A key new feature is an upgrade notification for the theme and plugin, keeping you updated with new releases as they happen.

The full changelog for the theme can be seen in the new Vanilla Theme Bitbucket repository. Similarly the changelog for the plugin can be seen on the Vanilla Plugin Github repository.

As usual, current Vanilla users can download the new version when they log in to their account.

I would also just like to clear up any confusion regarding version numbers. The Vanilla Theme and Vanilla Plugin do not share the same version number! This isn’t a mistake. The current stable version of the theme is 1.2.1 and the plugin is 1.2

Hopefully though, any confusion will now be a thing of the past with the new upgrade notification.

New Features

• CSS Editor – You can now add your own CSS which will override the themes CSS and won’t be lost in an upgrade.
• User Bar – One of the most popular features of Vanilla is the Admin Bar. This has been extended to logged-in users who will get the same bar which admins see but without the e107/admin links. The User Bar can be switched off if you would rather not use it.
• PM/Comment Mod Notification – The Admin Bar now has a notification of unread PM’s and comments awaiting moderation.
• FitVids BBCode – Easily wrap videos with FitVids for responsive videos using the plugins new BBCode.
• New Sitelinks – The sitelinks have had a complete overhaul making them easier to use on mobile and touch devices. They also now support 4 levels of drop-down sitelinks and are now included when you select whether to have site wide rounded corners or not.

Improvements

• Banner shortcode added to topbar (can be switched on/off in plugin settings to save you editing theme.php).
• Updated all social media buttons and added Facebook Like button above news.
• Improved layout for forum.php?new
• Several Admin Bar improvements on mobile layout.
• Choose the site title font size
• Toggle the topbar gradient on or off
• Choose background colours for sitelinks including hover state
• Choose which news social media buttons, if any, to display below news post title
• Added PM template
• Improved body class feature. Each page is assigned a unique class to the body, combined with the new CSS Editor you can create unique designs for each page and protect those changes from future updates.
• HTML5 is a year older so I’ve updated and refined the markup, added more ARIA roles and had a general tidy up of all the themes code to make it leaner, faster and more responsive.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with BBCode formatting
• Fixed issue preventing sitelinks rendering shortcode in anchor
• Fixed image uploading in forums
• Fixed admin bar avatar issues
• Fixed forum icons overlapping avatar in mobile forum view
• Fixed problem preventing selecting site stored avatars in usersettings

As you can see, the Vanilla theme is now even more versatile than ever. There are almost no limits to get the look and feel you want for your sites.

You can still get Vanilla, including all these new features and improvements for only £30, a fraction of the cost of a WordPress theme with similar, or even less, features- it could be the best 30 bucks you’ve ever spent!

Existing Vanilla users can log in and download the update for free. Please read the upgrade instructions included in the package before you update the theme and plugin.

This update fixes a few small bugs and errors. There are no new features at this stage. Also, just to clarify, I will continue to maintain Vanilla as long as there is enough interest. It plan on making it compatible with e107v2, only when the stable release is available and as the alpha version isn’t out yet and going by e107′s own timescale I wouldn’t think a stable v2 will be released for another year or two at the earliest!

If you have purchased Vanilla before today you should be able to log in and download the updated version from your account page.

Anyway, I’ve had a while to reflect and am ready to crack on with things now so please bear with me while I clear the backlog. I will hopefully get round to answering all posts currently unanswered in the support forum this weekend.

By now I would have had an updated version of Vanilla released so I will catch up with that next week, if you have any translations please send them to me so I can include them in the updated package.

On a side note… I’m doing the London to Brighton Off-Road Bike ride on September 22nd in memory of my friend to raise money for the British Heart Foundation. If your feeling generous, you can sponsor me at my JustGiving page. Thanks!

There have been many people calling for this as it became obvious some time ago that jQuery was leading the way in terms of ease of use and it’s massive community, so the announcement has been warmly welcomed by the community.

It’s also great news for Xen Themes users as we have been using jQuery as our framework of choice for over 2 years. With e107 switching to jQuery it will hopefully mean those plugins notorious for using Prototype and causing conflicts with our themes will be updated to jQuery also.

