Jump Start 2.0 Beta #3

[Jason Bobich]

Thank you for your patience, everyone! Jump Start 2.0-beta3 is now available in your Downloads section, along with new sample data and a blank example child theme.

Live Demos and Sample Data

I know most of you didn’t know quite what I was up to, but the majority of this delay between beta releases has been creating these demos and working the kinks out of a built-in system that will allow you to copy them to your own sites. After watching the video tutorial, you’ll see it’s a very simple process and not quite like anything else out there.

So, please checkout the live demos and try to copy them to your own fresh installations of WordPress, as starting points for your own websites!

Video Tutorial: https://vimeo.com/123872759

• Demo #1 (default)
• Demo #2 (agency)
• Demo #3 (agency)
• Demo #4 (agency)
• Demo #5 (shop)
• Demo #6 (agency)
• Demo #7 (shop)

Plugin Compatibility

• WooCommerce: A lot of work was done to, not only add compatibility for WooCommerce, but add theme-specific enhancements. You’ll find some theme options appear on your theme options page when you activate WooCommerce. Also the live demo #5 and demo #7 are examples of online shops.
• Gravity Forms: I’ve combed through Gravity Form‘s CSS to try and get all of its options as compatible as I could (see live examples).
• Revolution Slider: I’ve added basic compatibility for Revolution Slider plugin. You’ll now find a corresponding element in the Layout Builder when the plugin is active.

A tip when using Revolution Slider element: If you’ve built a full-width or full-screen slider, use our Layout Builder’s “popout” feature in the element’s display options (see screenshot and live example).

Changelog

For you nerds that want the whole shebang of everything changed, here it is.

• Added WooCommerce support.
• Added Gravity Forms support.
• Added Revolution Slider support.
• Added “Sidebar Widgets” styling section to Theme Options for all theme bases.
• Added theme support for title-tag in WP 4.1+
• Added a little design flare to alert component, to look less Bootstrap’ish.
• Added “tb_square_medium” crop size, 500×500.
• Added filter for custom logo image in sticky menu, see tutorial.
• Added user website URL display for bbPress user profiles.
• Added custom height option for page banners.
• Added max-width option for Promo Box element.
• Added max-width and text-center options for Content element.
• Added support for new “Blend Up/Down” section display option in Builder, and increased default top/bottom padding for sections.
• Added icon/text insert to Divider element.
• Added $size param to themeblvd_post_thumbnail filter, helps FILO plugin.
• Added option to hide gutters in post showcase.
• Added option to center header logo in Super User and Executive theme bases.
• Added option to center main menu buttons in Super User and Executive theme bases.
• Added option to insert search popup into main menu for Super User and Executive theme bases.
• Added color selection to custom font option of Entrepreneur theme base.
• Added border option for content areas of all theme bases, when using the stretch layout.
• Added custom color option for main menu dividers in Super User and Executive theme bases.
• Added background color opacity option for main menu in Super User and Executive theme bases.
• Added new textures: Circles, Crystal, Hexagons, Polygons, Pyramids, Skulls, Tiles, and Waves
• Added option to shade page banner images with transparent color.
• Added filters for displaying theme menu locations, see here.
• Added video_background option type.
• Added support for responsive visibility options for columns and sections in Builder.
• Added video background support in Layout Builder sections, page banners, and theme base header background options.
• Improvements to WP [caption] shortcode, and auto lightbox integration.
• Improvements, structural changes, and option changes to header of Executive theme base.
• Improvements to displaying icons in menus, including using FontAwesome’s fa-fw class.
• Allow header in Entrepreneur theme base to be configured with no background color.
• Allow copyright helpers %site_title% and %year% to work with content element of builder (for Footer Template Sync feature).
• Mobile menu toggle button will now match menu highlight color on Entrepreneur base.
• Expanded widget area assignments, requires 1.2.4 update to Theme Blvd Widget Areas plugin.
• Expanded “background” option type image sizing options.
• Darkened body text in WordPress page editor.
• CSS tweaks to buttons.
• Improved appearance of text logo option with Entrepreneur theme base.
• Improvements to styling of default widgets with lists.
• Improvements to default WP [gallery] integration.
• Improvements (really minor) to Magnific Popup lightbox styling.
• Mobile navigation toggle now displays at tablet viewport and in right of header, across all theme bases.
• Main menu font size made smaller for tablets and sticky menu to fit more buttons.
• Updated to FontAwesome 4.3.
• Minor styling improvements for bbPress.
• Changed Jumbotron element titles to use <h2> tags to fit in with header Typography on Theme Options page.
• Improvements to Icon Box element.
• Improvements to WPML language switcher, using WPML’s various options and using on mobile.
• Simplified header padding options for Super User theme base to desktop only.
• Increased bottom margin on page titles.
• Added some very basic IE8 support.
• Fixed: Image cropping with tb_x_large, tb_large, and tb_medium sizes.
• Fixed: Post Showcase (no masonry) not displaying right with excerpts.
• Fixed: Breadcrumbs, when bbPress is installed, was taking over breadcrumbs all over the website.
• Fixed: Added missing breadcrumbs for bbPress user profiles.
• Fixed: bbPress tag_list PHP error at the top of topics when “Lead Topic” option is disabled.
• Fixed: Custom padding not applying to “popout” elements in Builder.
• Fixed: Issues with nag regarding Theme Options not matching Theme Base on initial theme install, with default Developer base selected.
• Fixed: Blog display option not displaying “full content” when selected, instead of excerpts.
• Fixed: Slider option type not allowing you to inert images less than 200px wide. This was most evident when trying to use the Partner Logos element in the Builder and using small logo images.
• Fixed: When a layout section has repeating background set to parallax, it would get stretched on mobile.
• Fixed: In Promo Box element, when button is displayed below text, text alignment should be centered.
• Fixed: Technorati image icon in social icons.
• Fixed: “Preview Changes” not working correctly when inserting current page’s content into custom layout.
• Fixed: “Save as Draft” not working for custom layout pages.
• Fixed: Issues with “Blank Page” page template.
• Fixed: themeblvd_get_option() not returning 0 string value.
• Fixed: Minor CSS issues with WordPress native self-hosted videos, mainly in Firefox.
• Fixed: Description not showing with milestone ring element.
• Fixed: Builder API function themeblvd_add_builder_element() was not outputting custom element on frontend.
• Fixed: Browser horizontal scroll bars with “Popout” selected on Column Element in Builder.
• Fixed: Heading placeholders displaying in mobile version of mega menus.
• Fixed: PHP warnings when using custom queries with Builder elements.
• Fixed: Display errors on author archives when permalinks are *disabled*.
• Fixed: When selecting “color” social icons in the header, icons didn’t display correctly in mobile menu.
• Fixed: Tooltips for social icons in mobile menu now hidden to avoid odd behavior.
• Fixed: 404 pages not displaying with same styling as all other pages, with wrapped content.
• Fixed: With image element in Builder, descriptive text will also now get used for title tag if image is a link, and thus show in lightbox popup.
• Fixed: With image element in Builder, PHP error when linking image to webpage.
• Fixed: With WPML, when creating language variation of a page, custom layout will get copied to new page.
• The following functions have been deleted. These functions were simply action wrappers. For the most part, as long as you haven’t (as suggested not to do) moved main template files header.php, footer.php, sidebar-right.php, or sidebar-left.php to your child theme, this shouldn’t effect you.
  • themeblvd_head()
  • themeblvd_before()
  • themeblvd_header_top()
  • themeblvd_header_above()
  • themeblvd_header_content()
  • themeblvd_header_menu()
  • themeblvd_header_after()
  • themeblvd_featured_start()
  • themeblvd_featured()
  • themeblvd_featured_end()
  • themeblvd_main_start()
  • themeblvd_main_top()
  • themeblvd_breadcrumbs()
  • themeblvd_before_layout()
  • themeblvd_main_bottom()
  • themeblvd_main_end()
  • themeblvd_featured_below_start()
  • themeblvd_featured_below()
  • themeblvd_featured_below_end()
  • themeblvd_footer_before()
  • themeblvd_footer_above()
  • themeblvd_footer_content()
  • themeblvd_footer_sub_content()
  • themeblvd_footer_below()
  • themeblvd_footer_after()
  • themeblvd_after()
  • themeblvd_header_logo()
  • themeblvd_header_addon()
  • themeblvd_header_menu_addon()
  • themeblvd_sidebars()

