Gallery 1.2 Released ∞

Posted at 1:05 AM on June 22nd, 2009

IMPORTANT: Upgrading from earlier versions of Gallery requires removal of /gallery/ theme folder due to removal of page templates in prior versions of Gallery.
IMPORTANT: Gallery 1.2 only works with Thematic 0.9.5. Make sure to download and upgrade to Thematic 0.9.5 first.

It’s been a while since I’ve released any updates for Gallery and I’m sure some of you have been wondering what’s going on. In the past month, I’ve been working with Ian Stewart and Chris Gossman, lead developers for Thematic, to help improve both the amazing Thematic framework and the awesome Gallery theme at the same time. After sending the theme off to Chris, he made some changes to Thematic that allowed us to remove ALL PAGE TEMPLATES from Gallery, thereby isolating all the functionality in the functions.php. I really appreciate Chris and Ian for being so flexible and open to changing things up with Thematic for child theme developers and can’t express my full gratitude for their help with this release. That being said, there are a number of changes and enhancements in Gallery 1.2.

Download Gallery 1.2.1
Download Thematic 0.9.5+

Live Demo

Widescreen Video Embedding with Simple Video Embedder Plugin

Thanks to Jason Schuller’s easy-to-implement video embedding plugin, Gallery now supports video embedding from popular video sites like YouTube and Vimeo, even allowing you to add your own custom code if not supported. This is an awesome addition to Gallery and I even created a new icon for posts with video so you can differentiate between regular posts and video posts. You will want to download Simple Video Embedder from Press75.com to take advantage of this beautiful plugin. I believe it is also available from WordPress.org, so you can install this via the WordPress admin, just search for the title and off you go.

Theme Options Page

Another thing I wanted to get out there was a theme options page that allows you to adjust some items being used by the Gallery theme, the most important of which is the number of days to keep posts as new in order to show the “New” icon over the thumbnails. This is currently the only option, but I wanted to get the page done so I can add more customizable fields in the future as needed.

Added Single-Level Drop-Down Styles

This may seem pretty basic and very 1.0, but it was overlooked in previous versions and now you may add sub-categories with great joy and zeal. Enjoy.

Updated CSS & Image Sizes

A lot of people had issues either with thumbnails not being styled properly after changing their homepage to a single page or something similar and also with the size of the “Full Image” being set at 500×375. With this update, you no longer are required to use a fixed 500×375 image. As long as it is LESS THAN 500px wide, it will show up properly, anything larger and it will jack up the page. You asked for it, I gave it to you, don’t be a fool. Stay in school. Or something. In addition, the guys from Thematic added a “not-singular” class to their list of class names for pages in order to satisfy one of my needs with Gallery, the need to display thumbnail grids without having to specify 5 different page layout classes that could possibly change or be broken at any time. This basically fixes a bug in Gallery which was caused by an inflexibility in Thematic, which was fixed in the latest Thematic release.

Removed all Page Templates from Theme Folder

Basically, with the latest version of Thematic, Gallery does not need ANY page templates to function properly, instead utilizing ‘functions.php’ to insert, modify, and remove stuff from Thematic as necessary. This means you can upgrade Thematic or Gallery independently, without worrying about breaking either of them (hopefully).

NOTE: When upgrading Gallery, you will need to COMPLETELY REMOVE THE OLD GALLERY THEME FOLDER.

New Gallery Demo Site

Previously, I had been directing traffic to MixCSS as the official demo site for Gallery. However, with the updated version not actually going live on MixCSS just yet it didn’t make sense to continue directing people there. For a live demo of the actual Gallery theme as it appears on a new installation, check out chris-wallace.com/gallery. This will be the “official” demo as long as Gallery exists going forward, always staying up-to-date with the current version.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it, an updated version of Gallery. I’d like to thank Ian Stewart and Chris Gossman for their support of this theme and for providing the rock-solid Thematic Framework, which basically kicks all other frameworks’ butts, especially Thesis, which blows (actually, I’ve never used it, I’m just trying to start a fight .

Comments? Rock them out below and I will try to answer them, though I will admit due to a high level of comments and emails I may never respond to you. However, I do read all comments, which is good.