Check out this list of the highlighted features for version 1.2:

Events

Introducing Events, a new post type that works right along side of Vantage’s Listings. Events are like Listings but are date based items used to show upcoming events.

Single Event View:

Event Date Filtered List:

Event Form:

Threaded Comments:

Just like listings, you can charge for events and allow featured events. Pricing for events is completely up to you – provide events for free or charge a fee. Events also comes with a whole new batch of widgets: create event button, popular events, recently added events, similar events and upcoming events.

One more special, custom widget worth noting is the event attendees widget. This widget let’s users RSVP for event or see who else is attending an event. You can read more about this widget and how to use it in our Setting Up and Using the Event Attendees Widget tutorial.

Multiple Categories Support and Category Surcharges

Multiple categories are now supported and are available for both Listings and Events. We also added category surcharges. Surcharges allow you to charge a little more for posting events in specific categories.

List Page Sorting

Vantage adds a ton of convenient sorting options for both events and listings.

New AppMaps

In Vantage 1.2, we have moved map settings to a new location: Admin > Vantage > Geo Settings. This is done in anticipation of the soon-to-be-released AppMaps plugin which will allow alternatives to the Google Maps API that comes standard with Vantage. As before, the Geo Settings will control how Vantage works with map APIs to determine locations and distances.

Big Maps

There is now a widgetized sidebar and new widget that will display a big map at the top of the list pages. This new map widget will display different colored markers for Listings and Events. Each marker links directly to the Listing or Event.

Driving Directions

The map widget now also includes Google driving directions. Driving directions are optional and can be enabled within the widget settings. With a simple button push, users can print the directions in an easily readable format.

Contact Listing / Event Owner

Your visitors can now contact the Listing owners or Event organizers directly, through a popup contact form available on each Listing and Event page.

How Do I get This Update?

That’s a huge list and there is an even longer list of resolved issues and code improvements that’s too long to list here. By now, you must be wondering how to get your hands on the new release. You can download a copy from your customer dashboard. Or better yet, download and install the AppThemes Updater Plugin to make updating a snap!

New Tutorials

To help you along with all these new improvements, we created new tutorials and updated some of our exiting tutorials. As always, our helpful support team is ready to assist you with any needs.

• Setting Up Events in Vantage
• Setting Up and Using the Event Attendees Widget in Vantage
• Setting up maps and using map widgets

Be sure to read the full post as there are important notes for those choosing to update to JobRoller 1.7.

Custom Forms
Those who already own Vantage, should already be familiar with this feature. It works like the normal Posts menu on WP backend, but to create custom forms. Each new form can have any custom field type and can be assigned to one or multiple categories.

On JobRoller, custom forms can be created to provide additional fields to job listers when submitting jobs. When users select a job category assigned to a custom form it is presented with the custom fields. These can be optional or required.

Additional fields are displayed after the job lister selects the job category.

Any values inserted on the custom fields are available on the job page, including file downloads.

Payments
Our powerful payments framework is now integrated with JobRoller 1.7 meaning that payment gateways are not limited to PayPal anymore. Bank Transfer is now an additional option and additional gateways can be purchased from our Marketplace.

The payments framework adds it’s own menu on WP backend and allows site owners to easily manage all payment settings, plans and orders. This change also allowed to trim down the number of scattered menu pages and settings related with pricing and orders.

Previous versions only allowed to create one single pricing plan, unless you used job packs. After 1.7, site owners choose a plan type, single or pack, create any number of job plan and assign them to any job category. Additionally, plans have their own relist price that enable job listers to relist jobs for free or at a lower price and can be set a usage limit, allowing to set trial or promotional limited plans.

The resumes subscriptions pricing structure also changed and site owners can now create subscriptions plans, just like job plans.

Addons
Addons are part of the payments framework, and are applied to jobs and users. Addons represent a special attribute assigned to a job or a user. For example, purchasing a plan with the ‘Browse Resumes’ and ‘View Resumes’ addon will give the job lister access to resumes for a limited duration. Purchasing a featured addon will make the purchased job featured on listings and/or category.

There are 2 job addons, and 2 user addons:

Featured Addons (applied to jobs):

• Feature on Homepage and Listings
• Feature on Category

Resumes Addons (applied to users):

• Browse Resumes (allows buyer to browse resumes)
• View Resumes (allows buyer to view resumes)

These addons can be included directly on a job plan for free, or purchased separately. Each paid addon can have it’s own price and duration, and included addons can be set a duration or usage limit.

Addons are a great addition to JobRoller, as it will allow to further monetize your site.

Recruiters
Site owners have certainly noticed that the Recruiters role as been available in JobRoller for a while, but could only be assigned to a user from the backend. JobRoller 1.7 changes that, and there’s now an additional ‘Recruiter’ role available on registration. This role is optional, and site owners can easily enable/disable Recruiters registration.

