Learn more about Traction →

I am super excited to announce the release of our newest WordPress theme, Traction! Traction is a dark and clean magazine style theme with a robust options menu and built in support for WordPress post thumbnails. This is the theme I meant to design when I started Punchcut late last year, it just wasn’t ready yet. Traction comes with a boatload of features, including three colors schemes (red, blue, green), built in Twitter support, and much more. I encourage you to browse through all the features and take it for a test drive. Be sure to let me know what you think in the comments.

New Pricing

As previously announced on Twitter we have rolled out new pricing for our themes. I have some great news if you were a PRO member as of yesterday. You have automatically been upgraded to a VIP PRO Membership! What does this mean? This means you get access to all of our current and future PRO themes, including Traction. Yes, you are that special. We aren’t even selling these VIP PRO Memberships right now, so you really should feel special.

New customers buying our themes shouldn’t feel left out. Your regular PRO Membership (free with any theme purchase) entitles you to 25% off all future theme purchases.

Theme Updates

We also released new versions of all our other themes today (Vigilance, Titan, and Punchcut). Here is a quick breakdown of the changes and fixes:

Vigilance

• Bug Fix: Added more specific ul.children selector to avoid extra spacing on nested lists inside entries .
• Bug Fix: Fixed PHP comments in the footer.
• Miscellaneous: Cleaned up the admin and added notation for PRO and non-pro features.

Titan

• Bug Fix: Added back the extra unordered list to avoid breaking the layout when you add widgets.
• Bug Fix: Correctly aligned the navigation menu dropdown
• Bug Fix: Added more specific ul.children selector to avoid extra spacing on nested lists inside entries.
• Bug Fix: Fixed PHP comments in the footer.
• Miscellaneous: Cleaned a bunch of cruft from the stylesheet.
• Miscellaneous: Cleaned up the admin and added notation for PRO and non-pro features.

Punchcut

• Bug Fix: Added missing language hook
• Bug Fix: Correctly aligned the navigation menu dropdown and fixed the weird persistent hover bug
• Bug Fix: Added more specific ul.children selector to avoid extra spacing on nested lists inside entries.
• Bug Fix: Fixed PHP comments in the footer.
• Miscellaneous: Cleaned up the admin and added notation for PRO and non-pro features.

Feedback Please

Please let me know what you think about the new theme and anything else in the comments.

We have 2 new page templates hot off the press and available to our PRO members. You now have the option to use a dedicated Archives and Sitemap template on your blog. These are pretty handy if you want to give your readers a quick and easy way to scan over your content. To use your new templates create a new page called “Archives” and select the “Archives” page template from the Attributes menu on the right hand side of the page editor. Publish the page and you are done. You would follow the same steps to create a Sitemap page.

If you have not customized your PRO child theme then simply upload and overwrite your old theme with the new one (make a backup just in case). You can download the new child themes from the member resources page. If you have made customizations please follow the manual upgrade instructions below.

Vigilance manual upgrade instructions

• Download the new PRO child theme (Version 1.33) from the member resources page
• Copy the new archives.php file and the new sitemap.php file into your PRO child theme
• Change the version to 1.33 at the top of your style.css file

Titan manual upgrade instructions

• Download the new PRO child theme (Version 1.22) from the member resources page
• Copy the new archives.php file and the newsitemap.php file into your PRO child theme
• Copy lines 40 and 41 of the new style.css file into your existing style.css file directly above /* Make all custom CSS changes BELOW this line
• Change the version to 1.22 at the top of your style.css file

Punchcut manual upgrade instructions

• Download the new PRO child theme (Version 1.02) from the member resources page
• Copy the new archives.php file and the new sitemap.php file into your existing PRO child theme
• Copy lines 40 – 45 of the new style.css file into your existing style.css file directly above /* Make all custom CSS changes BELOW this line
• Copy line 56 of the new header.php file over line 56 of your existing header.php file
• Change the version to 1.02 at the top of your style.css file

Punchcut 1.01 is now available for download. PRO members head to the member downloads page. If you are a free user you can grab a basic copy from the theme page.

Punchcut PRO child theme updated to version 1.01

The Punchcut PRO child theme has been upgraded to version 1.01. If you have not customized your PRO child theme feel free to simply replace it with the new version (make a backup copy just in case). If you have customized your PRO child theme please follow these simple instructions:

• Download the new PRO child theme (version 1.01)
• Replace the entire /functions folder in your current punchcut_pro installation with the/functions folder from version 1.01.
• Add line 60 from the new child theme header.php file to your existing PRO child theme
• Edit your style.css file and change the version to 1.01

If you are a PRO member and would like a diff file detailing the changes please post a request in the support forums.

