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Titan 1.01 was released today. We don’t plan on releasing a new version every day, so don’t get your hopes up! An annoying bug popped up that prevented the Sidebar Adbox from being disabled. This seemed pretty important and worthy of the quick release. Be sure to post any bugs you find in the comments so we can start knocking them out.

We are proud and excited to announce the arrival of our second WordPress theme, Titan. We know you can’t wait to get it in your hot little hands so hustle over to the download page and give it a spin.

Premium and Free

Titan is a super clean, premium quality WordPress theme that is completely free. Titan is released under the terms of the GNU GPLv3. We know you are really excited to read the license, but we will sum it up for you anyway:

• Titan is free for you to download, customize, and use.
• You aren’t allowed to distribute Titan under a different license.

That was easy, now on to the fun stuff.

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Vigilance Added to WordPress.com!

We are proud and excited to announce that Vigilance was added to the available themes on WordPress.com on Wednesday night. WordPress.com has over 1.25 million active blogs and Vigilance is now 1 of 60 themes available to those users. This is truly an honor and we couldn’t be more excited, thanks to all of our users and to WordPress.com!

New PRO Feature: Page Templates

We have released version 1.2 of the PRO Child Theme which includes two new page templates! A really handy full width page template and a left sidebar template. PRO members can download the latest version in the support forums. If you’re not a PRO member yet, what are you waiting for? Sign-up today and start enjoying the benefits!

Vigilance 1.23 Released

Version 1.23 is now available, including a bunch of new features and bug fixes:

• New Feature: Improved code styling including styling for <pre>, <pre> tags are really handy when showing code examples
• New feature: Comments are now available on pages when they are enabled
• New feature: Post/page pagination, spread your long posts across multiple pages by using the <!--nextpage--> quicktag
• Improved home page recognition that fixes some blogs showing two pages as current in the main navigation when using a static front page
• Improved styling on the Float Quote element
• Better alignment of the sidebar widget list item images
• Fixed a bug that was preventing the “Comments are closed.” message from being displayed on posts that already had comments
• Fixed some improperly coded links in the theme options menu
• Fixed a bug that was generating slashes in the Feedbox and Alert Box
• Fixed a bug that was generating slashes on rotating image alt tags

Download 1.23 Now!

First 50 Memberships Sold Out

We have sold through the first 50 memberships, the 50% off coupon is no longer active. If you missed one of the first 50 memberships you are in luck. We just rolled out a brand new coupon that saves you $10 off the cost of a PRO membership. Sign-up with coupon code C9406.

We just pushed out a new version of the PRO Child Theme fixing a somewhat major bug. The bug was causing the header logo to display incorrectly on single posts and pages. It is recommend you upgrade to the latest version. PRO members can download that here:

PRO Child Theme Version 1.1

Everyone should expect to see Vigilance 1.23 over the next week which will contain several bug fixes and a couple new features.

First 50 are Going Fast!

First some great news. We have already sold through over half of the 50 for 50% off PRO memberships in the first 48 hours! Thanks for all of the awesome support from the Vigilance community, we really appreciate it!

If you plan on grabbing a PRO membership now is a great time, we will be surprised if the remaining 50% off PRO memberships last to the weekend. Don’t forget to use the coupon code 6CA27 when you sign-up to get the discount. Sold Out.

Two Versions of Vigilance?

There was a really good question in the comments that we thought deserved some clarification. We don’t want the Vigilance community to misinterpret the PRO Membership offering.

I’ve just started using your theme, and so far I have been very impressed. While the PRO version sounds great, what are the future plans for the free version? Will it be left by the wayside and just the PRO version be developed in future?

We want to assure you that there is only one “version” of Vigilance and it is and always will be free and open source.

Referring to a “free version” and “PRO version” is misleading. PRO members and regular users both download the latest version of Vigilance from the same location. PRO members simply get a slew of added benefits: full access to the support forums, unlimited theme support, priority upgrades, tutorials, customization tips, members only add-ons, and other cool stuff. They do not download a different version of Vigilance.

We hope this clears things up. Don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions or comments.

We have some exciting news to announce. Vigilance 1.22 has been released and we are now offering a PRO Membership with the following benefits:

• Members only forum
• Unlimited theme support
• Priority upgrades
• Comprehensive theme tutorials
• Killer customization tips
• Logo Pack: Your logo in the header!

PRO Memberships are being offered at an introductory price of $39 and to kick it off we are offering a 50% discount coupon to the first 50 members to sign up! That’s just $19.50!

Sign-up now with the coupon code 6CA27 to receive your discount. Sold Out.

Why PRO Membership?

We felt it was time to start offering “real” support and premium upgrades to Vigilance users that need help and/or want power features. Vigilance has been supported in the comments until now, but as the users grew a more robust solution became necessary. That put us in a predicament, we didn’t have time for a more robust “free” solution, and if we were going to support Vigilance, we wanted to do it right.

We also realized support can be a big problem when choosing an open source theme. You always wonder: Will the developer be around to help if something goes wrong or if I have questions? Most users feel comfortable downloading a theme if they know they will have someone to turn to when they have a problem or just need some help. PRO membership gives users that “safety net” and allows us to offer robust support and premium upgrades to those users that want it.

Just the Beginning

We will continue to add PRO Membership benefits as time goes on. We are planning to release more free themes, including one very soon. PRO Members will receive support for all current and future Jestro Themes as part of their membership. Consider your PRO membership an investment that will grow as we release more themes, features, and benefits.

Feedback

If you have any thoughts about this exciting news feel free to leave a comment. We would love to hear your feedback.

Update: Vigilance 1.22 Features

Forgot to include the new Vigilance 1.22 features in the original post. Here they are:

• Cleaned up the Theme Options menu and added a PRO member option for a logo in the header.
• Tweaked the copyright notice in the head meta to say “Theme Design Copyright” instead of “Copyright”

We will be releasing a new version with more bug fixes and some more PRO features soon!

Mashable rated Vigilance one of the 10 best WordPress 2.7 compatible themes. We appreciate the recognition and promise to keep working hard to make Vigilance even better.

If you are enjoying Vigilance be sure to stay tuned, we are planning to release a new theme and a support forum by early February!

If you made the decision to move your WordPress install from shared hosting to a shiny new VPS you should consider optimizing Apache by making some tweaks to your httpd.conf file. Apache is a fast, reliable, and flexible server but is heavy on resources by default. If you are running a small VPS, and using it just for WordPress, you can make some small tweaks to your configuration and get some significant performance gains.

If you’re looking for some tips on SSL performance with your WordPress site be sure to check out our guide on using SPDY and SSL. If you need a WordPress theme, be sure to check out our WordPress templates or read about how to find the best WordPress themes.

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Vigilance 1.21 is now official. Head over to the download page to grab a copy. Take a look at the improvements:

• Fixed broken layout when login is required to make comments
• Added a new theme option to exclude header navigation items by page ID (thanks Jason!)
• Search box added when search returns no results
• Fixed font sizing on child pages in the sidebar
• Restyled the original blockquote and changed the old style to .float-quote

Check out the new and improved super-duper blockquote! Clean, professional, and eye-catching. You can still use the old style, check the updated tutorials page for specific instructions.

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We are happy to announce Vigilance 1.2 has been released! This is the most stable Vigilance release to date. A few bugs have been squashed and some new features added:

• Cleaned up the alternating comment coloring
• Search term was not included in the title of the search results page
• Added trackbacks/pingbacks functionality and separated them from the comments
• Fixed too many tags breaking the layout issue
• Fixed the custom code feature so that it actually works

Hope everyone enjoys the release and be sure to report any bugs in the comments.