Job listers and Recruiters can both submit jobs, but the addition of the Recruiter, allows site owners to control each role differently. For example, Resumes access can be limited to Recruiters, Job Listers or both.

More reCaptcha
Security continues to be a priority so we added additional reCaptcha options to contact forms (including resumes), and to the apply online form.

Orders Available on Users Dashboards
Each user can now access their orders history straight from their dashboard and track each order status.

AppThemes Coupons
With the addition of the AppThemes Payments API, JobRoller is now compatible with the AppThemes Coupons plugin. Offer listing discounts and promos to the customers of your site. It’s a great way to get first-time customers to make that first listing or to get long-time customers to come back for more.

Much More
These are the major features coming with JobRoller 1.7, but they are not all. You can read the full list on the changelog.

Upgrading from previous versions

When you activate JobRoller 1.7, all your previous settings, including pricing and orders will be automatically upgraded. No additional actions are needed.

Important Notes for Updating to JobRoller 1.7

• The LinkedIn, CareerJet, or Simply Hired publisher plugins have been updated to version 1.1. If you are using any of these plugins and updating to JobRoller 1.7, you will need to update the plugin as well.
• At this time, recurring payments are only available with PayPal. Additionally, you must enable IPN to use PayPal for recurring payments. Other gateways will be updated to work with recurring payments soon.

Payments
Our powerful payments framework is now integrated with ClassiPress 3.3 meaning that payment gateways are not limited to PayPal and Bank Transfer anymore. Many additional gateways can be purchased from our Marketplace.

The payments framework adds it’s own menu on WP backend and allows site owners to easily manage all payment settings and orders.

As of the 3.3, many of the payment related settings has been moved to the Payments menu:

• price formatting and payment currency selection, previously under “ClassiPress->Pricing”
• gateways, previously under “ClassiPress->Gateways”
• orders, previously under “ClassiPress->Transactions”
• coupons, previously under “ClassiPress->Coupons”. Note: to continue use coupons you will need to install Coupons plugin

Responsiveness
ClassiPress is now fully responsive which means it scales perfectly on mobile devices.

Settings pages
We have implemented new settings pages to make manage settings even easier. All settings are now stored in single WP option, and the select yes/no options has been converted into checkboxes.

Widgets
We have added 2 new widgets which displays ‘Featured’ & ‘Sold’ ads, and into our other widgets has been added items number control – you can specify now how many items to display.

WPML
ClassiPress is now fully compatible with WPML plugin – you can translate your classified ads site to many languages! To make the things happen we have released free WPML Bridge plugin.

Pre-Made Categories Files
Setting up a classified site is easy with ClassiPress and we just made it easier. We have created a pre-made categories file that you can use to import over 800 categories to your ClassiPress site instantly. Better yet, it’s completely free. Get yours and save some time!

New ClassiPress Documents Section
We reorganized the ClassiPress documents to make it easier to find the info you need. When you’re there, be sure to review the Setting up Payments in ClassiPress 3.3 tutorial.

Much More
These are the major features coming with ClassiPress 3.3, but they are not all. You can read the full list on the changelog.

Upgrading from previous versions
When you activate ClassiPress 3.3, all your previous settings, including pricing, orders and coupons will be automatically upgraded. No additional actions are needed.

Ideas is a productivity theme which allows you to listen and engage your customers. Whether it’s a Web site suggestion, a new feature request for your product or a debate site — the Ideas theme will help bridge the communication gap.

Forums are an effective tool for discussion but not so effective if you need to monitor customers feedback. Ideas collects and prioritizes feedback from customers in a structured way. Customers post their suggestions, organized in categories, and others vote up or down. Votes are limited, which helps focus on the essential.

Ideas makes use of our “app framework”, meaning it’s fast, highly flexible and extensible. It also means a simple effective admin panel to control all the theme settings. We even use our own version of the Ideas theme for our own customers to provide feedback.

Learn More

• The Ideas overview page outlines all the features and functions, complete with screenshots
• Test drive the theme by visiting the live Ideas demo and admin demo

Ideas Home Page

Ideas Single Idea

Idea Submit Idea

Ideas User Dashboard

Main Features

Control Votes
Site owners have full control over the total available votes for each user. Votes can be automatically reset each month.

Control new Ideas before they are published. Idea authors are instantly notified by email as soon as their ideas are approved.

Independent Statuses & Categories
Ideas categories and statuses are custom taxonomies. You can add any statuses and/or categories separately from the posts categories and statuses.

Address Each Submission
Your response to ideas are displayed at the top of the page so your customer base knows exactly where it currently stands.

Integrated Discussion Settings
Ideas integrates with WordPress discussion settings. Control any discussion related options like threaded comments or comments moderation, directly from WordPress discussion page.

