WP 3.4: Theme Customizer

Theme Customizer

Old theme preview feature is now gone, and it is replaced by customizer. It will open a theme for preview (new window/tab in browser) and it will show the sidebar frame where you can change few things. This works with any theme, but if your theme doesn’t have direct support for features supported by customizer, you will see only options to change front page and site title. Themes like Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven will allow changing background, header and navigation.

This is interesting feature that is few years too late. All good WordPress theme (all premium and most of the free ones), already have their own frameworks, their own settings and customization panels. They all have so many customization power that using the Customizer is really pointless.

Theme searching is improved (again), making a very useless option a bit better for some reason. It can get themes from WordPress.org only, and that’s it. For most users it is completely useless. How many times users really change their themes? So much time is spend on making things in WordPress Core that will be used very, very rarely. Most WordPress websites use custom themes, or premium themes anyway.

Improved Localization

Translation files are split differently than before to allow for better flexibility and to have performance improvements when loading translations. There are many small improvements to localization, and all that is aiming to make WordPress easier to translate. Detection of RTL languages is improved also.

Themes API & Other minor improvements

Old set of functions working with themes is now completely replaced with new API to deal with themes. All old functions are now deprecated. New API relies on class that are now easier to use and most importantly aim to improve WordPress overall performance. Problem with all this is that if you use old functions in your plugins, you need to continue to use them for compatibility with old WordPress versions, making new API pretty much useless as long as plugins must be backward compatible.

There are some multi site improvements added with installation and searching, images captions support HTML now, XML-RPC is improved and comments management works from the post editor. But best features in this version is the click on empty part of toolbar, that scrolls screen back to the top.

How does WP 3.4 Beta 1 feel?

One of the things announced for this version is speed improvements and lower memory usage. But, with this current beta 1 that is not the case. I did some preliminary testing, and WordPress 3.4 Beta 1 uses 2-4% more memory than WordPress 3.3 did and 3-7% more than WordPress 3.2. As for the speed, situation is similar and WordPress 3.4 Beta 1 is slower than earlier versions of WordPress. Right now, I am hopping that this is only because we have just entered beta stage, and that in the next month leading to release of stable WordPress 3.4 this will improve. If things stay the same as they are now, it is not looking good from performance standpoint.

Other than this, WordPress 3.4 is in normal use, the same as previous WP 3.3. If you don’t get to change your theme you will not even see the only new feature in this version. I bet that only thing you will use all the time is click on the toolbar.

Conclusion

If the development of WordPress Core was done right, 50% of the features in this version would never been made at all, and the other 50% would be only a small part of much better release that would take a year or so to make, and not be rushed in couple of months. But, as it looks right now, we will continue to get new WordPress every 4-5 months with features that are rarely used. Right now I only hope that WP 3.5 will get at least some changes to media manager, I have lost hope on seeing some really important things any time soon.

Have you tried Beta 1 yet? Leave the comment with your experience with it.

Main point of main xScape Core theme is to offload as much of shared code as possible into it. Child themes will need less of standard markup files to function, and it will be much easier later to create themes faster and to have great degree of flexibility in customization. Main settings class is now abstracted and objects extended from it are improved. For xScape Core and Core themes translations loading includes all 3 translation files (if they exist).

Pages Navigator widget is updated to match standalone version (GD Pages Navigator) and has a new selection method. Problem with displaying normal image based banner ads is also fixed.

All 4 Core themes are updates, and you must use both the new theme and new xScape Core, so upgrade both. Next two old themes to be converted are eScape and photoScape, and they will be released in the next 4-5 days.

Email / SMTP Panel

Email / SMTP Settings

Global settings panel got new settings tab for custom SMTP server to be used with wp_mail and WordPress mailer. You can use predefined GMail account with your username and password or custom SMTP server. You can also override default from name and from email for sent emails. And you can test settings to make sure that everything is OK.

This should work with most servers, depending on their settings, so test it to see if your SMTP can handle it or not.

More HTAccess Tweaks

Jeff Starr is well-known for security related work on his PerishablePress website. His latest htaccess tweaks are released as 5G Firewall list, and I have included query and request string tweaks in the GD Press Tools security panel. Be sure to test all the changes, because some of them can cause problems in very rare cases, as with anything that is htaccess related.

Security & Backup

If you move wp-config.php outside of the WordPress main folder, security and backup in GD Press Tools will ignore this file for security check and backup. Now, this is changed, and plugin can detect if this file is moved, and will use the correct path for it.

And more

Bug fixes include: inconsistent dates in the backups now fixed with new functions, duplicated action for unloading jQueryUI, minor issues with debugger printing of arrays and objects and broken loading of translation files. gdr2 library has several new functions and many improvements to some of the core functions also.

Once again, thanks to Frank P. Walentynowicz and his continued contribution for improving some elements of the plugin.

Win the plugin license

It’s not too late yet, and if you don’t already have license for Pro version, here is the chance to win it simply by using Twitter. So, two lifetime standard licenses will be given on March 4 2011. To take part:

1. You only need to follow us on Twitter.
2. Tweet this:
   

   GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro for #WordPress giveaway. For a chance to win it, follow @milangd and retweet http://dv4p.com/gdpt4

3. You can tweet as many times as you want, the more the better are chances to win.

Promo coupon

Hurry up, and get 40% discount for this plugin (for yearly recurring payments standard and developer licenses, coupon is applied to initial payment only): GDPRESSTOOLS4. Coupon can be used until March 7 2011.

More about GD Press Tools Pro:
http://dv4p.com/gdpt

Bug fixes include: inconsistent dates in the backups now fixed with new functions, duplicated action for unloading jqueryui, minor issues with debugger printing of arrays and objects and broken loading of translation files. gdr2 library has several new functions and many improvements to some of the core functions also.

Win the plugin license

It’s not too late, yet and if you don’t already have license for Pro version, here is the chance to win it simply by using Twitter. So, two lifetime standard licenses will be given on March 4 2011. To participate:

1. You only need to follow us on Twitter.
2. Tweet this:
   

   GD Press Tools 4.0 Pro for #WordPress giveaway. For a chance to win it, follow @milangd and retweet http://dv4p.com/gdpt4

3. You can tweet as many times as you want, the more the better are chances to win.

Promo coupon

To get 40% discount for this plugin (for yearly recurring payments standard and developer licenses, coupon is applied to initial payment only): GDPRESSTOOLS4. Coupon can be used until March 7 2011.

More about GD Press Tools Pro:
http://dv4p.com/gdpt