May 6, 2011

New Theme Options – Part 1

Three weeks ago I went live with The New ThemeShift. Apart from the redesign and complete reorganization of the website, I told you about the new theme options. In this article I’d like to go into detail and tell you more about this awesome piece of code.

What’s in Part 1 and what will Part 2 be about?

In this part I’ll showcase some of the basic features and sections of this new options panel. The second part will be is about the Developer Mode for advanced users who want to customize the theme options page. Check out part 2!

New Theme Options

The new ThemeShift theme options page is fully AJAX-driven. That means that you don’t have to deal with page loads any more when making your theme settings. This really speeds things up and is a far better user experience.

The theme options are based on the OptionTree plugin by Derek Herman from Envato. But to tailor it to my special needs it has been heavily customized by Ralf Albert to meet my requirements. Rald is a smart guy who did a fantastic job listening to my requests and making magic happen. Danke Ralf!

Styling Options

The new options panel comes with a lot more styling options than the old settings page. In a few clicks you can easily customize the logo, favicon and background images. A handy jQuery color picker let’s you change the color of different layout elements (menus, buttons, links etc.) to ANY color you prefer.

Slider Options

For the themes that include a jQuery content slider there is a new handy feature. For example in a slider on the home page you can optionally select to display the latest entries of a special category or (and that’s the new part) create static slides in no time using the slider option. No need to worry about the order you create these slides. You can reorder them via drag and drop.

You’ll find many features that come in handy when you want to customize the theme without messing around with code in the template files.

Import & Export Options

Many WordPress users first develop a site on their local computer or on a test server. In this case they’ll have to move the site before going live. To make this step as easy as possible you can export the ThemeShift options from the old install and import them into the new site with copy and paste.

Help Center

As you might have seen in the first image of this article there are useful direct links to FAQs, general usage, theme documentation and the support forum. Additionally you’ll have an extra menu called Help Center that provides important information on how to get access to the member area on ThemeShift.com and other useful information (e.g. affiliate program).

Themes & News

Like in the old ThemeShift options panel you are able to browse the latest ThemeShift themes and news in one location to stay updated.

What do you think?

What’s your feeling about this new options panel? Is there anything that is totally missing? I’d be happy to hear your opinion in the comments.