Version 1.5.0 of Make was released into the wild today, and we’re pretty excited about the changes included in this release!
In version 1.5.0 of Make, the Customizer gets an overhaul. We’ve added a bunch of new theme options, improved the interface for controlling some of them, and reorganized things to make everything easier to find.
New interface
Inspired by the Kirki project, we added some new Customizer controls:
A range slider for adjusting numbers. These are used for font sizes, line heights, letter spacing, and more.
Button sets, which are easier to toggle than a dropdown. These are used in many places where there are a small number of options to choose between, such as font weight, link underlining, and the site layout.
New Typography Options
Make 1.5.0 includes several additional typographic properties that can be adjusted, including font weight, font style, line height, letter spacing, and word spacing.
We’ve also introduced a few new customizable elements in this release, including sidebar widget titles, and footer widget titles and bodies.
You can now also customize whether links in the header, body, widgets, etc., will be underlined.
We’ve also enhanced the font family dropdowns in 1.5.0, making it much easier to find the font you’re looking for among the 500+ Google font options.
New Color Scheme Options
Make 1.5.0 includes several new color options that will override parts of the global color scheme when set. These include header and footer colors, menu colors, and widget colors. We’ve also added separate color options for various links when they are in their hover/focus states. And for background color options, Make now includes accompanying options to control the opacity, so you can have semi-transparent (or entirely transparent) backgrounds.
For background images, we’ve enhanced the standard background position option so you can set both horizontal and vertical positioning right from the Customizer.
Updates & New Integrations
In addition to a couple of bug fixes, we’ve updated to the latest set of FontAwesome icons, added a new Russian translation, and added style support for Postmatic. Check out the complete changelog for more details.
For Make Plus, version 1.5.0 is mostly a compatibility update to keep up with these changes in the Make theme, and is a recommended update for all users. Stay tuned for some exciting new features we’ve got planned for Make Plus in upcoming releases.
When you have a moment to update your theme, let us know what you think of these new features. And if you haven’t tried Make yet, download 1.5.0 right now for free and give it a spin. We’d love to see what you’re putting together with Make and Make Plus, so please do share your creations!
Thanks so much for all your support and enthusiasm!
Make hit a milestone last week: over 200,000 downloads in the WordPress Themes Directory. The intention with Make was to create a truly flexible drag and drop theme while staying true to what we do best — that is, building solid and soundly coded, no-nonsense WordPress themes.
As part of ongoing efforts to improve our Make theme for WordPress, we’re proud to announce several new enhancements. All of the following updates are available in the latest versions of Make and Make Plus. Download Make for free to see the biggest, most sweeping changes in action!
While the Customizer received a number of improvements, the change most users will notice is the new panels interface, which makes it easier to view comprehensive, contextually-appropriate theme options right from the Customizer.
Earlier this week, we released several user experience enhancements for Make, our powerful, drag-and-drop WordPress theme. We also updated Make Plus, the premium plugin that adds even more great features to Make.
All of these updates come directly from user feedback and feature requests. At The Theme Foundry, we closely monitor your comments and suggestions for improving our themes. For this release, we’ve added many of the requested changes to our free theme – so anyone can download Make and enjoy the enhancements!
Here’s a quick rundown of the improvements we made.
The WordPress core project has a strong commitment to backwards compatibility. This commitment means that themes, plugins, and custom code continues to function when WordPress core is updated. At The Theme Foundry, we adhere to WordPress’ best practices when developing our themes to make sure that WordPress core upgrades go as smoothly as possible.
The Photography theme has been a hallmark of The Theme Foundry’s collection since we first released it nearly three years ago. It has stood the test of time and continues to be one of our most popular themes. Today, we are excited to usher in the next generation of Photography with the release of version 2.0.
This is a free update for all existing Photography customers. Please be sure to read the update instructions before you dive in.
Over time, even WordPress themes can show their age. As the months roll by after a theme is released, we slowly build a list of improvements and bug fixes for that theme. Sometimes we miss a small styling bug. Other times, we decide to wait and see on a feature.
Regardless of the nature of the improvements, we make a commitment to keeping our theme collection up to date by providing bug fixes, new features, and interface updates from time to time, so that users buying themes today get the same quality experience users had yesteryear, when the themes were originally released.
Until recently, we would do theme updates every 2-3 months. Every theme was updated at the same time, which lead to a number of issues:
We’re proud to announce that our latest release Avid is now available for sites hosted on WordPress.com! Avid can be purchased from your WordPress.com dashboard or from the Avid theme showcase page.
When you buy a theme on WordPress.com you get the same quality support, but your theme and website are hosted in the WordPress.com environment. It is easier to get up and running and your theme is automatically kept up to date.
For anybody who doesn’t follow WordPress development updates, you’ll be happy to learn that the next version of WordPress (version 3.4) is now available!
WordPress 3.4 features a number of improvements and updates, but the most exciting feature for us is the introduction of the real-time “theme customizer”, which allows you to preview changes to your theme options as you make them, eliminating the need to save/refresh your site to see what has changed.
We’ve been keeping an eye on WordPress 3.4, and now that it is released we’re proud to announce that our 4 most recent themes (Portfolio, Chalk, Duet, and Anthem) support the theme customizer for all theme options.
Make 1.5.0 includes several additional typographic properties that can be adjusted, including font weight, font style, line height, letter spacing, and word spacing.
