Tag Archives: WordPress

Smart 1.0.3 is now available

On November 27, 2017

We’re glad to announce the release of Smart 1.0.3, which is the most powerful version of our theme to this day. This release comes packed with a lot of improvements, fixes and new features that we’re sure you’re really going to like, so let’s get into the most important details.

Visual Composer’s Front-End Editor

Since this version, we’re including in Smart this very much requested feature of Visual Composer, which will help you preview your pages while you’re creating them. We have written a helpful article explaining how to use this new feature, which you can find here.

Transparent header for mobile viewports

Something that web designers need often is to use a transparent background for their site’s header. The default behavior for Smart’s transparent header is to fallback to a solid background on mobile viewports, but some users expressed the need to show a transparent header for mobile sizes too. Before Smart 1.0.3, that was only possible by adding some custom CSS, but now we have made this feature available through the Theme Settings page, in “Header > Design > Transparent Header (Mobile)”.

Sticky header for mobile viewports

Sticky or fixed site headers are very popular, since you can make your site’s main navigation area “follow” your visitors while they scroll down a page. Sometimes that is not a recommended practice for the mobile version of a site, since the header can take a lot of space in small devices, and that’s why Smart doesn’t enable sticky headers in mobile by default. However, not all sites are built the same, so since version 1.0.3 you can also have a sticky header for mobile viewports by checking the option in “Theme Settings > Header > Animation > Fixed Position Header (Mobile)”.

WPML certification

The team behind WPML tested Smart recently and they just certified the theme as multilingual ready. Smart 1.0.3 includes some adjustments for our WPML integration, such as new styles for the language switchers, matching the general look and feel of the theme. Read more about this here.

Better PHP Performance

As you may know, one of our main goals for Smart is to make it fast and stable. We’ve been working hard on that since the theme’s first available version, and we just went a step further in Smart 1.0.3, where we implemented a new PHP file loading method and reorganized our folder structure to make loading times shorter. Please note this new file loading method is only available if you are using our framework’s version 2.0.6 or higher.

Wrapping Up

So those are the most important items for this version, but there’s also a lot of minor improvements and fixes. You can check the full list here.

Get Smart 1.0.3

If you’re already using Smart, we recommend to update both theme and framework to get all the latest features and improvements. Just register your copy on “Smart > Product Registration” inside your site’s admin panel, then go to “Smart > Support & Updates”, and get the newest versions there.

And if you still don’t have Smart (why?), or in case you need an additional license for a new site, you can get it from ThemeForest right here.

Where are the demo sites?

You can check a whole lot of things you can do with Smart on our demo site. In fact, you can even use our One-Click Importer, which is included in the theme, to replicate any of those sites into your own WordPress installation, so you don’t need to start everything from scratch.

What’s next for Smart?

We’re currently working on our next major release, Smart 1.1, which will include some great new customization features, by extending and improving our compatibility and integration with popular plugins, such as WooCommerce, Visual Composer and Slider Revolution.

And, as we’ve been saying, even tough Smart is the fastest multipurpose theme you can find, we’re always working on performance improvements, so your site gets even faster with every major update.

So just go update Smart to version 1.0.3 and get a lot of new features to build your website.

Smart is now certified by WPML

On November 6, 2017

Written by Andrés Villarreal

Follow @andrezrv_hq

Hi there, everyone! You may have already guessed what we’re about to tell you by just reading the title, but let us guide you through some fine details.

In the past few weeks, we’ve been working hard on a new release of Smart, our great multipurpose theme. Version 1.0.3 comes with a lot of improvements, fixes and new features (which we’ll cover in another article), but there’s one that stands out: Smart is now certified to be 100% compatible with WPML.

Meet Smart, The Most Versatile WordPress Theme Ever

On June 26, 2017

Written by Juanfra Aldasoro

Follow @juanfraa

We’re introducing Smart, our largest and best WordPress Theme ever released. If you are looking for the ultimate WordPress theme then Smart just might be it.

Page Builder

Smart is a powerful, stylish and completely customizable multi-purpose WordPress theme. It comes packaged with an implementation of an extremely flexible and popular WordPress Theme Page Builder and an extensive and powerful set of features and functionality.

It has an advanced drag-and-drop page builder together with a robust collection of elements that let you create truly unique and dynamic pages from the ground up, giving you complete control of the layout and design of your site without needing to learn code.

