One of the main features of our WordPress Themes is the widgetized Magazine Homepage template and the corresponding Magazine Posts widgets. The included Magazine widgets show posts from a selected category in different layout styles and allow users to create a magazine-styled homepage with just a few clicks.
Using widgets for the Magazine sections turned out to be one of the most flexible and easiest ways for users, but the widget were very difficult to extend for developers. If you want to change anything beside simple CSS modifications, you basically had to re-create the complete widget in a child theme.
We spent the last weeks to rewrite all Magazine widgets from scratch to make them more extendable for developers. Now the Magazine Widgets can be easily overriden with a child theme to make modifications. We also improved the performance of database queries by adding transient caching.
Magazine Boxed Widget
The Magazine Boxed widget was one of the more complex widgets because it included two different post layouts. To simplify the widget settings and the technical implemention we have splitted the widget into two new widgets called Magazine Horizontal Box and Magazine Vertical Box.
Please take a look at the Magazine widgets after the update to check if they still display fine. You might have to switch widgets if you prefer the vertical box layout.
Post Meta Settings
The general post meta settings are now applied to the Magazine widgets as well. It was often confusing for users when they had disabled the post date or author in the post settings, but the Magazine widget still showed the post details.
In some themes, the Magazine widgets always showed post meta like date and author and could not be hidden. Other themes supported individual widget settings to disable post meta. With the new update we simplified the post meta settings and made the experience across all themes consistent. We have therefore removed all individual post meta settings from the Magazine Widgets.
The date, author, categories and tags of posts can now be enabled / disabled in one central place: Appearance → Customize → Theme Options → Post Settings
Content Templates (for developers)
We have added new template files with the latest update, which you can find in /template-parts/widgets/ in the theme folder. All Magazine widgets now use these new template files to output the widget content. You can simply copy the template file in a child theme to override it and make modifications to the HTML output of every Magazine widget.
Pluggable Template Functions (for developers)
Before the update, each Magazine Widget class included own functions to display the widget title or post meta. We have removed these widget class methods and created general template functions which you can now find in the /inc/magazine.php file of the theme folder. All template functions are pluggable and can be overriden in the functions.php of a child theme.
Affected Themes
- Admiral
- Beetle
- Gambit
- Gridbox
- Maxwell
- Napoli
- Palm Beach
- Pocono
- Poseidon
- Tortuga
- WorldStar
- zeeDynamic
All Pro Add-ons for these themes were updated accordingly.
Any questions?
If you have any questions or noticed any bugs please let us know. You can write to us at support@themezee.com or get in touch with our contact form.