Custom Community 2.0 – Get Ready To Play

CC2-news

YES! We just finished a big new update for the next and probably last beta version of Custom Community 2.0 Theme. And we also just released the first beta version of the CC2 Premium Pack Plugin!

 

So, what’s new?

 

New Design

We put a lot of love into the new design, which feels like 98% finished now. Except you have good reasons that something feels still not finished here – please write us your personal feeling on this!

Homepage_Example_wSlider_light_02

 

New Slideshow

One very most asked feature was to customize the slider’s width or height and to simply be able to choose some images you wanna slide. And yeah, we added all that.

highlights-cc2-slideshow

 

Taken To A Whole New Level

We’ve put a lot of thoughts into a new beautiful and ultra-lightweight slider. No additional scripts needed than just the Bootstrap Carousel, combined with easy options, and much more customization possibilities than the old CC1 slider had. (More post slider options coming in pro version!)

highlights-cc2-slideshow-setup

 

highlights-cc2-new-sidebars

More Sidebar Layouts added

Another most asked feature reqeust – so now you can have also 2 sidebars, left and right side.

 

highlights-cc2-more-options

More Theme Options added

Too many to list them all up here! :)
But few options still missing, they’re coming next.

 

New Premium Dashboard

We added a new nice Premium Dashboard so you instantly get an overview of all Premium Features – and for the Beta Version, you also see the current development status on each! ;)

Custom-Community-2-Premium-Dashboard

 

highlights-cc2-less-compiling

LessPHP Compiling (premium)

Compile your setup with LESS. Reduced output, faster pageload.

 

highlights-cc2-variable-handling

Smarter Variable Handling (premium)

Some theme options modify Bootstrap variables directly. This way you have much leaner CSS, we don’t need to overwrite anything of Bootstrap’s CSS, and we have much more possibilities for smarter options.

 

highlights-cc2-shortcodes

New Shortcodes (premium)

20+ shortcodes for columns, tabs, bars,… Add all the cool Bootstrap elements in seconds.

 

Simplified Markup

Simpler PHP and HTML

No HTML is hidden in complex functions. Instead, we brought as much as possible into the templates, with the easiest markup possible. Everywhere possible we avoided to hook or create new dependencies. This makes the template files much easier and customizable than they were in Custom Community 1.x versions.

We simplified and rethought every line of code, so child theming gets as easy as possible for you.

Leaner CSS

Super lean and short CSS, around 10% of the amount that it was in versions 1.x of Custom Community!

Inline Help

All theme files with detailed inline documentation with helpful comments by the theme authors.

Better Readability

We take our time to polish and format the code just to make it most easily readable and beautiful.
(Just as we are still working on the code a lot, not all is cleaned up yet..)

 

See The New Demo

The new demo site is just being build here:
https://themekraft.com/custom-community-wordpress-theme/

 

Download the BETA here

DO NOT UPDATE YOUR LIVE SITE YET! It’s ALL BETA = just on testing sites!

[product id=”7605″]

[product id=”7606″]

 

highlights-cc2-child-themes

Child Theme Generator (premium)

Setup a custom child theme in no time and get more page templates available instantly! The page templates are following for the next version…

 

» Notice on Typography Options:

Some options needed to be removed from the theme, as they work via Bootstrap variables, which is not allowed in themes and because it’s plugin territory. Unfortunately this hits a few typography options like link color or font-family. We will think about this further, for now it is only available in the premium pack.

» Notice on Sidebars for Pages, Posts,…

In the first beta versions there were a few more sidebars when you go to Appearance -> Widgets. There have been different sidebars for pages, posts, archives, …

» This has been replaced with just left and right sidebar now.

Reason: nowadays you can do this via a great feature inside the Jetpack Plugin:

Widget Visibility

With that feature enabled, you can choose for every widget you drop into a sidebar, on which posts or pages it should show up!

 

Thanks for all your feedback!

Big shouts to every single one writing us their personal feedback! We were really enjoying to read all these different perspectives and it was great input! You have contributed forming the new Custom Community a lot! Cheers!

Just one thing
We got most feedback via email, it would be awesome to see more people using our ideas forums

 

What’s coming next for the final 2.0 now?

CC2 Theme

  • Finish the slideshow HTML/CSS markup
  • More Theme Options, especially:
    • Option to have your website in “boxed” style
    • Container background color
    • Menu color and font options (premium)
    • Hide page titles / center page titles (premium)
    • More widget areas for header and content sections
    • Some more options to fine-tune the top and bottom spacing from sections (premium)
  • Make it translation ready
  • Polishing and bug fixing
  • Update Script for updating from CC 1.x versions

CC2 Premium Pack

  • Finish the LESS Compiling Options
  • Finish Child Theme Generator
  • Finish the additional Theme Options
  • Page Templates
  • Single Page Options
  • Finish Post Slider Options
  • Make it translation ready
  • Polishing and bug fixing
  • Update Script for updating from CC 1.x versions

 

Planned Release Dates

We plan to finish the CC 2.0 Theme within the next 4 weeks.

