We’ve updated all of our WordPress themes recently and they have been approved and are all available from your WordPress dashboard updates or for download from WordPress.org.

Update Summary

The biggest new feature is a new widget area that displays only on the home page. This works with static home pages, but is even more useful for adding content to the top of your blog when that is set to the home page. You can tell a bit about yourself, your company, your products or services, or whatever you would like  before displaying your blog posts. The home page widget(s) only display on the first page, so the remaining pages look like your normal blog. Don’t forget that if you do want widgets to display on the top (or bottom) of every page, you can use the Page Top or Page Bottom widget areas which display not only on the home page, but on all pages.

In addition, we have fixed a nasty bug where widget areas were not being handled properly when a foreign language was used. If the particular language translation changed the title of the widget area, it wouldn’t get called properly.

Future Development and Looking for Suggestions

We’ve already been working on Flat Bootstrap v1.9, which is primarily a developer-focused release to update Bootstrap and the other theme components and restructure the code base for easier maintenance. It will also make it easier to release more varied child themes in the future by allowing various style sheets and functions to be included, excluded, or overridden.

We’ve also been thinking about Flat Bootstrap v2.0 which will be more focused on adding more user-oriented features.

In addition, we have started thinking about and experimenting with a possible Flat Bootstrap plugin to add additional capabilities to our themes. Stay tuned for a future post requesting your suggestions!

Theme Update Change Logs

Since we haven’t previously posted version updates for our child themes (Link, Spot, and Pratt), we’ve included the full change logs for those. For Flat Bootstrap, we just included the changes since the last post.

Flat Bootstrap WordPress Theme

Flat Bootstrap Screenshot

Flat Bootstrap v1.8

The following enhancements and fixes are included in version 1.8:

  • Added a home page widget so you can add text or other widgets that get displayed only on your home page. Each widget added will take up the full width of the site. Padding is automatically added around each widget for a nicer look. These home page widgets work whether you have your blog displayed on the home page or you have a “static” home page set. When the blog is home, it provides a nice way to put some welcome or introduction text at the top of the page before your blog entries.
  • Previously on full-width page templates, we used javascript to move content from any plugins to the bottom of the page. For example, to push social sharing buttons below the content. In this release, we do that for all pages and articles, regardless of whether they are full-width or not. For example, social sharing buttons now get moved below the site index page content when using that page template.
  • Turned off making lists horizontal instead of vertical in the page top and page bottom widget areas (and the new home page widget area). We noticed that the formatting would get all messed up if the list was more than a single level deep.
  • Minor change to not display screen-reader text for page navigation unless there is actually multiple pages.

Flat Bootstrap v1.7.1

The following quick fix is included in Flat Bootstrap version 1.7.1:

Quick fix to suppress an error message about libxml invalid tags when processing the site footer. This would only display when WordPress was in debug mode (like on a test site), but it was annoying anyway. If anyone cares, the “error” is really a warning that PHP’s libxml doesn’t yet understand HTML5 tags. It still processes them just fine, though.

Link WordPress Theme

Link Theme Screenshot

Link Version 1.3

  • Changed sidebar-pagebottom.php to always fire off the xsbf_pagebottom() filter so that plugins can override what displays there even if a user hasn’t added any widgets yet.
  • Load the parent theme’s (Flat Bootstrap) style.css from functions.php to improve performance instead of using @include in the theme’s style.css.

Link Version 1.2

  • Enhanced the off-canvas menu so that it now scrolls to allow for more menu items!
  • Because of this, up to two levels will now display. The submenu items are indented and aren’t forced to uppercase.
  • Widened the menu by 40px to look better with longer link titles and when second level menu items are displayed.

Link Version 1.1

  • Added new custom header that is a city skyline
  • Remove content-header.php as the parent theme (Flat Bootstrap v1.4) now handles the logic needed in this child theme. So no need to override it here anymore!
  • Remove sidebar-footer.php as no sample widgets are displayed there (they are in sidebar-pagebottom.php) so no need to override the parent theme (Flat Bootstrap v1.4)
  • Move the Page Top widget area to below the header image as this looks better.
  • Includes all the latest enhancements from the parent theme, such as support for portfolios and testimonials, new page templates, full-width embedded videos, expanded color palette, and much more.

Spot WordPress Theme

Spot Theme Screenshot

Spot v1.4

  • Fixed issue with the Page Bottom and Footer widget areas when using a language translation. These widget areas (“sidebars”) are now called by sidebar ID instead of name because the name may be translated.
  • Removed reference to Blacktie.co from the site credits that automatically display at the bottom of the theme. They are still credited in this readme.txt file of course.
  • Enhanced the CSS styling related to the WordPress “admin bar”.
  • Changed the sample footer widget to use fa-2x and fa-fw icon classes instead of icon-lg.

Spot v1.3

  • Added new custom header that is a city skyline
  • Added new custom header that is a desk with a briefcase on it
  • Remove content-header.php as the parent theme (Flat Bootstrap v1.4) now handles the logic needed in this child theme. So no need to override it here anymore!
  • Removed header.php so that the one from the parent theme is used. Created a function to filter xsbf_navbar to right-justify the menu items and replace O’s in the site name with a red dot.
  • Move the Page Top widget area to below the header image as this looks better.
  • Updated the screenshot.
  • Includes all the latest enhancements from the parent theme, such as support for portfolios and testimonials, new page templates, full-width embedded videos, expanded color palette, and much more.

Spot v1.2

  • Change name to Spot from Flat Bootstrap Spot per WordPress.org recommendation
  • Remove features from this child theme that are now incorporated into the parent theme, Flat Bootstrap

Spot v1.0.1

  • Initial updates for inclusion in the WordPress.org Theme Directory

Pratt WordPress Theme

Pratt Theme Screenshot

Pratt Version 1.4

  • Added the ability to turn off displaying the site title in the top nav bar.
  • Added the ability to change the color of the site title in the top nav bar.
  • Changed the default header background to the city view as that is the one that is in the theme’s screenshot.
  • Updated the calls to the various sidebars to use the sidebar ID instead of the name to avoid issues with language translations that change the name.

Pratt Version 1.3

  • Added new custom header that is a city skyline
  • Added new custom header that is a desk with a briefcase on it
  • Remove content-header.php as the parent theme (Flat Bootstrap v1.4) now handles the logic needed in this child theme. So no need to override it here anymore!
  • Removed header.php so that the one from the parent theme is used. Created a function to filter xsbf_navbar to right-justify the menu items and replace O’s in the site name with a red dot.
  • Move the Page Top widget area to below the header image as this looks better.
  • Updated the screenshot.
  • Includes all the latest enhancements from the parent theme, such as support for portfolios and testimonials, new page templates, full-width embedded videos, expanded color palette, and much more.

Pratt Version 1.2

  • Change name to Spot from Flat Bootstrap Spot per WordPress.org recommendation
  • Remove features from this child theme that are now incorporated into the parent theme, Flat Bootstrap

Pratt Version 1.0.1

  • Initial updates for inclusion in the WordPress.org Theme Directory

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