Happy 2012, everyone!

We try to keep our themes current by responding to customer requests and bugs every so often.

This time is no different – over the last couple of weeks we’ve gone through and made a round of updates to all of our WordPress themes, with mostly minor bug cleanup for many of the themes.

One major addition – we’ve added Google Plus icons to all of our themes that have “social site” support – that means Anthem, Linen, Paperpunch, Photography, React, Shelf, Titan and Traction all now feature a hand-crafted Google Plus icon, configurable on your Theme Options page.

Also, Duet received some much-requested stylistic tweaks – removing the author from pages and hiding the “Read More” link when there is no “more” tag on a post are the most notable.

Download the latest package from your downloads page, and check the changelog for specific details for your theme. Of course, we’re always looking for more feedback – so if you have any questions, comments or suggestions feel free to contact us or write a comment below!

I should point out that Photography on WordPress.com is not the exact same theme we sell here for self-hosted WordPress.org sites. The look and feel is the same, but the underlying functionality and setup has been modified to better fit the WordPress.com platform. The main difference being we use the Gallery Post Format on WordPress.com and a custom Gallery Post Type on WordPress.org.

If you’re confused about how the hosted WordPress.com platform is different from the self-hosted WordPress.org software see this article explaining the differences.

Browse all our themes available on WordPress.com.

On most themes we’ve added a bit of styling to fix an issue with image stretching in older versions of Internet Explorer – not exactly groundbreaking, but hopefully your sites will look a little nicer in old browsers! A few of our themes also got some small stylistic updates to tables and definition lists.

There are a few minor bug fixes for Shelf and we also fixed comment anchors so “Leave a comment” links throughout your site will correctly bring you to the comments form.

React got a couple of big feature additions:

• A page template with the sidebar
• The ability to add multiple Project/Portfolio pages with the projects of your choosing

Information on setting up multiple Project pages is in your theme documentation.

Photography also got some nice additions:

• A theme option for adding captions in two different styles
• The ability to create multiple Gallery showcase pages featuring whichever galleries you want
• Keyboard navigation on individual galleries

Information on setting up captions and multiple Gallery pages is also in your theme documentation.

We’ve gotten a number of requests for the React and Photography features, so we hope you’re as excited as we are!

Check the change log for your theme to see the changes in the update.

If you run into any issues please post in our forums and we’ll be happy to help!

We’ve added an attachment template for viewing media items associated with a post.

Another new feature: Linen now has support for excerpts! If you specify an excerpt it will be used as the summary of your post.

We’ve also made modifications to the featured slider for both Linen and Traction – you no longer need to have 2 sticky posts to activate the slider – 1 will work just fine! We’ve also added the option to display sticky posts both in the featured slider and in the standard post list – something we’ve gotten several requests for.

In addition, there are several bug fixes applied to all of our themes. Check the change log for your theme to see the changes in the update.

If you run into any trouble please post in our forums and we’ll help you out!

The biggest visible change is an updated theme options panel that matches the look and feel of the new WordPress 3.2 interface. Also included are a bunch of bug fixes and enhancements. Check out the /docs/changelog file included in your theme if you’re interested in reading more about the changes.

If you run into any trouble please head straight to the support forums and we will help you out :)

With the release of Photography 1.2 the Gallery post type now includes built-in support for categories. Why is this useful? By default Photography shows all your galleries on one “Gallery Page”. With category support you may now create new gallery pages that only show galleries associated with a specific category. Our newest forum moderator, Mike Fields, wrote up an awesome tutorial on how to do just that. Thanks Mike! Before you get started, be sure to read through this tutorial: Customizing your theme → Editing a template file.