Fully-Functional Backend
Admins can add, edit and moderate ideas directly from the backend and there are additional panels that help communicate each idea’s status, publicly or internally. You can also view the total votes for the idea being edited and instantly reset it.

Widgets, Widgets and Widgets!
Ideas works with all the native WordPress widgets plus custom widgets including: popular ideas, recent ideas, recent comments, quick info, idea voters and stats, for different locations in the theme.

There’s plenty more features but we’re gonna stop here. Visit the Ideas product page for more details and screenshots.

Already an AppThemes Club customer? Head on over to your dashboard and download it now!

How to Get There – Driving Directions

Google Driving DirectionsI don’t think I need to explain the benefits of this one. If you have a geographically focused business directory, your customers and end-users are going to love this. Josh shows you how to get it all set up – from HTML to Javascript to CSS. It’s the complete package. In the end, each business listing will have a simple “Get Directions” feature. Users enter their address in a field and directions show up under the Google map.

You’re going to want to try this one out. But remember, always create a child theme first. When you’re ready to go, hop over and read Josh’s Adding Google Driving Directions Service to Google Maps tutorial.

Do the Taxonomy Dance

Adding & removing taxonomiesWant to take more control of Quality Control? You can by removing and adding taxonomies to suit your needs. Quality Control has a few taxonomies to help you organize your tickets: Status, Priority, Milestone and of course Category and Tag. Maybe these are not enough for you? Add more. Perhaps you’re not interested in ticket status. Go ahead and remove it.

Cristi Bruca shows how to do all this in his Adding And Removing Taxonomies tutorial. Read it and be a taxonomies master!

ClassiPress Child Themes: Getting Started

ClassiPress Child ThemesOur ClassiPress developer, Andrjez, kicks things off with the basics. His ClassiPress child themes tutorial shows you the fundamentals of folder structure, styling and functionality. With this tutorial, you should be able to create a basic child theme for ClassiPress. If you’re a whiz with CSS and WordPress functions, you’ll be able to do even more. He also provides some clear examples of how changes can affect the layout and functionality of the parent theme.

Read his ClassiPress child theme tutorial and start making your own child theme today.

You might also want to check out another important ClassiPress tutorial from Andrjez. In it, Andrzej presents a check list of things that should be completed to update child themes for ClassiPress 3.2. This is a must read if you have an existing ClassiPress child theme and plan to upgrade to CP 3.2.

And Now, a Couple of Handy Tuts from Our Founder…

AppThemes founder, Dave Cowgill, never passes up an opportunity to learn how to do something new with WordPress. Each time he does, he writes a tutorial to share with the world. Sometimes these improvements seem to be small but they frequently have a big impact.

This week, he has two new tuts that will help improve your WordPress posting productivity. His first lesson shows you how to add custom buttons to the WordPress editor. These custom buttons give single-click capability to add tags to your post. Dave’s other tutorial shows you how to make posts via email using WordPress multisite. This is going to be super useful if you’re always on the go. Now you can just make a post via email from your phone or other device.

Suggest a Tutorial

Job Listings, the Bread and Butter of JobRoller

Create a Job ListingThis is what it’s all about, right? Allowing your site’s users the opportunity to post jobs to your website is the engine that generates content, traffic and more. And with the ability to charge for listings, it makes JobRoller a potential income producing tool for your website.

JobRoller makes listing job opportunities a snap. Users can create and edit listings with ease. With the addition of TinyMCE text editor, users can format there job listings to fit their needs. To see how easy it is, check out our video tutorial on creating job listings in JobRoller.

Resumes, the Frosting on the Cake

Add a resumeJob listings give companies and organizations the power to post job opportunities to your job board. But there are two sides to the job coin. Available candidates want an opportunity to market themselves to companies looking for qualified personnel. That’s were resumes come in.

Each ‘job seeker’ get’s their own dashboard where they can add one, two or more resumes that catalog the list of their unique qualifications. Just like job listings, JobRoller gives you the opportunity to monetize resumes by charging for job listings. It’s simple for a job seeker to post their resume. Our video tutorial about adding resumes to JobRoller, shows you how.

Suggest a Tutorial

Thanks to tbase for suggesting these video tutorials. If you ave a tutorial that you want to see, let us know by leaving a comment below. Cheers!

Dazzling Child Themes

Our application themes are made to look great and the default designs deliver attractive layouts. The only problem is that hundreds of other sites have exactly the same look. You want something unique but hiring a designer can be costly and beyond budget constraints. Well forget all that because the AppThemes Marketplace is chock full of child themes that will bring your site to life. Colorful and attractive, the latest designs and the hippest graphics are available to you. You’re site is going to look fantastic and stand out above the rest.

Of course, for some child themes, it’s not just about looks but functions and features, too. It can be as simple as adding sliders and galleries to revamping the whole theme to fit a niche industry. Or how about responsive child themes that can be viewed on all devices? Now that’s something almost everyone would love.

