Category: News

Releases 1.1.0-1.1.1

Posted on by Dan Flippo

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Release 1.1.1

  • The CSS for the theme has been improved in several places to utilize more CSS gradients and fewer images. This reduces the amount of downloads and improves the look and feel on high resolution displays.
  • I have make the “EDIT” buttons smaller and less obnoxious for editors
  • I have added a new favicon option to the theme. It won’t automatically change your favicon but you can pick one in the customizer when you choose between other images for the look and feel. I have provided both old and new style UUA favicons.
  • The top menu has been adjusted so that it starts further to the right unless there is not enough room.

Release 1.1.0

Due to delays in getting updates published to the WordPress.org repository, I am now making GitHub Updater a “required” plugin for the theme. If you don’t have it, the theme will help you download and activate it. You can still choose to not install the plugin but that will now require more effort.  The theme is now published publicly on WordPress.org and I will periodically submit additional versions to WordPress.org but I encourage websmasters to get the updates through GitHub.

It is highly recommended that people update to this version of the theme so that you get future updates automatically. Since the process to install the plugin is now integrated, it is no longer necessary to install GitHub Updater manually.

Symbol_Metal

UU2014 Public Releases 1.0.8 - 1.0.10

Posted on by Dan Flippo

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Here are some of the more recent changes to the theme:

  • The new CSS for the background image was being over-ridden by the CSS on the page. Added tags to the HTML to ensure images are scaled to fit footer.
  • GitHub throttles unauthenticated API requests. A token has been added to the theme to ensure users don’t get throttled when using the GitHub Updater with the theme.
  • The theme customizer now has a new section that allows you to choose between chalice images and the new UUA image. For the header, I have provided silver and red images in two different sizes.

UU2014 Public Release 1.0.6

Posted on by Dan Flippo

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This release supports an additional automated solution for updating the theme. The theme still supports updates from WordPress.org but it also supports direct updates from GitHub. To enable the updates from GitHub, you need to add the “GitHub Updater” plugin to WordPress. This plugin is not available on the WordPress.org plugin directory and you need to download the latest version from GitHub:

  1. Download the latest GitHub Updater release from https://github.com/afragen/github-updater/releases(choose the “zip” option)
  2. Go to the Plugins -> Add New Plugin screen and click the Upload tab
  3. Upload the zipped archive directly
  4. Go to the Plugins screen and click Activate

Unfortunately, you will only receive automatic updates for future updates so it is still necessary to update your theme manually one final time. (You can see why I wanted to support automatic updates)

  1. Download the latest UU2014 release from https://github.com/dflippo/UU2014/releases (choose the “zip” option)
  2. Go to Themes in WordPress
  3. Temporarily activate a different theme other than UU2014 such as Twenty Fourteen
  4. Click on Theme Details for the UU2014 theme and click Delete in the bottom right corner to remove the old version
  5. Go to the Themes -> Add New Theme screen and click the Upload tab
  6. Upload the zipped archive directly
  7. Go to the Themes screen click Activate

Version 1.0.5 Released

Posted on by Dan Flippo

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There have been a few minor issues resolved in this latest version of the UU2014 theme. I believe the most significant changes are the new customizer screens where you can choose whether to display comments or bylines on posts.  Details are provided below.

WordPress.org has been very slow to review the theme and provide feedback. This release of the theme was mostly to address feedback I received this week. I still hope to have WordPress automatically prompt users to upgrade the theme but for now you need to manually upload the new version of the theme to your server.

Please feel free to post your own issues or questions on the theme here:

https://github.com/dflippo/UU2014/issues

V/R

Dan Flippo
Webmaster, Unitarian Universalist Church of Kent
www.kentuu.org
Based on feedback from elseloop at WordPress.org, the following issues were reported and resolved:
  • Error when Meteor Slides is not installed
  • Posts with no title have no link to the single view from the index list
  • “Comments are disabled” notice should be displayed on posts with comments disabled
  • Width of floating sidebar isn’t responsive to widget width
  • Need to add CSS for widgets in footer sidebar
  • Issue with sidebar CSS for recent comments
Additional information on each bug is online at: https://github.com/dflippo/UU2014/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aclosed
While resolving the issues above, the following features have been added:
  • The customizer has a new section to allow you to choose whether to display comments for posts, pages, and image pages.  The default is yes for all three but I recommend disabling comments for all three for most congregation websites.
  • The customizer has a new section to allow you to choose whether to display a byline for the author of each post.  In the past the bylines were not displayed.  The default is now to display the byline.