1. Create a new category and give it a name representative of the collection of galleries that you would like to create. I’ll be using “Nature Shots” as an example, but the name you use can be anything you like.
2. Assign all galleries that you wish to appear on your custom page to this category.
3. Now you will need to create a custom page template to display all galleries in this category on one page. Copy the file named gallery.php from the photography_pro theme folder into your PRO child theme folder. You will want to rename it as well. If the category you created has the title “Nature Shots”, I would suggest naming the template gallery-nature-shots.php. It’s a good practice to use only lowercase letters and the dash character (-) when naming files. Never use spaces.
4. Next you will need to change the name of the page template you just created. The template name is located at the top of the file and looks like this:

   /*
   Template Name: Gallery
   */
   

   You will want to give it a name that is similar to the name of the category you created in the first step. If the category was “Nature Shots”, I would suggest something like this:

   /*
   Template Name: Nature Shots Gallery
   */
   

   It’s a good practice not to use any punctuation here. Just use letters and spaces for best results.

5. Now you will need to adjust the query. The original query is located on line 8 and looks like this:

   <?php query_posts( 'post_type=gallery&orderby=menu_order&nopaging=true&order=ASC' ); ?>

   you will want to replace this line with the following code:

   <?php
   query_posts( array(
   'post_type'     => 'gallery',
   'orderby'       => 'menu_order',
   'nopaging'      => 'true',
   'order'         => 'ASC',
   'category_name' => 'Nature Shots'
   ) );
   ?>
   

6. Save your changes and upload the new page template to your server (if it isn’t already there). If you’re confused about uploading a file be sure to watch the video tutorial on how to use an FTP client.
7. Create a new page in WordPress by expanding the “Pages” tab in the admin menu and clicking the “Add New” link. Be sure to give the page a title similar to the category name. I used “Nature Shots”.
8. On the right-hand side of the screen, you should see a meta box with the heading “Page Attributes”. You will want to select the page template we just created from the “Template” dropdown. If you do not see this box, you will want to click the “Screen Options” tab (located in the upper right of the screen) and make sure that the “Page Attributes” option is checked.
9. Publish your page! Now add the new page to your menu via Appearance → Menus. When you visit the page you should see only the galleries that have been associated with the “Nature Shots” category.

Enjoyed this tutorial? Let us know in the comments. If you have any questions or problems please head over to the support forums and we’ll be happy to help you out.

Today we released some exciting new updates for all of our themes. Some notable improvements include:

• A faster and lighter logo uploader for all themes.
• Shelf 2.0: A revamped codebase and support for Post Formats.
• IE9 Beta compatibility fixes for Photography and Paperpunch.
• Updated slider for Traction and Linen.

Head over to the downloads page to grab the new theme packages. WordPress 3.1 is required, so please be sure you are running WordPress 3.1 before you try to update your theme(s). Also, be sure to read the upgrade instructions and the important notes on the new logo uploader, Shelf 2.0, and Traction Updates.

New logo uploader

We have replaced the old logo uploader with a faster and lighter version that uses the WordPress core media uploader. The new version will require you to re-upload your logo after you update your theme. Before you upgrade the theme be sure to download a fresh copy of your logo. After upgrading navigate to Appearance → Theme Options and re-upload your logo. Click the Insert into Post button after the upload is complete. If you used the old FTP method you will have to specify the absolute URL of your logo image.

Shelf 2.0

We have completely revamped how Shelf works to take full advantage of the new WordPress 3.1 post formats. So much so, you will need to follow specific instructions and use a special migration plugin to update to Shelf 2.0. These instructions must be followed to the letter or they will not work. Do not upgrade to Shelf 2.0 until you have finished with the migration.

Important Note: Any posts with Audio or Image files hosted outside of your WordPress installation will need to be updated manually.

1. Back up you database. This is the most important step. Do not skip this!
2. Update WordPress to version 3.1 or higher.
3. If you are using a custom menu, navigate to Appearance → Menus and remove any and all “Tumblog” menu items you added to your active custom menu.
4. Download, install, and activate the Shelf Migrate Plugin.
5. Verify that you are running Shelf 1.1.4 (or earlier) and WordPress 3.1.
6. Navigate to Settings → Shelf Migrate.
7. Click Migrate Shelf.
8. Update to Shelf 2.0.
9. Install, activate, and run the Regenerate Thumbnails plugin.

