Development

We recently released a major PTB update, today we are dropping more new features for PTB. The new version of PTB provides better integrations between Builder Pro and third-party post types. PTB is no longer limited to just adding custom fields for third-party post types. You can create archive templates for any custom post type and display them. If you are using PTB and Builder Pro to build dynamic sites, you will love this new update. The latest version allows you to display PTB search results on the Advanced Posts module. Discover more details in this post.

Post Type Builder (PTB) has been a great tool for non-coders to add custom post types without writing any code. It allows users to build custom advanced sites such as property listing, movie reviews, classified listing, user submission sites, etc. Today we are excited to announce a major update of PTB v2. The new version has added many new features and improvements. It has been improved with better compatibility between the addons and third-party themes/plugins, especially Builder Pro. You can use PTB to add custom post types, taxonomies, and custom fields; then use Builder Pro to design the templates and display the custom fields using the dynamic content feature. This new version is much better than before. We highly recommend you try the update on a staging site before rolling to the live site as it is a major update. If you've built something cool with PTB, please submit it to our showcase or comment in this post. We are planning to feature some user sites created with PTB.

Today we are proud to announce the long anticipated v7 release! Since our last major update (v5), we've been planning to further improve the pagespeed and performance of our themes and the Builder. The v5 update focused on the frontend pagespeed, whereas v7 is for the backend performance. The main goal is to make our themes faster and with better stability. We've re-coded many components in the backend to optimize the overall code — less database queries and lighter code (PHP/Javascript/CSS). We are happy to see many of our user sites getting A+ score on Google Pagespeed Insights (see some of our featured user sites and showcase). This update will make our themes much faster and better!

A significant frontend change in v7 is the Builder row grid system. We've replaced the old CSS flexbox to CSS grid to handle the Builder grid system. Using the CSS grid gives more layout possibilities such as adding unlimited columns, column re-ordering, and creating tiled-like grids.

This is a big update, so we jumped from version 5 to 7. Due to the data structure and grid system changes, we highly recommend not to downgrade your theme once it is upgraded to v7 (read the important notes at the end of this post for more details). Please be advised that all Builder addons and Builder Pro must be updated as well in order to use with v7. Testing the theme update on a development/staging site is recommended.

AFTER UPDATE: If you have any cache plugin or server-side cache and CDN tools (eg. Cloudflare), please remember to clear their cache. If you have Cloudflare Rocket Loader, server cache and mod_pagespeed enabled and experiencing issues, try to disable them.

Since the release of Themify v7 Beta, many users asked about the official v7 release. Today we have good news, the v7 is close to final. We are just finishing off the minor issues and doing final testing on our demos. Having said that, we have the final v7 beta version available. We would like to invite you to test out the final beta and let us know if you spot any issues. If everything goes well, the final v7 should be released in 2 weeks.

Download v7 Beta and Install

• Download themify-beta.zip (don't extract the zip file). NOTE: If you previously have Themify Beta theme installed, you can use the Themify Updater to update it to latest version without having to reinstall it.
• With any of your test/dev WordPress sites (please don't install Beta version on live sites): go to Appearance > Themes, click "Add New" > click "Upload Theme", then upload the themify-beta.zip and activate the theme. If you already have Themify Beta installed previously, you can use Themify Updater plugin to auto update (you should see the update notification on the admin area if you have Themify Updater activated).
• NOTE: The Beta version doesn't work with the current Builder addons and Builder Pro. Please deactivate them prior to testing the Beta version.

We might seem quiet lately, but we are actually working very hard on a major framework update. It is so BIG that we had to skip a version. We've jumped from version 5 to 7. The reason we skipped a version is because we don't recommend downgrading your Themify themes after upgrading to v7. For this reason, we are releasing a beta version so you can try it before updating your themes.

The last v5 update focused on the frontend performance and we are happy to see many of our users' sites getting A+ score on Google Pagespeed Insights. In this v7 update, we re-coded a lot of components in the backend to optimize the framework and Builder's performance. Another significant change in v7 is the Builder row grid. We've changed the Builder row to use CSS grid in replacement of flexbox in the old version. Using the CSS grid gives more layout possibilities such as adding unlimited columns, column reordering, and creating tiled grids.

The Beta theme is based on Ultra using the latest v7 framework. Please help us test it on your staging/development sites (do not use it on any live site). As a friendly reminder, the Beta theme doesn't work with any of the current Builder addons and Builder Pro yet (please disable them prior to your test). Have fun with the beta version and let us know what you find.

Themify just got another awesome update with more new features and improvements. The Themify Updater has got better and better. Now you can install the required plugins without leaving the demo import lightbox. Other highlighted features include: accent colors, HTML/CSS editor, row/column clickable link, and dev mode. Read on this post for more details.