Note: Make sure to update the Theme Blvd Layout Builder plugin and Portfolios plugin, as this is required for everything you see in the live demos.

Topic

[askwpgirl]

Squeeeeeeee!!!!!

[mizzinc]

Wow!!! That’s a huge update and not an April Fools joke too.

[Israel Curtis]

been refreshing this forum twice a day for AGES… and you pick the one day I don’t trust anything on the internet to get my hopes up 😛

but it’s real!

[cfunkyk]

Siiiiiick!

[fgs]

Great Jason! Thanks for the Gravity Forms CSS tweaks!

[mike-se]

WOW!

[Wendell Harness]

So…. this is what Heaven looks like.

[askwpgirl]

Thanks for all the theme demo content. That helps immensely! And the import of the demo content is so slick! It works like a charm. WooCommerce is working great. Working with JS and WC makes me enjoy what I do.

[sharonq]

Jason – I’m a superuser who started with Jumpstart years ago and was happy with it but struggled (with a lot of your help) with getting my website the way I wanted it to be. After a break of a couple of years I’m back at website building (for myself) again – I want a professional website without paying through the nose for it – typical superuser.

I tried Genesis and Dynamik for a bit and then Types and Views bootstrap theme with the Layout plugin – both advertising easy customization and great results – and underwhelmed. I had almost given up and was starting to think I would have to buy a prebuilt theme when I saw that you had a beta of a new Jumpstart and thought I would give it a try.

All I can say is WOW for someone like me this theme is going to be dynamite. I have only been playing with it for a few hours but I was able to import the superuser demo and easily edit it. I know I’ll run into roadblocks but so far everything has been very intuitive. WIth the old Jumpstart I had to watch hours of videos and pester you with a ton of question but so far I’ve been able to find everything I needed.

