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WordPress is imposing a major new requirement for themes beginning very soon.
All themes will be required to use the Customizer interface for options in the base theme, and not be allowed to have the Theme Options style of options as currently used by Weaver Xtreme. Existing themes will be allowed to remain in the repository, but will not be allowed to have updates if there is a traditional option interface. This is a truly significant change.
After some checking, it looks as if at least 50% of existing themes with significant number of Theme Options have not done anything about this new requirement.
Fortunately, there is a major loophole / escape hatch in the new requirement. Plugins can do pretty much anything they want! So, beginning with Weaver Xtreme version 2.0, there will be essentially no options provided with the base theme. The current existing Theme Option interface will be instead moved to the Weaver Xtreme Theme Support plugin. This will be rolled out in such a way that the Theme Support plugin will have the options interface built in well before the 2.0 theme is released, and for those with the plugin installed and up to date will see virtually no change in how Weaver Xtreme operates.
I suspect many other themes are planning on a similar upgrade process – no immediate move to Customizer, but providing the options via a plugin. There is at least one theme in the WP repository that does have a dual option interface – one for Customizer, one the traditional Theme Options interface. The options seem to be essential duplicated in each interface. This is what currently is the ultimate goal for Weaver Xtreme – a dual option interface.
At this point, I do anticipate moving the pre-defined subtheme selection from the current “Theme Options” interface to the Customizer interface. This will both provide some kind of option interface for anyone without the Theme Support plugin, and begin an eventual process of duplicating many of the Theme Options in the Customizer option interface. The goal is to eventually have a significant subset of the total options available from Customizer, while retaining the current Theme Options interface for the foreseeable future via the Theme Support plugin.
So, to summarize:
- Weaver Xtreme 2.0 will be released later in 2015 without the existing Theme Options interface.
- The Theme Options will be included with the Weaver Xtreme Theme Support plugin. There will be no significant options available without the plugin.
- The transition from Weaver Xtreme 1.x to 2.0 will be essentially seamless for current users.
- Weaver Xtreme will eventually provide a significant, but not totally complete, set of options from the Customizer interface. The goal is to have the ability to use either interface at the same time. One of the biggest advantages of the Customizer interface is its ability to immediately show the effects of the new option setting on a live version of your site.
- The current Theme Options interface will be available for the foreseeable future.
Sounds good, Are you (should you) plan a beta for the first version that will have all the options in the plugin.It may not be a complex code change but it touches a lot of stuff 🙂This, of course, will require beta testing. Will release the 1.3 version first – get it in before the Customizer deadline.
The main challenge of the goal of a dual but equivalent pair of option interfaces will be to get them to work together, hopefully using the same database settings.
Dumb question perhaps, what is the “Customizer”? Is that the selection in Dashboard – Appearance – Customize?
And maybe a premature question, but I’ll probably not want to be an early adopter to the new upgrades: Any negative consequences to staying with the current WeaverX, any new features I’d be missing out on?
The Customizer is exactly that: Dashboard -> Appearance -> Customize.
Other that really being required to install the Weaver Xtreme Theme Support plugin to get the option screen, there will be no significant changes to the interface. All this really involves is moving some code from one place (in the theme code base) to another (the Theme Support plugin). This isn’t much different than how Weaver Xtreme Plus works now. (And Weaver Xtreme Plus will continue to work, as well).
The automatic update path for the theme and plugins is pretty difficult to avoid for any length of time, so we will really recommend that everyone move to the new version.
I don’t really know about new features. There aren’t a bunch of outstanding feature requests I know about, but this would be the time to make them:
http://forum.weavertheme.com/categories/feature-suggestionsThe Customizer is exactly that: Dashboard -> Appearance -> Customize.
Thanks for answering that. And yes, I agree with WP designers that it can be a bit of a problem. Both of the themes I use (Weaver Xtreme and Suffusion) have their own theme options menus, with some items duplicated and conflicting with items in the Customizer area and other WP settings.
Being forced to move the theme options though, will that take away the theme developers’ freedom to design their own user interfaces, which are generally much better than the standard WP menus?The solution to this issue that Weaver Xtreme will use gets around the issue by moving the options interface to a plugin, and so there will be no change to our users. (Well, the Appearance menu label is likely to change from “Theme Options” to “Weaver Xtreme Dashboard” because they won’t allow “options” on that menu any more. Other than that – it will be seamless.
Is this change is WordPress supposed to be an “improvement”? Seems very drastic, and I don’t see the benefits for anyone.
The underlying goal I believe is to force developers to move towards a more interactive (WYSIWYG) type of interface so WordPress becomes a more user friendly environment.This is a legitimate goal, But its implementation leaves to be desired.They should have started by working with theme developers to develop a Customizer framework that could support rich feature sets like in Weaver themes.Instead, they are forcing the change on the developers when the Customizer is still rudimentary and mostly inadequate, and that is pretty lame.The fact is that very few themes have the rich set of options found in Weaver. There are a few others that have a pretty decent set of options, but not that many.
So Customizer is really directed at what is probably a big majority of themes that have maybe 10 or 20 options.
One of the main features of Weaver’s interface (at least that’s what I think) is the fairly complete inline explanation of each option. That is very hard to duplicate with Customizer. On the other hand, on can simply try an option and see the results in a second or two (depending on your server’s speed and response time.) That is a different workflow model than is allowed by the current Weaver option set.
But it is what it is. The announcement was made in April with a 6 month deadline. The decision was made by the core theme reviewer group – and probably less than 10 people were really involved in the decision. There was no significant input taken from the hundreds of theme developers, and once it was made, there simply was no give or take – it was an irrevocable edict that this is how it would be. The main concession is that themes can do what Weaver is doing – put the interface into a plugin. And that will work, and be essentially seamless.
Ok, Weaver. I’m glad that you are working to work around the lame edict that has been placed on us. I agree, extremely lame. I have been using Weaver Pro II since, I dunno, probably just after it was released. I have several sites on the Weaver Pro II, and will eventually upgrade. However, I have a new client so need a theme to build that site on. Do I go ahead with the Weaver Extreme Plus now? Then just install the plugin when it is available?
Yes, no worry, there will be a seamless transition from the current 1.3 version to the 2.0 version.There wont be any additional plugins, The free Weaver Xtreme Theme Support plugin already holds a lot of the options, and will just be holding all of them in the future. But it wont look any different than today to the user. Changes will just take place in the background.Do you have instructions for the upgrade path from Weaver Pro II to Weaver Extreme Plus?
Actually I guess I should ask, “Where do I find the instructions to upgrade?”Here in the Weaver X Tutorials and hints section
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