License Option Discussion

• A 2.0.1 release
• Increased support - both via email and in the forums
• An aggressive theme and one-panel release schedule

We hope you are as excited as we are!  Woohoooooo!

Heres a few things that have changed:

1. We no longer use e-Junkie as our shopping cart, we now have our own shopping cart that works with PayPal. This means no more e-Junkie affiliate links, they will now be dead ends. If you are a One Theme Affiliate please sign up at our iDev site here. iDev is a far superior affiliate system to e-Junkie with masses of features (deep linking anyone?). Anyone who wants to check it out can do so at the iDevAffiliate Website.
2. The member’s system: In the downloads section of the member’s system you will now see an area for each theme you have purchased from our store. Please be aware that each theme is shipped with One Panel, but there is absolutely no need to re-upload it if you already have One Panel installed on your WordPress blog.
3. We now request that people report bugs at our Mantis installation instead of on the forum, this makes them much easier to track and lessens the possibility that they might slip through the net.

In previous versions of One Theme users had to prepare each thumbnail image for use with One Theme on their local machine. Cropping or resizing the image in an image editor such as Photoshop or Gimp to the correct size for each thumbnail type. Once that was done, the image had to be uploaded to a server using an FTP client. The URL of that image then had to be added to the chosen post’s Custom Fields for each thumbnail. This could all be quite a hassle if you had 3000 posts on your site, and the common practice in such cases was to simply de-activate thumbnails, much to the detriment of the aesthetics of your blog.

The Thumbnail generator changes things dramatically. Consider the following:

You have an image on your machine that is bigger than the five different thumbnail types for One Theme.

You open One Panel and load up the Thumbnail Generator. You use the tool to select a post, browse for the file on your machine, and click upload. The Thumbnail Generator then takes your image, resizes and crops it to size for each thumbnail type in the theme. The next thing it does, is automatically add the Custom Field entries to the post you selected. Great right?

If that isn’t enough, you also have the choice of scanning the post for images. Or entering an image URL from the web.

Also in previous versions of One Theme; changing language terms was problematic. It required a php file to be edited by the user and often resulted in errors for our customers. In this version we have added the Localization tool. Now all you have to do is type in the text you are looking for, select it, and edit. Much safer, and no editing of files.

Changelog:
Added: Localization Module
Added: Thumbnail Generator
Added: Ajax Loading Images
Added: Upload OPD File
Added: Search Pagination

Screenshots:

This is hopefully the last BETA, and we expect to release version 2.0 on the 15th of March. Thank you all for your kind comments and encouragement!

We just shipped 1.1.4. Upgrade now!

This is just a little fix, but it makes some very important changes:

1. One Theme Installer - This means no more nasty error messages when installing, we’ve ported the installer over from the 2.0 tree to 1.1.4 for your pleasure.
2. Category Menu in WP2.7.1 - The new version of WordPress broke our category menu. Many, many thanks to Extreme Member for debugging this and sending us the patch!
3. Google Feedburner Accounts - Our FeedBurner subscribe box didn’t work with Google accounts, this is now fixed and compatible with both the old style, and new style FeedBurner accounts.
4. Image Uploads - We’ve made some enhancements to this and finally banished the famous ‘Image Uploads Bug’.
5. Threaded Comments - Now implemented and working with 2.7+!
6. Top Menu Fix - Some much needed fixes to menu rendering in IE and Safari.
7. Styles Update - We ported some of the new styles from the 2.0 beta over for a treat.

This may well be the last of the 1.x series to be released. Depending of course on whether WordPress manage to ship their next release before we ship 2.0 (we sure hope not!).

The first BETA will have little more than the basic One Theme functionality implemented, the new features such as the thumbnail tool will be added over the next week or so. But using the new control panel and messing around with the config files should be enough to keep the testers busy in the mean time.

So now we are tying up some of the code that has thus far escaped us, frantically trying not to stray too far from our deadline. The bug tracker is set and ready for people to join. And I really should be writing code right now!

