This article is deprecated! Any technical information refers to software versions that are now obsolete. Please visit the DIYthemes Blog for current updates, or check out the old Thesis Blog for a treasure trove of website marketing insights.
Unless you’ve been hanging out in the real world and avoiding the Web (how dare you!), then you’ve probably heard that WordPress just cranked out its newest version, 2.8. Bottom line? The new widget interface is flat out awesome, and even better, the WordPress code ninjas fixed some things that actually improve the Killer Recent Entries and Subscriptions widgets.
That, my friends, is what I call a WIN. You know what else is a win? All the other improvements, fixes, and tweaks to Thesis 1.5.1, which are listed below.
- Added post images to RSS feeds: This was an obvious and glaring omission from the time I first introduced post images, and finally, your subscribers will see all that image goodness that your regular site visitors see. All together now… Ahhhhhhh.
- Fixed thumbnail dimension overrides on the in-post editor: So yeah, let’s just pretend that I didn’t screw this one up in 1.5, k?
- Updated the thumbnail auto-crop script: My armchair benchmark testing with WordPress 2.8 and this new script resulted in slightly quicker page load times when using teasers and auto-cropped thumbnails. Supposedly, the updated script will work with more server configurations, too, but I’ll believe that when I see fewer support threads regarding thumbnails 😀
- Tagline font controls actually work now: [cough] Let’s pretend that these worked in 1.5, too.
- Changed the way admin scripts and styles are loaded: This began life as a fix for widget compatibility in WordPress 2.8, and it eventually evolved into a more robust and efficient method for loading styles/scripts in all versions of WordPress from 2.7 on up.
- Moved in-post options to their own master file: Formerly,
lib/admin/admin.phphoused all the in-post options, but since these options are such an important part of Thesis, it made sense to abstract the code out into its own file,lib/admin/post_options.php. - Added a new nav menu to the options panels! Want quick links to the Thesis forums, the DIYthemes affiliate program, the Thesis User’s Guide, and this here blog? Well, I thought you’d never ask. But since you did… Done.
- Where’d my sub-headline font controls go? Oh, you—you’re observant. I moved them underneath the regular headline controls, cause that makes a helluva lot more sense. Next!
- Removed the redundant search box from the “search not found” page: Yeah, this one was a dumb holdover from an age gone by.
- New Thesis screenshot with the current version number! Confused over which version of Thesis you’re clicking on? Not anymore, homeh.
- Styled up a new “cancel reply” button for threaded comments: In a word—snazzy.
- Moved two lines of conditional code out of
header.php: This code is now buried deep in the core files where you’ll never find it! Mwahahahahaha. - Nuked most of WordPress’ new and overly ambitious
rellinks in the document<head>: The Thesis canonical URLs take care of this on the most basic level, and better, they don’t imply a nonspecific chronological relationship between post/pages (as WordPress does). - Added a few new filters: Check out the list in
lib/changelog.txt, but keep in mind that this file is incomplete and should not be taken as gospel. Dev nerds, expect a veritable slew of new filters over the next couple of releases… Pretty soon, the only thing Thesis won’t be able to filter is your water. Fortunately, Brita has you covered. - Myriad pedantic style tweaks and fixes that only a freakshow perfectionist could love. Too many to list here—just roll with it, grasshoppa!