While I’m pleased about this announcement I’m still crossing my fingers hoping that they will remove all JS from the head, leaving it to the theme maker to decide which JS framework, if any, to use on the front-end. Some sort of script enqueue would be nice too!

Built in HTML5, the concept behind Vanilla was to create a theme which can be used as a standalone theme or be used as a scaffolding to develop your own designs. The idea is something common in WordPress, where it is known as a parent theme. I have tried to build something as close to this principal as possible within the constraints of e107. You could also call it the nearest you can get to a theme builder for e107.

Vanilla will be our flagship product. It’ll be in constant development and will evolve as new features become available and all Vanilla customers will have access to new updates as they become available.

It’s also GPL2 and MIT licenced so you can use it on as many sites as you like. Once you buy Vanilla you’ll never need to buy an e107 theme again!

Check out the Vanilla theme page for more details and be sure to check out the Vanilla demo site. To demonstrate the versatility of Vanilla I will change the design, using just the theme options, every day or two.

The e107Slider Plugin is a lightweight responsive slider built using ResponsiveSlides.js. The plugin has 2 menus, an image slider and a news slider which can be positioned in any menu area.

To see it in action go to the Vanilla Theme demo site.

The plugin is currently in beta and I’m keen to get feedback and suggestions for improvements before a full release.

Support for the e107Slider will be on Github. If you find a bug please raise an issue. You can also track development of the plugin on the e107Slider Github page.

In less than a months time your website will have to comply with EU ePrivacy Directive disclosure requirements or be faced with the threat of a fine up to £500,000. This new requirement has been dubbed the “No-Cookie Law” and has come against widespread criticism. Although it’s intentions are good, it has been ill-conceived and has the potential to harm businesses inside the UK and European Union.

NoCookieLaw.com aims to increase awareness and highlight the opposition to this legislation. They also have a petition against the cookie law.

It is interesting to point out though that Paul Boag recently posted an article claiming that we shouldn’t be too worried about the implications of this law based on the EU’s own guidelines (PDF).

First off, you might or might not have noticed but this site is now running on WordPress. The reason is simple… I prefer WordPress.

WTF?!?! Explain yourself man!

It’s what I’ve been working with for over two years and if I’m going to be totally honest, I no longer have the passion for e107. Maybe it’s years of waiting for 0.8/2.0, maybe it’s the attitude of some of the e107 support staff which has meant I don’t participate on e107.org, maybe it’s the diminishing community and the lack of effort to accept that things need sorting out. I don’t know, it’s probably a bit of all of the above.

The final straw has been the 1000+ Chinese spammers signing up here in the last few months, despite email verification, image verification and an .htaccess file longer than my arm.

I’m not trying to bash e107 here, nor big-up WP. I’m past all that now, to me there’s no contest. What I do want to do though is to reinvigorate this site and I feel switching to WP is going to give me the lift I need to keep this site active and push it forward. It shouldn’t really make a lot of difference to you, I still have all my premium and free e107 themes available and the support forum is still active. In fact, it will be better, trust me!

Membership changes

I managed to import the old e107 database into WP using the awesome e107 to WP migration plugin but I didn’t import the users. Unfortunately, out of the 6500 members I had, I had no way of sifting out the 1000′s of Chinese spammers from my genuine members. So I have slimmed my membership down to those members that were in theme purchase userclasses. Basically, if you haven’t received a welcome email from this site, you will need to re-register to purchase or download any themes. I apologise for any inconvenience this may cause!

Will there be more e107 themes?

Yes! I have been working on a new e107 theme for a couple of months now and I intend it to be “The Mother of All e107 Themes”. I don’t want to give anything away now, but it’s going to be pretty amazing and ground-breaking. It could be my last e107 theme so I want to make it my best.

Moving forward

Moving onwards, I want to continue to grow Xen Themes and I want to share more of what I have learned over the last two years since I started my own design and development business. I know there are plenty of you that use WordPress as well as e107 and there are many of you who may be thinking of trying WP out, so I will start to blog more posts about WP and in particular helping e107 users understand WP terminology and how WP works compared to e107.

There are a few things still to do on the new site so I’ll be tinkering about and adding pages over the next few days. If you have any problems or questions feel free to get in touch or leave your comments below.

With regret, as with all my free themes I cannot provide support. I’ve got too many free themes and not enough time to give support for free themes.