First of all I would like to say thanks to everyone who downloaded our Shell-Lite Theme. Since 07/26/2011 Shell has been downloaded 12,764 and the numbers are growing on daily basis.
NOTE: We cannot stress enough the importance of Child Theme while making any customizations to Shell-Lite files directly. Anything you change and if you are not using a Child Theme will be overwritten with this or any other future upgrades. Also note that same applies to all Themes out there, not just Shell.
You can use the sample (fully working) Child Theme which is included since day one (the first release) or grab the zipped Child Theme here. If you want to learn more about Child Themes please refer to the following links:
- http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
- http://themeid.com/forum/topic/3/use-child-theme-for-personal-customizations/
- http://wordpress.tv/2011/08/20/jane-wells-appearance-is-everything-customizing-your-theme/
What is new in 1.4.1 version?
- Blog Excerpt Template: blog-excerpt.php in addition to standard Blog posts. Blog Excerpt Template is for users that don’t want full posts (also know as posts summary).
- Author Meta (Author’s Box) just in case user’s would like to display “About Me” box. Good thing about Author Meta is that this box will display only if an author enters their Biographical Info. Please note that if you have a plugin you will need to deactivate the plugin. Shell’s Author Meta uses the latest WordPress Codex functions. Sadly over 98% of “Author’s Box” codes that you can find online are using deprecated functions and they are not good for Themes and Plugins as well. WordPress is being updated constantly and our Theme functions must follow that as well.
- Templates files such as blog.php, blog-excerpt.php as well as images.php and archives are now with unique DIV IDs to give you more control over Child Theme development. These IDs are in addition to Shell Grid classes and they will not impact your current design.
Bugs?
Yes, there are some bugs in previous 1.3.1 version and all of them are addressed:
- All Theme files had PHP Comments (headings) and they were referring to Shell instead of Shell-Lite. This does not affect your site in any way because these are just comments such as: * @filesource wp-content/themes/shell/example.php while it should be * @filesource wp-content/themes/shell-lite/example.php
- comments.php, functions.php and footer.php files had few names without a textdomain. Textdomain is used for Theme Localization (translations) which is going to be available down the road.
- Modernizr JS version had a small bug in version control.
Other Changes
- Post Data CSS margin-top:20px was added for better readability.
- shell-child-theme.zip folder is removed. This was an extra and not really needed in Theme. To avoid confusion sample Child Theme is left in non-zipped folder.
Husband, Father, WordPress Theme Review Admin, Chicago Fire fan and creator of Responsive Theme. What more do you need?
Congratz on the new version Emil!
The author box is really a great improvment… will take a look at the function and implement on my new design if i’m allowed to ^^
Thank you so much. See we listened and integrated the Author’s Box
I noticed that it’s very hard to get indexed a wordpress website when using the Shell Lite Template.
Not sure why but after a week all my posts are still not indexed.
Usually I can get them indexed in 2 days…
Hi,
I don’t think that Theme is preventing indexing John, there is something else going on. The reason why is because Shell is properly structured for best Search Engine indexing and tested on many sites before we actually released this to the public. I would check your meta tags and make sure that everything is all right there, also please see http://www.google.com/webmasters from there you will be able to see why your site is not indexing in right away.
If you need further assistance please go to http://themeid.com/forum
Thanks!