This week we added some very cool updates to the the Elemental framework which make the homepage and sidebars even more flexible. Thanks to everyone in the forums for making great feature suggestions.
So what’s different?
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Optional Homepage Sidebar
Some people have asked to be able to differentiate between the righthand sidebar on the homepage and the sidebar which displays elsewhere throughout the site. So we’ve added a new widgetized region called “home sidebar” which is empty by default.
New Widgetized Homepage Sidebar
When empty, it just defaults to the contents of “main sidebar”. When filled with widgets, it becomes its own unique sidebar which displays only the homepage. This is a great solution for people who want certain advertisements to show up on the homepage and others on interior pages.
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Optional Two-Column Homepage Layout
What if you want to use your new unique homepage sidebar, but have no need for the middle column? Simply remove all widgets from the middle column and your layout now goes seamlessly from this…
Three Columns
…to this…
Two Columns
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New Dynamic <body> Classes
Elemental’s biggest strength is providing hooks that make styling it as easy and flexible as possible. One great way to provide for that is including dynamic classes that allow for better CSS specificity. In other words, unique styles for unique sections.
New Body Classes
The new additions include:
- Classes for both parent category and child category
- A class for “currentMonth”. Seasonal styling made easy!
More Improvements!
In addition to these free upgrades, Elemental has already added these changes since its release last month:
- Improvements to the URL structure in the “Share This” widget for better SEO
- A new single-post template (“Post Comments Sidebar”) which publishes content at full width and puts sidebar widgets adjacent to the comments area
- Improved coding in the Sitemap template which makes far fewer calls to the database and considerably reduces memory usage.
- The “Home” tab active state issue was fixed
So if you haven’t already done it, go log in to your account and enjoy some free upgrades on us! Be sure to check out the changelog, too, if you want to see exactly what code was edited.
Existing Elemental users, keep an eye on your Elemental dashboard widget for ongoing announcements.
Elemental is a clean & powerful blog framework for WordPress packed with options for customizable layouts, typography, navigation, widgets, page templates and more.