There are no limitations as to how builder elements can be customized and arranged, giving anyone the ability to create truly dynamic websites with ease.

Demo Importer

The Demo Importer let you the any of the Smart packed demo content and choose from a selection of hundreds of amazing pre-designed layouts.

The theme gives you complete creative control to build countless layouts any type of mobile-friendly website you want. Even for navigation layouts.

WooCommerce Integration

It also comes with Ecommerce Integration, including WooCommerce support, a couple of premade store layouts, and special functionalities to create a unique and complete web shop in minutes.

Responsive & Retina Ready

Responsive Design is crucial these days. Smart is responsive and the layout has been designed with mobile devices in mind. No matter how you use it your website will be accessible and readable on all devices.

Theme Options Panel

The powerful and intuitive theme options panel will let you customize your entire site style with a few clicks. The Theme Options Panel allows you to toggle on and off features, adjust your layout, control colors, optimize for search engines, performance and more.

Thousands of Features

With unlimited options, and hundreds of features (like picking your own fonts, CSS animations, thousands of icons, translation and RTL support), Smart is your best ally to create a fantastic WordPress website.

Start creating with Smart

What’s new in WordPress 4.1?

On December 11, 2014

Written by Juanfra Aldasoro

Follow @juanfraa

Differently from version 4.0, WordPress 4.1 aims up the ante in bringing a majority of the WP users to the center stage, offering a number of new features that promise to make their lives easier in their day to day interactions. This version will be released in mid December with the following prominent feature upgrades from its previous iterations:

Distraction Free Writing Mode

Focus on your writing, and nothing else. This new feature enables efficient switching between normal writing mode and distraction free editor for WordPress bloggers to ensure hassle-free and productive blogging capabilities. It’s something similar to the current full screen distraction free writing mode, which lacks the necessary features and tools such as quick access to all meta boxes within a single toolbar included in this new “Distraction Free Writing Mode”.

WordPress 4.1 Distraction Free Writing Mode

Twenty Fifteen – The New Default Theme

The nicest WordPress default theme so far. Perhaps the most significant leap toward beautifying the WordPress platform for end users is the inclusion of the Twenty Fifteen theme by default in the 4.1 release. The blog-focused theme is developed with a particular attention to the typography, with the main navigation menu and logo within the sidebar, further emphasising on the content. It comes with a variety of different color schemes and it is really flexible when it comes to customisation. You can change colors, backgrounds for different sections and much more.

The Twenty Fifteen theme, customised with a nice background image

Twenty Fifteen comes with a variety of different color schemes

Select2 inclusion for Drop-down lists

WordPress 4.1 will offer to include Select2 directly from core. Select2 is a popular script to create drop down lists that supports searching, remote data sets, and infinite scrolling of results. If you’re a WooCommerce user, you may have seen this popular select tool within the options panel, or during checkout for the country selection. One of the good features of this module is that the contents for the drop-down list can be loaded to the browser only when required and will therefore save chunks from the overall weight of the website. This new feature might be invisible to users, but for sure will benefit both: developers and users.

Install New Language Packs from the Dashboard

2014 has been the year in which non-english WordPress downloads surpased english downloads.WordPress adoption is expanding exponentially across the globe, and the upcoming iteration will include additional language installation packs available via dashboard. This functionality will further shrink the language barrier to WP adoption in a bid to improve convenience for end users. With the 4.1 installed, you can select from a range of language options available in the Site Language section of the Admin area.

You can install new language packs directly from the dashboard

Automated Image Formatting

Another step forward on the quest for simplifying the process of writing for everybody. Often, WordPress newbies find formatting images an arduous task due to the complex image alignment functionality for earlier versions of the platform. WordPress 4.1 boasts inline image editing capabilities to automate the process of image formatting and alignment with a few quick clicks and without having to open the image editor, but inline.

WordPress 4.1 Image Formatting Tool

New Session Management Options

In context of the ongoing security concerns haunting WP users, the WordPress 4.1 version will introduce a new session management function to monitor and keep track of user session activities. The system will show valuable information such as log-in time, originating IP address and session expiry date and time. Users can also log out all session from a single interface in the new beta version.

WordPress 4.1 Session Manager

If you are willing to test the new version, you can use the Beta Tester plugin to install WP 4.1 Beta before the final release, which is planned for December 16th. The upcoming iteration promises new capabilities and features that are relevant to average WordPress users, developers and should improve productivity with the most popular CMS and blogging platform.