Prima Child Theme

Phoenix Child Theme

zpGids Child Theme

ClassiClean Child Theme

These child themes not only look and work great but they’re priced right, too. A custom redesign would cost hundreds of dollars, but you’re going to find a brand new look for far less. Priced from $29 to $59, these child themes give you a lot of bang for the buck!

Make your site stand out, check out child themes in the AppThemes Marketplace.

Productive Plugins

We can’t build themes that include every feature under the sun. The result would be utterly unusable. Instead, we focus on building lean, robust and very usable application themes with an essential set of core features. Building this way, you get better themes and fewer problems.

So we give you a great theme to start with and now we’re giving you the ability to add functions and features that make your site perform at peak levels. Your online business is unique and Marketplace plugins allow you to pick and choose the advanced features you want. Each plugin provides a targeted feature with specific value to site-owners. Mix and match to make the site you always wanted. With developers creating new plugins all the time, there will be no shortage of options to choose from.

Add high-performance features to your site, view plugins in the AppThemes Marketplace.

Community Created, AppThemes Tested

The AppThemes community has thrived and it’s attracted a fair amount of talented developers and designers. We invited the best from the community to create products for our marketplace launch. These people know our themes as well as anyone. They are rock solid developers and designers that know how to create great products. You can be sure that their child themes and plugins live up to our rigorous standards. But just to be sure, we test every item sold in the Marketplace. Each one has our seal of approval.

So we have some top-notch code wranglers and pixel pushers, but what about support? Each Marketplace developer is committed to supporting their product to the fullest. AppThemes customers will be able to get personalized support direct from the developer in our forums. And we’re keeping Marketplace developers in the loop when it comes to theme updates and changes. We’ll make sure they have ample time to update plugins and child themes. The goal is to create an interruption-free experience for you.

This is Going to Grow and Grow and Grow

This is just the start. AppThemes has created many items for the Marketplace and will continue to add more. We’re sure that our community developers will continue to create many more items, too. In fact, maybe you have a plugin or child theme you would like to offer to AppThemes customers. If so, check out our guide to selling in the AppThemes Marketplace.

We’re excited to see how the Marketplace grows and we’re excited to see how your site will benefit from new designs and added features. Check out the AppThemes Marketplace and let us know what you think!

ClassiPress 3.2 Child Theme ChecklistAs you know, the creation of Vantage brings a lot of changes to our other themes. The goal is to make all our themes a little more alike and a little less different. Common functions should use standardized code. Common features should be similar from theme to theme to theme. The benefits are great. Themes are easier to maintain, they’re easier to build and much, much more.

While we strive to implement these changes with minimal impact, there are some changes that are going to require a little extra work on your part when you update to newer versions. With ClassiPress 3.2 on the way, we want to give everyone ample opportunity to prepare for changes that might have an impact on your site.

Our ClassiPress developer, Andrzej Piotrowski has created a checklist of debugging tasks for anyone that uses or has developed child themes for ClassiPress. The list is pretty short and should not take too long to complete. Once you complete the tasks, you should be in pretty good shape for the official release of ClassiPress 3.2.

How Do I Know if I Need to Make Changes?

If you’re not a developer, you might be thinking, “oh my gosh, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do!” Worry not, this tutorial is mostly for advanced users and developers. Just to be sure, here are some simple guidelines to determine if the changes mentioned above will affect you:

• If you’re a novice user – you’re not a developer – and you bought and simply installed ClassiPress on your site, you probably do not need to do anything.
• If you bought and installed a child theme, you will want to contact the developer of your child theme and ask them what their plans are for updating.
• If you hired a developer to modify your theme in any way, you will want to contact that developer and direct them to the checklist.
• If you have created a child theme or modified the theme code in any way (not recommended), then you really should read the checklist.

Suggest a Tutorial

Child themes and custom things. Action hooks and custom looks. Plugins, filters, PHP. We provide these tuts to you for free! Tell us in the comments what you want to see.

This week, we have a couple of help WordPress tidbits from founder Dave Cowgill.

In Redirect Your WordPress Feed to Feedburner, Dave shows how you can bump up your marketing by leveraging the RSS, email syndication and analytic tools available with Feedburner.

Dave’s other tutorial, Add Custom Styles to the WordPress Editor, will show you how to add your site’s styles to the WordPress visual editor. No need to switch back and forth from preview. Just work in the visual editor and you’ll exactly how your page is going to look.

Tutorial Tuesdays are for You

According to our survey, you want to see more tutorials on customizing our themes. You also want to see more video tutorials. Well, we’re happy to deliver. Expect to see more of both in the coming weeks. Remember, these tutorials are for you. If you have any suggestions, please add them in the comments section.

Cheers!