And after an extra testing round it will be uploaded to wordpress.org!

The CC2 Premium Pack is half way done, but will need around 4 more weeks, at least, too.

 

Got ideas or just missing something?

If you still miss something, now it’s your time!

Visit our ideas forums, add your ideas and vote for others!

Visit Ideas Forums

 

What you like most on the new CC, what do you still miss?

Please leave us your quick personal feedback in the comments!

And please do us a little favor, and share this post ;)

Have fun testing and playing with the new CC!

 

45 thoughts on “Custom Community 2.0 – Get Ready To Play”

  1. Steven says:

    Thanks for the update.
    I just installed Beta 2, free version, and the live preview is blank. There is no HTML is the frame source. However, if I activate it I can see content. Is that a known issue?

    • Konrad Sroka says:

      Hi Steven,

      I could not reproduce this issue – if you still experience this issue with the latest theme version “2.0 Beta 2” then please create a support ticket (just from your “CC Settings” page in your backend ;) and provide us all details about your WP install so we can try to reproduce..

      Thanks for your feedback!

      And how you like the look and feel of the new CC 2.0 ?

      Cheers! Konrad

  2. Nathan P. says:

    Glad you’re keeping the header widgets, I use the main one to show banners at Adult Fun Center. Really would upset me if you had chosen to delete those. It’s my main reason I love this site. (I’ll be tempted to use it on more than 1 with the widgetized page template!)

    Any support for WooCommerce in this theme? That’s one thing I’d love to see besides header widget areas.

  3. Phil says:

    Konrad, thanks for your business. Is there a way to change the default font family for the posts and pages content? The current font is sort of blurred, it looks horrible across all major browsers. I don’t see a “custom CSS’ feature to change this font.

    Please let us know.

    Thanks again.

    • Konrad Sroka says:

      Hi Phil,

      Most Typography just work with Bootstrap Variables, which cannot be compiled within the theme, as this is plugin territory. Full typography options are available in the premium extension – like font family, font color, link color,..

      Thanks for your opinion on the font, I liked it so far but honestly also didnt check this font on every browser.. will reconsider which font to use as standard font for CC 2.0

      Thanks for your feedback,

      Cheers, Konrad

  4. Phil says:

    Hi Konrad.

    Thanks for taking care. This font in question looks very cool on my Linux box ( I guess we are Linux lovers, aren’t we? :)

    However, it appears extremely blurred on all Windows browsers.

    Thanks again for your great theme.

    Phil.

    • Konrad Sroka says:

      Hey Phil! :)

      …actually I never use Linux nor Windows ;)

      However, extremely blurred on Windows browsers -> grrr…

      Will check for another font, as I said, anyway..

      :) Thanks for your hints, cheers, konrad

  5. Aaron says:

    I’d really like to know when this will be out of Beta. It’s been 2 months since last notice and 5 months since originally stated for release by end of 2013. What’s the holdup? Please email me directly with an update. Thank you!

    • Konrad Sroka says:

      Hey, we are sorry for the delay, but we simply couldnt finish all till now.

      We are working on it and next update should be available next week now!

      Hope to have it 2.0 before this month ends!

      Sorry for the delay, its a massive project…

  6. Phil says:

    Hey Konrad.
    Turns out one of the most popular SEO plugins, Yoast WordPress SEO can’t generate a XML sitemap. Tried on two different fresh WP installs, the last one just out of the box with only default plugins.

    This issue could be easily duplicated, the theme gives ‘Page Not Found’ “Oops! Something went wrong here.” instead of beloved Yoast XML sitemap.

    Could you please look into the matter?

    Thanks in advance.

    Phil.

  7. Phil says:

    Oops, Konrad, never mind my previous comment. I am unable to duplicate this issue out-of-box as before. Let me take a blame, there is something on my side, not yours.

    Sorry.

    Phil.

    • svenl77 says:

      Hi sabre,

      It will be a buddypress theme like the 1.x theme was. The BuddyPress options will interact with the new theme compatibly layers from buddypress 2.0. This will make everything more lightweight and easy to update.

  9. greg myers says:

    I was using the first version and saw this and downloaded it as it will better suit our needs. Totally blank page when activated, in the Customize view too. 3.9 WP, could that be the problem? If the theme works we will be getting the premium plugin.

    thanks

  11. admin007 says:

    I am also using old cc pro version, went to check out the neww cc2 beta and everything is blank! What is the problem? Surely if I want to switch over to the new cc2 I will not have to build everything from scratch again right? Please get back to us asap :)

    • svenl77 says:

      Hi admin007,

      sorry for the delay, the new version will hopefully released this week. With the final release we will provide an update script to migrate from the 1.x to the 2.0.

      We will try to make the migrate process as easy as possible, and to migrate as much as we can.
      But some things have changed radically and therefore, we can not guarantee that your site will look 100% the same as before.

