back and Enjoy. Simply view your store or catalog category and you will see everything dynamically put into place as soon as you add a new post within that category.

You can see this in action by checking out the demo catalog: http://lucidity-catalog.sandboxdev.com/category/catalog/ or by seeing a customized version: http://jzelazny.wpengine.com/category/blog/wordpress/wordpress-commercial-themes/

Support

Support is available at the SDAC Inc. Forums

Demo!

You can demo this theme: http://lucidity-catalog.sandboxdev.com

Purchase!

This theme is available for purchase: Buy Theme ($75.00)

*This theme is licensed under the GPL license.

Lucidity WordPress Theme

Lucidity Theme
Lucidity is an easy to use, intuitive WordPress theme that is highly customizable by any level of user. Lucidity is perfect for people that are looking for a minimal clean lines layout with minimal code for fast page loads all while having the ability to control content and layout using the admin. This theme also supports threaded comments and sidebar widgets by default.

Take Control!

After building over one hundred custom WordPress themes – we decided to put together something that the majority of our clients wanted: the ability to control basic settings like colors, fonts, adding external code, etc to their site without having to touch the templates, know CSS, or mess with the .htaccess file.

Changing The Appearance is Fun!

We all love options. With Lucidity – you can easily change the look and feel of your site by selecting one of the several options available in the admin.

Simply select the font you want to use on your site in the drop down menu, save the selection, and reload your site to see the changes.

Fonts

Choose Your Font
Now you can customize your site – with your own preferences without having to know CSS or pay a designer to change it for you.

Colors

Changing colors is something that most people love to do, but get frustrated with CSS. With the easy to use point and click color picker – simply point to the color you want, save the option and your web site will use the newly selected color.

Control Appearance

Say goodbye to editing the CSS file and looking up the color codes for the colors you want to use.

Feedburner Is Easy

If you use Feedburner – you can copy and paste your custom Feedburner URL into the Feedburner field and all your readers who want to subscribe to your RSS feed will be directed to your Feedburner URL.

Add Feedburner Code

No more need to edit your .htaccess file, add a plugin, or do anything more than a simple copy and paste.

Follow Me With My Social Network Links

If you are like most people – you want to share your social networking site links like your LinkedIn Profile, your Facebook page, and your Twitter feed. With Lucidity – you can easily do so by copying and pasting your social networking sites into the admin.

Add Your Links/Icons

Show all your sites easily in the header of your site without having to upload images, edit template files, or add in any other special code.

Stats Please

Companies like Google and Quantcast make it easy to track your web site’s stats. Simply copy and paste the code they give you into the admin and it will be automatically be added to each page, post, attachment, etc page in your site.

Add Analytic Code

No plugins or messing with templates required.

Support

Support is available at the SDAC Inc. Forums

Demo!

You can demo this theme: http://lucidity.sandboxdev.com

Purchase!

This theme is available for purchase: Buy Theme ($50.00)

Looking for a simple catalog solution? Check out our Lucidity Catalog Theme.

Get Category Name By ID (WordPress)

I have been working on a new WordPress theme (to be released this week) and in one of the admin screens – I needed to get the category name by using the category ID. To do this (in or outside of the loop):

<?php get_cat_name( $cat_id ) ?>

Super simple – super helpful.

Reference: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_cat_name

WordPress 2.8/Plugins Issues

I have updated over 25 sites so far and for the most part – everything has gone smoothly. There were a handful of sites though that had issues with a few plugins (including this site) due to one common issue: jQuery. If you are seeing any strange behavior – post upgrade, the first thing you will want to do is to make sure all your plugins are up to date. After that – if you are still having problems – check to see if any of your plugins rely on jQuery. If they do – next check the code (either look at the js files in the plugins, or look at your site’s source code to see if it is loading an old version of jQuery). There is a good chance they are using an older version, or are relying on something that no longer works with the latest release of jQuery (1.3.2 as of today).

Some plugin developers are aware of the issues but have not released an updated plugin. Because you are most likely not alone with your issues – check out their support forums, or post comments to see if someone came up with a quick fix so you can be back in business.

While most WordPress updates can be performed quickly and easily by almost any user – there are times when you run into unexpected problems that can cost you dearly. When this happens – don’t hesitate to call us. We have been working through WordPress updates for years and can help out!

WordPress 2.8 is Available

WordPress 2.8 has officially been released. The update contains a number of bug fixes (over790) and tweaks both on the front end and the back end. The most noticeable change for most users will be the redesigned widget interface – which finally allows users a more intuitive interface when working with widgets. You can read more about all the changes and updates that went into 2.8 if you are interested. Overall – there are a lot of great updates, changes, and new functionality that make this release great for both users and administrators.

Download the latest versions of WordPress: WordPress 2.8

WordPress 2.8 Release Candidate 1

WordPress 2.8 is one step closer to being released. The first release candidate is now available: WordPress 2.8 Release Candidate 1. I have been using WordPress 2.8 beta on a few sites now for a few weeks and have not experienced any major issues until now (I just tried to add in tags and nothing happened) – but if you want to take a look to see the changes in action or make sure your plugins/themes all function – download this version (not on production sites unless you are a risk taker).

WordPress Theme Wishlist

I have been working on releasing a WordPress theme for awhile now and I keep adding in new functionality instead of just releasing it into the wild. Since I create a lot of custom themes for clients – I am often exposed to a lot of really cool functions, ideas, and designs. Before releasing my initial theme – I wanted to ask for some general feedback.

  1. What is the number 1 thing you want from a theme? Ease of use (admin panels to manage your content), easily skin-able, simple, clean code?
  2. How many people plan to have a mobile theme to handle their content on mobile devices? Would you ideally like this as an option from the get go?
  3. Do you use “all” the theme template files (archive, links, etc?)
  4. What would make you really happy with a theme?

SDAC WP Plugin Update: SDAC Related Content v 2.1

We just updated our SDAC Related Content plugin to fix a few bugs and to also add in some additional functionality. You can now choose to show related posts by tag or by category. (No longer just category). This is a great plugin for anyone looking for related functionality on WordPress, WordPress MU, or VIP hosting as it does not make any database changes and it uses caching.

Check out the forum for any support issues or leave any feature requests and we will do our best to add them into future releases.

WordPress 2.8 New Features

With WordPress 2.8 beta 1 now available – there are some great new features that I wanted to highlight for the upcoming WordPress 2.8 release.

An exhaustive list of all the updates are available for review, but here are ten highlights for the end user.

  • Don’t ask for confirmation when marking a comment as spam
  • Don’t notify post author of own comments
  • Allow the dashboard widgets to be arranged in up to four columns as set via the Screen Options tab
  • Improved Plugin search on Administration > Plugins > Add New
  • Autosave post/page when pressing Control/Command+S
  • Support more than one gallery on the same page
  • “Choose a city in the same timezone as you” for Timezone in Administration > Settings > General
  • Add “Send this password to the new user by email” option to Administration > Users > Add New
  • In upgrade process, provide better explanation for database upgrade message
  • Add password strength meter to Add User and Edit User

Everything looks very promising and the developers are doing a great job with getting bug fixes in place, more options, and easier to user interfaces. Stay tuned for the release of WordPress 2.8 in the near future!