Things on the Standard Theme front have been relatively quiet as of late. Engaging with the ever-growing community and working to develop our monthly customizations have been more than welcome time bandits, but it’s also hard to talk too much about your core software project when it’s under heavy development.
For the past couple of months, we’ve been heads down, hands designing, and fingers coding the next version of Standard.
We as a team have tried to be transparent about our processes and products and in keeping consistent with that ideology, let’s take a look at what’s coming down the pipeline for the next iteration of Standard Theme.
A Better Look & Feel
One of the things that we attempted to achieve with the first version of Standard was an administration panel that made it easy for anyone to customization aspects of their site.
For the most part, I think we were successful. As we pushed our bug fixes and new features, it became clear that there was room for improvement, so we took advantage of that opportunity and have literally rebuilt the entire administration system.
Aside from a total visual overhaul, the administration functionality is much more streamlined – it’s more usable, it’s faster, and it even supports a few new features (that you’ll see soon enough).
Design Without Coding
From the beginning, we attempted to make sure that Standard was developer-friendly and designer-friendly. We bundled a stylesheet with the theme that allows you to make any customizations you want and then bring it with each time the theme is updated.
Of course, not everyone is comfortable with CSS or perhaps would prefer to adjust the placement of some other elements of the page. Standard 2 is going to make it much easier to make UI customizations without having to write a single line of code.
This includes native WordPress 3.0 functionality along with some brand new features we’re building out.
Standard Functionality For All
Finally, we’ve noticed a few requests on how we’ve achieved certain pieces of functionality across the 8BIT properties. Sure, we can talk about certain things in blog posts or podcasts, but if there’s a felt need for something then we’d love to provide.
So we’ve created some of our own functionality that we’re going to be making available and compatible for any WordPress theme. Of course, this will be available out-of-the-box with Standard 2.
Although Standard Theme is core product and all of our properties are running on the codebase, we’ve consistently been about community since the initial beta of the theme. To that point, we’ve attempted to take the most popular feature requests and build them in to make sure we’re creating the most solid product that we can.
But stay tuned. We’re just getting started.
Sweet. Can’t wait to try it out.
Won’t be too much longer
.
Well… if you need Beta testers again… I love the first version. Although I still need to upgrade to v1.1.1
I made some adjustments to the functions.php file and that’s not as easily transferable.
We may be mitigating that in the next version..
I am super excited.
Us too =D
Looking forward to it. Really feel this the becoming one of the best themes out there.
Thanks, Daniel. Seriously.
You guys rock.
We try.
Any idea when this is being released? I’m working on building a multiple blog site for a client that needs to handle high amounts of traffic, and I’m thinking this may fit the requirements.
If you need any beta testers I have a private development server with a clean install of WP3 (I work in WordPress a lot).
soon.
my best impression of Steve Jobs. haha, we are running through some bug testing and stress testing.. we want to make sure it is really solid before it gets out. but soon.
last i heard, we were aiming for solid code and perhaps maybe a upgrade to the look and feel …
Looks awesome. Can’t wait!
sweet.
your gravatar is awesome.
Thanks!
@Tom
Dude, I know how hard you have been working. Totally stoked for you, and just want to encourage your inner nerd to keep being incredible.
-peace
You’re the man, Jared. Thanks a bunch
The team’s pretty pumped about what’s coming..
YESSSS
Add a few more “S’s” and we’ll be money
super excited. have been recommending standard to everyone in the market for a new theme.
..and we definitely appreciate it. Thanks Brian!
Looking forward to using the new theme. Standard Theme is the best by far for WordPress!
Thanks Dewitt
I. Am. Stoked.
(foreal)
We are, too..!
So will this be released with GPL?
Ha, yep.
In all seriousness, we’ve been all about the GPL since our initial launch (and our terms state it!
).
How does this work out for current Standard users? Do we get it, or are you treating it as a separate product?
The Support License grants lifetime upgrades for the theme.
Sweet. I got that.
can’t wait!!!! love using it already and the upgrades look awesome!!!!
..there’s probably more going in that we’ve shown in screen shots, too