Changelog

• Style Enhancement: Added border to post thumbnails by default.
• Accessibility Enhancement: Added a skip to content link.
• Enhancement: Added support for grandchild pages and categories in the top navigation.
• Miscellaneous: Updated .po and .mo files along with language instructions.
• Miscellaneous: Updated all links with The Theme Foundry URL.

Punchcut 1.0 is now available for download and includes post/page thumbnail support! PRO members head to the member downloads page. Everyone else can grab a copy from the Punchcut theme page.

Punchcut PRO child theme updated to version 1.0

The Punchcut PRO child theme has been upgraded to version 1.0. If you have not customized your PRO child theme feel free to simply replace it with the new version (make a backup copy just in case). If you have customized your PRO child theme please follow these simple instructions:

• Download the new PRO child theme (version 1.0)
• Add the new /functions folder to your existing punchcut_pro folder
• Replace line 11 of your header.php file with line 11 from the header.php file in the new child theme
• Edit your style.css file and change the version to 1.0

If you are a PRO member and would like a diff file detailing the changes please post a request in the support forums.

Changelog

• New Feature! Add built in support for post/page thumbnails (WordPress 2.9)
• Security Enhancement: Sanitized the get_search_query function.
• Bugfix: Fixed z-index navigation dropdown bug.
• Bugfix: Fixed broken link in the theme options page.
• Bugfix: Updated Cufon glyphs for Junction to allow for punctuation.
• Bugfix: Fixed missing category in post footer when comments are off.
• Bugfix: Removed the comment count on password protected posts.
• Bugfix: Fixed missing edit post/page link.
• Bugfix: Fixed issue where too many categories were displacing the floated comment number.
• Bugfix: Fixed second level list spacing in sidebar.
• Bugfix: Fixed custom code box so it works with Javascript.

Big news today. We just released a brand new theme, Punchcut, and are rockin’ some fresh new digs here at Themes by Jestro. Some of you how might have been following along on Twitter and know the launch was supposed to be yesterday, but mod_rewrite decided to take me 12 rounds as I was running the final checks before launch. Needless to say, I picked up some bruises but eventually came away with a knockout.

This marks an important point in our history for several reasons (which I will get to later). I encourage you to take a look around and please let me know what you think of the new setup. Don’t hesitate to post a note in the comments if you find any bugs while browsing around. Alright, let’s talk about Punchcut.

Say hello to Punchcut

I started out with an idea for a magazine theme and somehow Punchcut was born. Needless to say, it doesn’t look anything like a magazine theme, but it looks pretty damn good (at least I think so). There are several interesting points that came up while developing and designing Punchcut.

Typography

One of the important pieces I wanted to include with this new release was some really nice out of the box typography. There have been some explosive developments in the web font world lately so the goal was to take advantage of the trend and package some fonts with this theme.

This is easier said then done, 99% of fonts out there do not allow you to re-distribute them (especially under a different license like the GPL). I eventually stumbled upon two fantastic fonts, Chunk and Junction, both available under the SIL Open Font License (OFL) which allows for re-distribution under different compatible licenses. I started out with the gorgeous Museo Sans for the navigation and post headers, but the license doesn’t allow for distribution so Junction had to step in. On that note: I plan on releasing a tutorial for PRO members on substituting Museo Sans for Junction. Downloading and using Museo Sans is perfectly OK, I just can’t distribute it as part of a theme package.

Cufón to the rescue

Punchcut initially used the @font-face declaration to embed all the typography. This was great in the latest version of Firefox, but certain browsers (Internet Explorer) have trouble handling regular font files and require their own “special” file. This file requires the address of the site the font is being served on, which renders it pretty useless for a theme.

Correction (thanks to Bryce for reminding me in the comments): Internet Explorer EOT files do in fact work without requiring the website address, but the fonts simply looked terrible when I tested them in IE/Windows (especially with ClearType turned off) so I went with Cufón instead.

I had heard of Cufón before but and was anxious to give it a try. Cufón ended up working beautifully and now the fonts render perfectly in almost all browsers including the dreaded IE6.

Features

Punchcut comes bundled with all the features you have come to expect in our themes and some nice extras:

• Use your own logo (PRO members)
• Handcrafted social icons (RSS, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Email)
• Professional and responsive support (PRO members)
• Custom navigation control
• Extra page templates (PRO members)
• Choose your background colors
• Sidebar image rotator
• Special “Alert Box” with a toggle switch in the theme options menu
• Built in Google Analytics support

I encourage you to head over to the download page and take Punchcut for a test drive. If you end up liking and using the theme I would encourage you to upgrade to PRO membership and get all of the features and unlimited support.