Eliminated Dependence on TimThumb

StartBox 2.7 now does all of its custom on-the-fly image resizing with native WordPress functionality. This means you can still use all the same image functions that have shipped with StartBox, without the fear of any potential insecurities. (Note: it’s worth mentioning that prior to this StartBox used the latest version of TimThumb which had no known security flaws).

Added Language support

All of the text strings that StartBox generates have been localized for quite some time. StartBox now ships, however, with support for British English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese built right in!

Want to see StartBox in your language? Please get in touch!

Phasing-out StartBox Slideshows

We’re going to remove Slideshows as a built-in feature in StartBox 2.8, and as a result we’ve stopped enabling Slideshow theme support by default. If a site has been using slideshows they will continue to appear, but new sites will no longer display the menu item. We plan to release a plugin with all the slideshow code, so that you can continue to use them indefinitely, but we strongly recommend using a better plugin (like Soliloquy).

Lots of Bugfixes

We fixed a rather nasty bug with the custom sidebars implementation that prevented more than one custom sidebar appearing on any given page at the same time. We fixed another bug with loop.php and single.php that prevented articles with pagination from showing their pagination. Finally, we fixed the author template archive to actually return the full archive of posts, instead of just the most recent one.

2.7 Changelog:

• Added: Language support for British English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, and Japanese
• Added: Filter ‘sb_register_sidebar_defaults’ to allow easy override of default sidebar markup
• Added: sb_image_crop_dimensions() for properly determining the crop coordinates for any image
• Fixed: Multiple custom sidebars can now appear on a single page (e.g. replacing both Primary and Footer Aside 1 is possible).
• Fixed: Author template now properly displays entire author archive.
• Fixed: Replaced post content pagination to loop.php and single.php.
• Fixed: Default settings for post thumbnails in theme options.
• Fixed: Made footer settings sanitization a touch less restrictive.
• Fixed: Prevent comments from storing the default website text if no website provided
• Changed: Removed automatic add_theme_support of StartBox Slideshows (unless a site already has one or more slideshows)
• Changed: Updated startbox.css to better style heading elements (h1, h2, etc) for handling line-height and bottom margin.
• Changed: Updated the Options API uploader to use media manager.
• Changed: Improved inline documentation for sb_get_post_image, sb_post_image and sb_get_post_image_url
• Changed: Updated sb_get_post_image, sb_post_image and sb_get_post_image_url to not use extract()
• Changed: Added StartBox Support link to Help metabox in Theme Options
• Removed: Eliminated AJAXUpload scripts and all references
• Removed: Timthumb.php and dependence on Timthumb entirely. \o/
• Removed: Deprecated sb_post_image_url

You can view the entire changelog on GitHub.

The post StartBox 2.7 Now Available! appeared first on StartBox.

Without a doubt, magazine-styled themes have been a staple format in the WordPress theme ecosystem. They’ve also been fraught with user experience challenges, mostly faced by site operators who are just trying to set up their content and “make it look like the demo.” In terms of visual design, most magazine themes also try to approach the way large news sites.

There’s a knife edge between minimalism and just a lack of detail.

When I looked into creating Brochure for StartBox, what I wanted to do was take the most common features of magazine themes, create distinct visual styles for different publisher segments, and make sure that setup is easy.

StartBox already comes with a robust Featured Posts widget. Most magazine themes have boxes upon boxes of featured posts, mostly sorted by category. StartBox already does this. I created additional widget areas above and below the front page content, and beneath single post content, for publishers (that’s you!) to drop in as many featured posts widgets that they need.

Magazine themes have slideshows. StartBox’s built-in slideshow is highly customizable. You can go all out with a huge slideshow, or perhaps a smaller one.

Visually, I made three different “looks,” all very different from each other in character. “Elegant” has a classic look that invokes the look and feel of old paper; “Modern,” whose name speaks for itself, and “Columbia,” a feminine—and rather daring—look dedicated to the classic personification of the United States. I daresay, I had a lot of fun creating Columbia. The typeface adds a tender touch, as well as the asymmetrical box corners. I tempered the femininity of the look with a subdued background that featured wreaths of leaves, just like what national personifications and Classical sculptures tend to wear. Again, it was a lot of fun.

StartBox itself, if you weren’t aware, includes a number of different page layout options. While the most common places the content on the left with sidebars on the right, Brochure has been designed to anticipate the use of all provided layouts and adapts nicely to them.

Lastly, but equally important, Brochure is responsive: it has breakpoints for tablet resolutions and for smartphones. You can see this feature and more on our Brochure theme demo.

So, I hope you enjoy Brochure. It’s a magazine theme that won’t make your site look like yet another news site.
– Jayvie Canono
 

The post Meet Brochure: A Magazine Theme, With a Touch of Style appeared first on StartBox.

You’re also welcome to join us in the #wpstartbox channel at any other point, too. There are usually a couple people hanging out in the room, so it’s a good place to drop in to get a quick question answered or just shoot the breeze.

Look forward to seeing you there!

The post Weekly Dev Meetings, Fridays at 11am EST, #wpstartbox on IRC appeared first on StartBox.

What’s Changing?

For me, this means an entire team of people contributing to StartBox Themes and now StartBox Plugins (yes, plugins). For you, this means even more high-quality products and content, and even better support and documentation! For WDS, this means a great asset and even more people to add to their already enormous fan base.

