The much anticipated PremiumPress 9.0 theme updates are soon to be released!
The purpose of this blog post is to address some of the common questions receieved and help ease everyone’s mind regarding new releases.
Before I begin it’s worth noting that updates are completely optional, they will NOT happen automatically. It is your choice to update and updated are not for everyone, so please read more about updated before you proceed to alter your website.
When is the next update?
Below is the anticipated release dates for the new PremiumPress 9.0 theme releases.
Real Estate Theme – March 25th 2018
Directory Theme / Coupon Theme – April 25th 2018
Auction Theme / Classifieds Theme – May 25th 2018
Comparison Theme / Video Theme – June 25th 2018
Dating Theme / Car Dealer – July 25th 2018
Shop theme – Aug 25th 2018
Note that these will be stable releases only, updates using the updater tool in the admin panel will follow once all themes are released.
What has changed?
Over the past 12/16 months since the last major update a lot has changed; mobile design has improved, web applications have grown smarter and new CSS/javascript frameworks have been released.
Since all PremiumPress themes are based on the popular Twitter bootstrap framework, we have been eagerly awaiting the stable release of version 4.0 for over a year.
Finally in January 2018 the new CSS framework was released and since then we’ve been working hard to update all our themes.
https://blog.getbootstrap.com/2018/01/18/bootstrap-4/
With a new CSS framework comes lots of new design options, our primary focus for version 9.0 is mobile interaction therefore you’ll find more lightweight, optimized and easier to use website features that allow quicker and smarter user interaction.
Essentially we are moving away from bulky, bloated desktop themes to faster, smoother and more elegant mobile friendly designs.
Why the new CSS framework?
Since 2015 we started releasing new theme updates every few weeks, constantly building on the old CSS framework that we had. It was in the latter end of 2016 that mobile deign really took over and this is when we had to rethink our approach.
It made more practical sense to wait for the new release of the Twitter bootstrap CSS framework than to simply add-on more and more code to accomplish simpler and simpler tasks.
With the release of the new Twitter bootstrap code, we hope to be able to build more practical applications and designs on a scablable foundation.
How will this affect my business?
When updating an entire framework with a new CSS foundation its inevitable that some design related features will be compromised, there is no exception here.
We understand that its not ideal and if it was avoidable we would have, however building a system with a solid foundation is the key to growth and success in any business.
We hope by deploying the new CSS framework and by building all our themes around this that you and your business will thrive for longer and with more options for growth and expansion.
What does this mean? Well, for starters it means we’ve had to redevelop the entire PremiumPress core framework to work with the new mobile friendly framework.
To put this into context, the old theme download was 14.6MB the new version is only 2.2MB.
We have stripped away all the old code, rewritten and optimised, reconfigured and restructured to produce something we feel will help our clients grow in today’s every-changing and demanding environment.
New Child Themes designs
It took us years to build the large collection of child theme designs we currently have now.
The new CSS framework means that the old designs will or may not function the same, therefore we have the painstaking task of redeveloping each and every child theme from scratch.
We hope that you’ll appreciate the new designs a lot more and be able to find a suitable design to fit your business.
The next steps…
We are working day and night to bring you the new framework and we appreciate your patience and understanding during this process.
It’s understandable that you may have many questions and ideas that you want to share with us and we are always egar to listen.
However, we want to ensure that we release the new framework on-time so please bear with us while we push onward and hold your questions until after the initial theme releases.
Thank you to everyone for your support and commitment,
Kind Regards
Mark Fail