Plugins I Found Useful

Posted on by Maggie Lynch

lightning14I decided to go with a different social plugin (part of the FB widget I chose - http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook-like-box-widget/ .  The style I chose is “Right 5″

I also wanted to let you know about three plugins I’ve found that other churches may find useful. As PHP is something I do very poorly (never learned it, just fake it if I have to) I searched for plugins that would do things for me without having to ever get into the PHP functions and change code manually. In each instance below I did get single-license pro versions of the plugins for full extensibility.

Not every congregation has the luxury of having a full time webmaster or even someone who is a programmer. In my situation, once my site goes live I’m turning the day-to-day operation over to a team of three people who will share the webmaster responsibilities. Though they are all savvy computer users, none of them are programmers or even familiar with HTML beyond the basic bold, italic, and link codes.  So, I wanted applications that they could learn and use without the need to understand or use CSS, HTML, or PHP.

User Role Editor($29 pro) - Three big things make this worthwhile to me. First is the ability to add new roles and assign capabilities (permissions) to them. Second, the ability to easily change/add more granulated permissions for already established WP user roles. Third, the ability to build all pages at the admin level and then turn them over to a content provider by a combination of role and specific page assignments on a user by user basis.  This is huge at our church because we want the content providers to maintain their own pages.

Pages by User Role ($13) - It does only one thing, but it saves a raft of trouble. It allows the administrator to identify specific pages, posts, custom posts, categories etc. to be accessed by a particular role.  This was critical for us because we are making the congregant directory available online to those who are in a role we call “member.” (Not just members of the church, but also long-time congregants/friends who support the church through participation and funds but are not members).  There will be additional content available to them (e.g., videos, special committee work, community sharing, etc.).

User Profiles Made Easy ($25) - I tried and discarded several free login and profile builders because they were either too circuitous to use or failed to have an easy integration with form building and display.  This one is pretty good (though the checkbox and radio button functionality isn’t working well).  It provides a nice front-end login & registration, the ability to build profile pages with custom fields, ability to upload a picture, and the ability for the end-user to easily identify what information they want to display and what to hide from anyone who has access to view their profile (such as in the congregant directory).

I hope someone finds these useful for their congregation as well.

Maggie Lynch
Interim Webmaster
UU Community Church of Washington County
Hillsboro, Oregon

UU2014 Public Release 1.0.4

Posted on by Dan Flippo

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Changes:

  • Replaced integration with the Sharebar plugin with embedded us of the CSS and JS from the plugin. The plugin was generating WP errors due to poor PHP but there weren’t any issues with the CSS or JS. Instead of the plugin screens, we now have a new floating widget area and you can put whatever widgets you want in there. Settings for display have been added to customizer and the Sharebar section was removed. Theme will no longer recommend installing Sharebar plugin.

UU2014 Public Release 1.0.3

Posted on by Dan Flippo

Screenshot

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I believe the UU2014 theme is now ready for public use by other UU Congregations and UU Organizations.  The theme has been approved by WordPress.org and will be publicly visible in the theme directory soon.  However, I recommend people download the current version I have posted on GitHub which will also be submitted to WordPress.org after v1.0.1 is visible (don’t want to interrupt that process).  The changes to the theme are not very large but make configuring some of the new features even easier.  I have removed the custom option screens that were in the 1.0.1 release and replaced them with very simple controls in the WordPress Theme Customizer which you can find at Appearance -> Customize in the administration menu.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues with the theme.  The latest version is already being used on this website and my own congregation’s website.

  • Dan Flippo

Detailed Change Log:

v1.0.3 - UU2014 Public Release 1.0.3

  • Updated theme to utilize the WP Customizer API for all theme settings. This eliminated the need for any custom options screens in functions.php. These settings include the content width and all integration in recommended plugins. WP Customizer allows you to see the effect of the plugin integration in the preview window. It is also cleaner and more future-proof.
  • Reformatted PHP using NetBeans
  • Regenerated Translation Files

v1.0.2 - Updated footer to include a small bit of text to track theme usage

v1.0.1 - Updates for WordPress.org Review Team

  • Removed <meta name=”description” from header.php
  • Removed hard coded RSS link in header.php.
  • Renamed all functions in functions.php to be prefixed with uu2013 including the setup_theme_admin_menus() function.
  • Added license and copyright text for images used in the theme.

v1.0.0 - Initial Release of UU2014 for public use