Congratulations on a home run!

[Todd Wilson]

Thanks Jason for the Beta #3 update and I have some feedback as I start to demo the latest release.

Here’s the settings I’m starting with:
Theme Base : “Super User”
Active Theme : “Boxed Starter Child Theme”

The first thing I noticed when I set up the main menu is that the link color was set to white and it’s not visible on the existing default background color. It felt like this might be a nice option to include the ability to adjust the menu link color. I checked the link colors and my default settings show variations of blue, so I realized that wasn’t intended to affect the main menu links.

Next, I wanted to start by adding a google font (Open Sans) and apply it to all of the headlines. I found that since there was an overriding value in the theme preventing the google font from being applied:

jumpstart-boxed/style.css:53
font-family: bold;

It’s an easy fix and once it’s adjusted to font-weight then the custom google font is applied. I’m just getting all of my WP files updated and will let you know if I find anything else that might be helpful.

Thanks again for all the hard work you are doing.

[askwpgirl]

Hi Todd,

I’m a Jump Start user. I was following this thread and saw your post come through.

Please note that you can’t use those old Jump Start 1.x child themes with the new Jump Start 2.0 parent theme.

Please download and use the new child theme that Jason posted in the Downloads area of your account specifically for Jump Start 2.0.

The style.css file is blank, but if you need to grab the selectors easily to change something, you can find them here:

* For the styling specific to each theme base, look in the base folder in the jumpstart folder for the Theme Base name you are using. In that folder will be a file called base.css. This determines the default styling for the Theme Base, some of which can be modified in the Styles tab of the Appearance > Theme Options.

* For the general container widths and @media queries, look in the jumpstart assets > css > theme.css file.

Just copy what you need into your style.css file in your child theme.

Note: if you copy a selector for the base.css file into your child theme’s style.css, the properties set in your child theme’s style.css will override the styling set in the Style tab of the Theme Options.

I’ve found that I haven’t had to add too many selectors to my child theme’s style.css, and it’s been a cleaner way to develop to start with it being blank.

I hope this helps!

Angela

[Todd Wilson]

Hi Angela,

I must have overlooked that theme in the Downloads folder and I do normally start with the Blank Child Theme but I haven’t had a chance to get familiar with the new Theme Base setup.

Thanks for the quick follow-up and for clarifying those styling customization points. I also agree that it’s much better to start with the blank theme and only add what you need.

[askwpgirl]

Hi Todd,

No problem. I teach a 6-week course on theme customization, and we use Jump Start for theme in the class. With Jump Start 2.0, all my past students are asking about the child themes. The whole concept of Theme Bases takes some getting used to. We all loved and got used to our favorite child themes! 🙂 Good luck! Have fun!

I miss having all my selectors, but I’m getting used to it. I usually copy over the container width selectors and the @media queries for them and all the header and navigation items. I’m kind of liking how Zen it feels now.

A

[sharonq]

Any idea when the Beta will go live? I am really loving it – so far I have managed all my customizations without touching the css. LIkely that will end soon but I am really impressed with what I can do so far.

One question – is there any way to leave the selections opened when editing the layout.

In order for me to change the text in a column and then see how it looks and change it again I have to Show elements options then click on columns, then edit content options, then make my change, save it, update the page, go and view the page and decide if I like what I did and then go back and do it all over again.

As soon as I click “update” everything closes – is there any way to default to leaving them open?

[Jason Bobich]

Hi guys!

Thanks for all the kind words. I’m thrilled to see all of the positive feedback.

@todoubled I apologize for the confusion here. The sample child theme you’re using is for Jump Start v1, and it’s not meant to go with Jump Start v2. These two things shouldn’t be used together. But the good news is that anything accomplished by the previous sample child themes I was including can be done (and much more) through the user options provided via theme bases.

If you’re looking for a child theme starting point to then move forward with customization, grab the one in your Downloads, specifically designated for Jump Start v2.

@sharonq

Any idea when the Beta will go live?

This beta-3 was the final beta; it was more of a release candidate. I won’t be adding more features at this point for 2.0, but just making sure any bugs are fixed. But to this point, a lot has been fixed. So, I’m definitely in the final stages. I’m working on the logistics of selling, marketing materials, documentation, etc.

As soon as I click “update” everything closes – is there any way to default to leaving them open?

Unfortunately no it’s not easily achievable because it’s all tied to WordPress’s update button of the page. Any solution to accomplish this would add a certain bit of weight to the loading of everything. — Some sort of cookie would need to be stored and updated with every click you make in the Builder, and then when the page loads after saving, there’d have to be an extra javascript process where that cookie is read and then opens up all the panels back the way you had it.

So while this is possible, you could see how it would add a lot of weight to a process that already is a bit on the heavy side, in loading the Edit Page screen.

An alternative though is to build your page as a template over in the Templates section of your WP admin. Then just sync that template to your page. When working in the Templates, the page does not refresh when saving, and so you get the result you’re asking about.

[Author]

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