Because of all the added value that will be coming to WPStartBox.com (more themes, new plugins, better documentation, better support, etc) the cost of entry will be rising in 2013. For the rest of 2012, however, you can continue to get individual themes for $47 or lock-in the Theme Club rate at $100 and get everything for another 12 months.

What’s Staying the Same?

The best parts, of course! I’m staying on-board as the project lead, and StartBox itself will continue to be 100% freely available via GitHub. Lastly, everything will remain 100% GPL so that you’re free to use it however you like, wherever you like, and on as many sites as you like, for as long as you like. Like I said, this is a pretty sweet deal for everybody.

The post A Breath of Fresh Air appeared first on StartBox.

What’s new?

In practical terms, nothing. I did my best to introduce zero new features with this release. I say “did my best” because there were a few small features that I added for convenience, but otherwise this release is entirely bugfixes and optimizations.

So, it’s been 8 months, and you didn’t change anything!?

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I changed 122 files with 5,762 additions and 5,193 deletions. In other words, I changed things a whole heap. Most of the changes were adding better in-line documentation, tweaking functions to be more user- and developer-friendly, dropping features that are no longer necessary, and laying some groundwork for some very exciting changes coming down the road. Before I get into that, though, have a look at the changelog below:

Version 2.6 Changelog

• Added: hook “sb_author_before_posts” on author.php after the author’s meta information, before their posts are inserted
• Added: shortcode [sitemap] to leverage the sitemap/archive functionality anywhere
• Added: shortcode [expires] for hiding content after specific date ([expires date=”Aug 18, 2012″ expired_message=”You missed out…”]blah[/expires])
• Added: shortcode [show_after] for revealing content after specific date ([show_after date=”Aug 18, 2012″ teaser=”Coming soon…”]blah[/show_after])
• Added: /includes/functions/conditionals.php (migrated functions from the increasingly ambiguous /includes/functions/custom.php)
• Added: /includes/functions/images.php (migrated functions from the increasingly ambiguous /includes/functions/custom.php)
• Added: /includes/functions/menus.php (migrated functions from the increasingly ambiguous /includes/functions/custom.php)
• Fixed: annoying bug introduced in 2.5.4 that prevented sidebar settings from being stored on first save.
• Fixed: bug that prevented WordPress SEO (by Yoast) from overwriting page titles
• Fixed: bug that would cause the RSS nav menu extra link to use href=”true” instead of href=”/your/feed/url/”
• Changed: Options API: Refactored most of the code and added better inline documentation (see /includes/functions/admin_settings.php)
• Changed: Options API: WYSIWYG option to use wp_editor functionality introduced in WP3.3
• Changed: Options API: Logo option is now cleaner and simpler
• Changed: Options API: Layout Options are now in their own separate section
• Changed: the Sitemap Page Template now accepts parameters passed as an array through the Custom Field “sitemap_settings”
• Changed: updated all post image functions to run off a single array or argument string, instead of multiple arguments
• Changed: renamed /plugins/ to /extensions/
• Changed: [date] shortcode now accepts “relative=true” parameter to return a relative date (e.g. 5 hours ago)
• Changed: updated SB Social widget to include Google+ and more gracefully handle output of each network’s name
• Changed: wp_enqueue_style calls now pass through theme version numbers (for chache-busting purposes)
• Changed: footer widgets now hook into sb_footer_widgets via hooks.php (they were previously hard-coded)
• Changed: replaced custom, unfilterable search form extra in Menus to use get_template_part() and searchform.php or searchform-menu.php (if present)
• Removed: deprecated ALL custom hook functions, replacing them more simply with do_action( ‘hook_name’ )
• Removed: deprecated sb_title() function, since it’s only use was having wp_title hooked directly to it
• Removed: /page-fullwidth.php (full-width page template) — use the One Column layout option instead
• Removed: /page-tertiarysidebar.php (tertiary sidebar page template ) — use sidebar manager instead
• Removed: /sidebar-tertiary.php (tertiary sidebar file) — use sidebar manager instead
• Removed: Digg shortcode (not as relevant as it once was)
• Removed: Options API: Feedburner Settings (Google is eliminating their feedburner service, in the mean time you can still use the official Feedburner plugin)
• Removed: Options API: “Save the Web” Settings (The PushUpTheWeb service no longer exists)

What other exciting things can we expect?

StartBox is a very powerful and flexible theme. I’ve used it for nearly every single project I’ve been involved in since 2008 (when I created it), and I’m very proud of it. It works well for large- and small-scale projects alike, and has been developed in such a way that things work in a simple, logical fashion (after you spend about 30 minutes with it you’ll be familiar enough to know your way around quite well). But, it’s not perfect and it’s still far from where I want it to be.

I’ve learned a tremendous amount about web development in these past 4 years, and even more about WordPress, specifically. There are a lot of great features in WordPress that StartBox still doesn’t leverage as best it can (or at all, in some cases) and I’ll be working to rectify that. A feature that I’m burning to integrate is the Theme Customizer, introduced in WordPress 3.4. I actually debated brining integration into StartBox 2.6, but decided to hold off for another release. I’m also working on integrating HTML5 and an even more responsive layout, and at least one more thing that should really blow your hair back.

I hope you enjoy using StartBox as much as I do, and I hope it’s benefitted you as much as it has me. I’d love to hear about how you’re using it, and what you like/dislike about it so I can work to improve it even further in the coming months. Please leave a comment below or drop a note over in the Forums. If you find a bug or want to implement some features of your own, Pull Requests are Welcome!

The post StartBox 2.6 Released appeared first on StartBox.