Wow, it’s landed – Thesis 1.4 Thesis 1.4.1 Thesis 1.4.2 is here and it’s jam packed with killer new features. Building upon an already rock solid foundation, Chris Pearson has once again taken things up a notch or three with this release.
It’s only been in our hot little hands for a couple of hours, but here’s what we love so far. We’ll be updating as we uncover more gems, but here’s our Thesis 1.4 review – hot off the press!
The New Multi-Instance Sidebar Widget (Killer Recent Entries)
Rick revealed this puppy last week, so if you want more check out his post here. Briefly though, it’s taken the great thesis_widget_recent_posts() function and allowed you to place it with ease using the awesome Wordpress widgets control panel. Of course, it’s totally dynamic too – you can pick the categories you want, the number of posts and comments and the title.
Even better, this widget is multi-use, so you’re not limited to just recent posts or a certain category, you can have as many of these little gems as you want. Golden.
Power User, Meet Easy Editing Options
1.4 introduces some great changes to your posting workflow. Part of this, and one of the things I’m most excited about, is the new SEO Details and Additional Styles options pane in the write panel.
New SEO Options and More
Allowing quick and easy access to define a custom title tag, the meta description and meta key words, this functions answers one of the major feature requests for Thesis and will allow you to take your SEO to a whole new level. Best of all, there’s no mucking around with cumbersome custom fields and a click on the [+] button on any option brings up useful advice straight from the horse’s mouth on how best to utilize these great new features.
On top of the new SEO features however, it’s the Additional Styles field that really rocks my socks. Simple in concept, but incredibly powerful in practice, this field allows you to simply add a new body class to individual posts. A simple example would be to add the word christmas to the field. Once this is applied we can jump to our custom.css file and add .christmas {color: green; background: red;} and we’d have a beautiful OK, terrible and shabby, Christmas themed page just like that. Of course, the potential for this immense: you can feature certain posts or theme them for the season. We’ve done a similar thing with pages in some of the sites we’ve worked with, but with 1.4 the feature comes to posts it’s a whole lot easier to boot. Just quietly, I reckon this is really hot.
Epic Changes for Home Page Layout
Cosmos: All New Home Page Options
No doubt this was the most anticipated change for 1.4. Cosmos, the semi-official codename for this feature, provides the user with three options:
- Standard blog format
- Featured & teasers
- Magazine layout
Chris’ own words best describe what this means:
No matter what kind of site you’re building, Thesis has a home page layout setting that’s right for you. Get started with this killer feature by selecting a home page format below, and depending on your selection, you may be presented with additional options and/or information for fine-tuning your home page.
Essentially, the new home page options allow you to make massive alteration to the basic architecture of your site with just the ticking of a few boxes. The Features and Teasers display option looks set to provide a great tool that can be quickly implemented for almost every Thesis user who wishes to drive traffic to specific, key posts and by providing granular options as to exactly what’s displayed it’s accessible to everyone straight out of the box. This definitely looks like one of the best additions in 1.4: they’re “option rich and dynamic” and should be awesome at increasing your time on site and page views.
It appears the, the magazine lay-out, which looks set to enable some fantastic changes to your blog (err, magazine!) without the need to get your hands too dirty is still just around the corner. While the Featured and Teasers option actually looks to cover off most magazine format requirements, it looks like we can expect a full widgetized, entirely non-blog format very soon.
If that’s not enough, Thesis 1.4 also introduces the feature box which, while it may be placed using the Thesis options panel, must be customized using a the new thesis_hook_feature_box hook. Of course, if the DIYthemes community is anything to by, you can expect some awesome tricks with the feature box will appear over the coming days. Similarly, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, the support crew will no doubt have you sorted in no time. Oh, did I mention that display options are to improve dramatically next release! So expect that tick-box goodness to be here soon!
Right from the get-go though, I’m 100% confident that these new options will lay the foundation for some truly incredible Thesis powered sites. For you developers out there, it means the power of Thesis as a CMS for just about anything has grown even more. So if Thesis Rocked for Web Developers with 1.3, it’s just gone from Guitar Hero to Rock Band overnight with 1.4.
Post Images and Thumbnails
New Post Image and Thumbnail Pane. Sweet.
Possibly the coolest feature in Thesis 1.4 and it’s a major. I’ll be writing a full post on this in the next couple of days, but this new feature will allow you to easily add a whole new level of visual flair to your site and you’ll be able to do it all from the options panel. Best of all, it’s all controlled by a tidy and easy options pane write from within the Wordpress write panel. Piece of cake. As you can see from the image, it’s looking dead easy to add your own style to your post images and I’m expecting to see some great implementation of this in the coming days. If you’re interested, subscribe to our RSS feed and we’ll keep you posted!
All in All, Thesis Continues to Shine
Thesis 1.4 brings a lot to the table. There’s some wicked new features and no doubt a whole heap of optimization in the engine room that I’m looking forward to hearing more about. What I reckon is most exciting about this release to the Thesis community though goes right back to the fundamental philosophy behind the framework: the abstraction of design from code ensures the theme I purchased many months ago just got a whole lot sweeter and it didn’t cost me a cent to upgrade. Now I’m not just talking about the dollars, although they’re important too, but by keeping everything in my custom files, the upgrade took only moments and we were straight back online with 1.4.
DIYthemes is still offering lifetime upgrades for all Thesis licenses and knowing that you’ll be able to make the most of every new feature – both in the options panel and under the hood – is what really makes Thesis a killer theme. So if you haven’t already, head on over to DIYthemes and pick up a copy now, you can’t afford not to! Oh, and if you’ve already got a personal license, maybe now is the time to upgrade to a developer’s option!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice review – I’ve been playing around with 1.4 this morning and it’s looking great.
I don’t think the “magazine lay-out” made it in to the official 1.4 release, I think you maybe snagged the early version
see this tweet and the one after for more info.
http://twitter.com/pearsonified/status/1154858598
Fraser: Seems that’s so. I’ve amended the post. Still I’m loving Thesis 1.4 and really feelin’ the Featured and Teasers mode – I reckon that covers off a whole lot of magazine style requirements in one stroke and does a whole lot more.
Still, the fully widgetized non-blog mode is going to be sa-weet!
I was looking forward to the Post Images and Thumbnail feature but it appears to have the least sizzle. Yeah, the thumbnails show in a Features and Teasers blog but ONLY if manually cut and pasted into each blog posting, an extremely time-consuming and convoluted process. I would be singing praises from mountaintops if it would automatically snag, say, the first image on a posting for a highlights thumbnail. But, sadly, no.
If anyone learns anything different, please let me know. Thanks.
David: I’ll be taking a closer look at some of the features packed into 1.4.x over the next wee while – you’ll see where already running with the Featured & Teasers layout here at DIYninjas with the new design.
I’ll let you know what emerges!