Catch you later!

We hope you had a fantastic holiday season. We know you have all been eager to get your hands on One Theme 2.0 and news has been sparse.

So we thought we would cheer you up a little by giving you an exclusive preview to the new Control Panel…

introducing One Panel.

As you can see we’ve taken a massive departure from the traditional option pages format in favor of a centralised approach. The panel is massively ajax driven and almost every aspect of it will change dynamically on command without reloading the whole page.

We’re not showing you too much now, because we still want you to be surprised when you use it for the first time. But know this; the first round of beta testing will be starting on the 21st of January. Thats two weeks from today!

Theres a lot to cover here, and don’t forget that we already announced a bunch of additional features for version 2.0 in the previous article: One Theme 2.0 Teaser

So strap yourselves in because there’s a hell of a lot to talk about:

Introducing One Panel

Imagine being able to use the One Theme control panel on any theme you wanted.. We’re making it a reality! As of version 2.0, the One Theme Control Panel will be a stand alone plugin known as “One Panel“. You (or your designers) will be able to create One Panel manageable themes, using a fully documented API that will be freely available to read in the “One Theme Developer Centre“.

If that isn’t exciting enough for you, with a little web development experience you could potentially convert any other theme that takes your fancy (free, or premium) to a “One Panel Capable Theme”. Implementing as few, or as many of the One Panel Features as you like, as for each theme you will be able to add a config file that will instruct One Panel on which features to allow management for.

What about the One Theme Theme?

One Theme will still ship exactly the same as it does now, with the default theme in the zip file. The only difference is that your activation keys will actually be for the use of One Panel, and changing the theme will only potentially change which features are available in One Panel (depending on which features have been implemented by the theme developer).

Will One Panel look different to the old Control Panel?

You betcha! We’ve completely redesigned the user interface to a completely modular, AJAX environment with smart search, and context sensitive help to make using One Panel even more user friendly than it is now!

Will One Theme be developing new themes for One Panel?

Yes, we’ll be opening the “One Theme Marketplace“. Three new official themes will be available in the store for the 2.0 launch; “One Theme Professional“, “One Theme Modern“, and “One Theme Fun!“.  We’re also planning on allowing independent theme developers to list their themes in our marketplace early next year. This will also be a place you can request logo’s, customizations, and other One Panel/Wordpress services. Here’s a preview of two of the three new themes:

Preview of One Theme Professional

Preview of One Theme Modern

I’m a reseller. Whats coming for me?

The new “Reseller System“. Shortly after the 2.0 release we are planning on allowing greater flexibility to our resellers, by offering a system that allows them to order extra licenses, choose a number of billing options, and manage the details of each licensee holder while still being able to maintain control over the license.

So there you have it!

As you can probably guess, theres a fair bit of work to be done between now and the launch, which we are initially planning to be somewhere in the middle of December. We are also looking for a BETA testing team, so if you fancy being one of the first to use One Panel, and helping us squash any bugs - please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

The whole team is brimming with excitement right now, and we hope after reading this, you will be too! Also I would like to say a quick thank you to our fantastic forum staff for keeping this under their hats thus far, you guys are doing an excellent job!

Update: One Theme Fun Screenshot

We’ve decided to up the version number to 2.0, this should indicate the amount of progress this new version will offer. We aren’t wanting to give too much away at this early stage but here’s a tiny teaser of what’s in store!

1) Turbo Thumbnail Tool: Thumbnails are a pain! With a click of the mouse, let the thumbnail engine scan all the posts on your blog, find any images within that post, crop them to the right size and assign them as thumbnails. Alternatively, quick search for a post, click, and upload… easy right?

2) Easy Localization: New to the control panel in v2.0, a localization tool allowing you to replace all hard coded english, letting you blog in any language you want with ease.

3) ??? The third teaser won’t be announced just yet, lets just say it’s the biggest and most unexpected feature ever announced! This enhancement has the whole team teaming with excitement.

Stay tuned for the official feature announcement!