You should now be running Shelf 2.0. The posting procedure has changed significantly with this new version (Shelf no longer uses custom fields), so please read through the Shelf Documentation carefully.

Traction Updates

Some notable changes to Traction:

• We have removed the sidebar Twitter stream option from the theme. This functionality should be handled through a plugin and our version couldn’t be controlled through Appearance → Widgets. To quickly replace this functionality download and install the Wickett Twitter Widget plugin. This is an “official” WordPress.com plugin that has been battle tested across millions of sites.

• The featured slider now uses the excerpt instead of a custom field for the featured slider button descriptions. First, make sure the Excerpt box is checked in the Screen Options tab. Next, copy any descriptions you have in custom fields into the Excerpt box. Remember to keep them short and sweet.

• The footer widgets have been re-organized and the About section has been removed from the Theme Options. If you are using the old About section (found under Theme Options → Footer), please make a copy of the text before updating. Copy the text into a new Text widget under Appearance → Widgets and drag it into the Footer Left sidebar. After you update please double check your footer widgets are in the right location. You will probably have to re-organize them, so be sure to take a snapshot before you update Traction. Remember, all your widget settings are saved in the In-active Widgets section, you simply have to drag the widget back to the appropriate sidebar.

Changelog now included

We are now officially including a changelog inside the /docs folder of your theme. This file will be updated with each release and have a list of the changes for that version. For this reason, we will no longer be posting a changelog on the blog. Instead, we will post only the most notable changes at the beginning of the post.

Problems?

If you run into any trouble please head straight to the support forums and we will help you out :)

Focused on improving our themes

Routinely improving and updating our themes is very important to us. This doesn’t mean just keeping up with WordPress standards, but also adding new features and improvements from time to time. For example, Vigilance now features a drop down navigation menu and Traction includes a full-width page template. We also hired WordPress expert and core contributor Austin Matzko (aka filosofo) to help us with this recent update. Austin did an awesome job of auditing, refactoring, and streamlining a ton of theme code.

Update Notes

• The old navigation menu controls in your Theme Options page have been removed (found in Vigilance, Titan, Paperpunch, and Traction). If you were using them, please setup and use the new WordPress 3.0 menus. The new built-in WordPress menus have all the functionality of the old menus and then some. Be sure to take note of your menu setup before you upgrade. Setup your new menus by navigating to Appearance → Menus.

• All stylesheets and scripts are now enqueued from the themename-extend.php file. If you previously made changes to your header.php file and duplicated it to your child theme please be aware the stylesheet and javascript calls are no longer in the header.php file.

Changelog

We packed a ton of new stuff into this release, below is a quick overview of some of the important changes.

• All themes – Code: Improved and streamlined PHP logic on image rotation scripts.
• All themes – Code: Converted to the new WordPress comment_form function.
• All themes – Code: Updated several function calls to use WordPress 3.0+ standards.
• All themes – Code: Removed support for old navigation menus. All themes now require WordPress 3.0+.
• All themes – Code: Moved all theme functions into the core method for easy child theme overrides.
• All themes – Code: Properly enqueued all stylesheets and scripts for better compatibility.
• All themes – Security: Added anti-XSS measures in several spots where theme data is saved.
• All themes – Security: Added espaces to several attribute values.
• All themes – Localization: Improved localization coverage and string formatting across all themes.
• Paperpunch – Bugfix: Clear float on navigation.
• Photography – New feature: Choose a photo size (medium or large) for your Flickr galleries.
• Photography – Enhancement: Added a spinner for the light color scheme.
• Photography – Bugfix: Fixed Flickr reset issue.
• Photography – Bugfix: Added styling for .aligncenter on entries.
• Photography – Bugfix: Fixed thumbnail hovers in IE.
• Shelf for Tumblr – Bugfix: Don’t show date separator if there are no tags.
• Titan – New feature: Footer has been fully “widgetized”.
• Titan – New feature: HTML5.
• Titan – Enhancement: Cleanup stylesheet and add table of contents.
• Traction – New feature: Full-width page template for all three color schemes.
• Traction – Speed Enhancement: Switched to sprites on background images to save HTTP requests.
• Traction – Enhancement: Added support for wp_link_pages.
• Traction – Bugfix: Fix featured container height with only one featured post.
• Vigilance – New feature: Drop down navigation menus.
• Vigilance – Enhancement: Add automatic feed link support.
• Vigilance – Enhancement: Stylesheet cleanup.