      Hope that helps you,

      Greetings

      Sven

  12. Anne Borrowdale says:

    New blog post isn’t showing and I’m getting message “Empty slideshow” among other problems. Is this due to the new version being released? Should I be doing something to resolve this myself?

  13. Anne Borrowdale says:

    Got an empty slideshow and some blog posts no longer showing – will this be resolved with the new version your end, or is this something I can fix now? Please respond asap

  14. brade says:

    Any news on when the new beta will be released. It says it already has been above. Please confirm? Thank you :)

  17. Aaron says:

    ETA on final full version release (not another Beta)? I’m waiting since paying in November to use premium pack and CC2 on a LIVE website!

  19. jesteban says:

    I worked with CC2 all day yesterday and while I had some difficulties here and there I have to say for the most part that it’s a pretty impressive beta. The slider seems impressive. I’m glad to see that it handle’s more than just posts. I’d like to have more control over the sizing of the navbars. And I wish the top navbar didn’t interfere with the header image. I’d like the header image to be able to portrude up to the top of the site when the top nav is small and to the right. I couldn’t get site title and tagline to display with a header image.

    When viewed on my IPhone I like the new drop down menu for mobiles. But I had trouble getting the bottom navigation to work. It seemed to want to only display the top navigation menu. I’m glad I purchased the premium a while back I think it’s going to be an impressive release.

    It took me a while to get use to using the customize section. I was thinking about that last night and decided that in my mind most theme’s customization menu’s are so useless that I’ve gotten use to just skipping over them and I had to force myself to use it. Once having conquered that threshold I came to realize that there is a lot more here than I realized at first and to be fair that is probably the best place to put it because it gives you the greatest ability to show new users what you can do. It’s actually fairly handy have the page view, the customize menu and my developers tool or firebug all open on the same page at the same time.

    I didn’t see any obvious place to link to outside libraries in the header or the footer like the old CC1 had. But there’s still a lot to learn about the new release that will take me some time before I’m feeling comfortable with it.

    I went through a bunch of other themes yesterday and I still think that either CC1 or CC2 is worlds above most themes. I like that fact that I can customize the themes in such a way that my customizations remain intact after theme upgrades.

    Thanks for this new product. I think it’s looking pretty great.

    Jim

  20. jesteban says:

    I just installed the CC2 premium extension from my account download and it seems to shut down the customize display and the entire site. I’ll take a look and see if I can figure out why it’s doing that but I was kind of hoping that you’ve already run into this.

  21. psychologykc says:

    As others have asked: any idea when the site will be out of beta? I’ve put my entire site on hold since last year, thinking that it will be “any day now.” I really must move on to something else soon.

  23. Benjamin Doyle says:

    Hi, I just downloaded the new Custom Community theme, and it’s terrific! We are using it for a digital humanities project to build, in part, a “commons” function into our digital archive (the Early Caribbean Digital Archive). I am trying to emph our buddypress/commons-in-a-box “register” widgets by placing in header (dsgsites.neu.edu/ECDA). I added the expanded pack for this theme, which includes a “header-widget” customize option in “customize” panel, but there isn’t actually an option to add a widget to the header in main dashboard (->under “widgets”). Am I missing something here? Also, I’d love to make my slider images/posts link to the actual pages; something akin to a slyder/nav function. Is this possible as well? I am still learning html/css/php, and I’m not sure where in my php files I need to add hyperlinks.

    • Fabian Wolf says:

      (..) which includes a “header-widget” customize option in “customize” panel, but there isn’t actually an option to add a widget to the header in main dashboard (->under “widgets”). Am I missing something here?

      Nooo, totally not. Actually, it seems more that I missed something when taking over the reigns of development. Also, I have to admit I normally wouldn’t use header widgets, so that’s why the fact that there IS NO header widget area totally escaped my attention. Sorry for that, and thanks for pointing it out! :D

      Will be fixed with the next commit to the Github repository (= the next few hours).

      cu, w0lf.

      • Benjamin says:

        @fwolf Thanks! I actually had to nuke my prior wp instance (url remapping issue). I just installed CC2 again. To elaborate a bit, as it may prove informative from a development perspective, we are aiming to build a user community through which CC2 styles / designs the portal. We are using CBOX/Buddypress, and I wanted to include our “login/register widget” in a heading/”sub-heading” section to emphasize registration function. I also wanted to reduce the text heavy aspect of traditional nav in favor of CC2 image slideshow as alt/ nav. If I wanted to make my slideshow images (not bubble/side preview) link to actual pages (e.g., slider image: “Featured Projects” –> “Featured Projects” page; rather than having a traditional link in main nav). I apologize for tacking this new question on here. Should I create a new “ticket” somewhere?? Again, we are very excited by your theme, and are using the ECDA as a model for other projects at our institution for creating digital commons components to our digital research projects.

        All the best,

        Ben

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