Note: Shelf will be updated again soon with bugfixes and support for the new WordPress 3.1 post formats.

NOTE: (November 8, 2011) Captions on your galleries are now available through your Theme Options panel. If you’re running Photography 1.4 or later, you do not need to make the changes in this tutorial.

We have had several requests in the Photography theme support forum for instructions on how to add captions to the main gallery page. By default, Photography shows a “featured thumbnail” image of a chosen photo from your gallery with no text. In this tutorial I am going to walk you through adding two different caption styles to your gallery page. Let’s get started!

Edit the gallery template

We need to add the gallery title to our gallery template by editing the /photography_pro/gallery.php file. Be sure to read through the editing a template file tutorial before jumping in. Open up your freshly copied gallery.php file and find the code below (starts on line 23).

      </a>
    </li>
  <?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>

Add the post title template tag just above the closing </li> and wrap it in an <h5> (shown below).

      </a>
      <h5><?php echo the_title(); ?></h5>
    </li>
  <?php endwhile; ?>
</ul>

Add basic styling

The gallery title will now show up on your gallery page underneath each thumbnail, but it doesn’t have any styling. We need to add some CSS to clean things up a bit. Be sure to read through the adding custom CSS styles tutorial before you make any changes.

Open up your /photography_pro_child/style.css file and scroll all the way to the bottom.

/* Make all custom CSS changes BELOW this line
-----------------------------------------------------------*/
/* Example: Change the sidebar background to blue:
#sidebar {
    background: blue;
}
*/

Add some styling to the new <h5> element by replacing that code with the code below, which adds margin above the text, centers it, and makes it a bit larger.

/* Make all custom CSS changes BELOW this line
-----------------------------------------------------------*/
li.g-thumb h5 {
    margin: 10px 0 0 0;
    text-align: center;
    font-size: 1.3em;
}

Add fancy hover styling

If you prefer a fancier “hover only” caption use this code instead.

/* Make all custom CSS changes BELOW this line
-----------------------------------------------------------*/
#gallery ul li {
   height: 195px;
}
li.g-thumb h5 {
    display: none;
}
li.g-thumb:hover h5 {
    display: block;
    margin-top: -97.5px;
    font-size: 2em;
    line-height: 0;
    text-align: center;
    color: #fff;
}
#gallery ul li a:hover img {
    opacity: .25;
}

Here is a summary of each CSS property / value pair listed above.

1. Hide the <h5> tag by default.
2. Show the <h5> tag when hovering over the thumbnail.
3. Add a negative margin to center the text vertically on the thumbnail.
4. Increase the font size to 20px.
5. Zero out the line height so the negative margin we specified above works properly.
6. Center the text.
7. Set the color to white.
8. Turn down the opacity on hover so the text is more noticable.

Enjoy your captions!

These captions have been tested and are working in the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Chrome. The second hover method doesn’t look as great in Internet Explorer because it doesn’t support the opacity property (unless you are using the IE9 Beta).

Changelog

• Bug Fix: Fixed squished/stretched Flickr thumbnails by adding an option to override with a featured image.
• Bug Fix: Fixed random “headers already sent” errors.
• Bug Fix: Fixed IE8 gallery display issues.
• Bug Fix: Fixed disabling of password protected gallery title and descriptions.
• Bug Fix: Use WordPress variables for language attributes and character set.
• Bug Fix: Fixed descriptions not displaying for single images inside galleries.