I’ll be doing this every Friday starting next week (unless no one shows up). You can watch last week’s episode below, then send in your own question for the next show. The next show will be on “Setting up WordPress SEO by Yoast The Correct Way” so make sure you confirm that you’ll be attending this event on Facebook on March 17th 2017.

The post Astoundify Live: Ways to speed up your Listify site! appeared first on Astoundify.

We originally had a site that was based off our successful Marketify theme, which allowed us to quickly launch our digital e-commerce site and at the same time make tweaks and improvements to the theme as we were using it in our own site (“eating your own dog food“). Even though it was great to use one of our own themes we still felt like it would be exciting to build something for us that was truly custom that we could put our unique stamp on.

The main issue with selling your own digital products and wanting to build your own site is that it’s hard to find time to do both. Sometimes one has to take a back seat. We decided our products should always be the primary focus of our efforts so we hired a team of professionals to help us build our site.

I reached out to a few designers on Dribbble to see what their availability would be like and if they would be interested in taking on a new product. Luckily I found a very talented designer: Dalton Hurd. I felt like we both had similar design styles and he was really interested in designing our front-end site, customer dashboard and on-boarding process for our new hosted platform.

Highlights of the Re-Design

• Offer a great purchase experience for customers (another blog post coming about that in the near future) using a distraction free checkout experience.
• A completely new customer dashboard for submitting support requests while being able to view previously submitted requests, updating account information, linking their Envato account and much more.
• Our new hosted platform and on-boarding process which allows you to create a site without having to setup hosting, theme, and premium plugins. Simply by signing up via a simple form on our site.

We Reached Our Goals

I’m happy to say that these goals were achieved, with some of the designs still to be rolled out over the next week so keep checking back on this blog and through our site. For me it can become a bit of a obsession to make everything “perfect” but you may never end up launching. Much like our release cycle for our themes and plugins we realized the most important part of developing a product is ensuring the product actually reaches your audience; otherwise you are wasting your time.

Finally, I’d like to say Thank You So Much! to all of our amazing customers, you’ve made all of this possible. We look forward to providing you with ever better products, and excellent support. We are just so amazed by the amount of customers we’ve had use our products over the years and the part we’ve played in helping start your businesses.✌️

P.S. If you’re curious about our new hosted platform which includes premium plugins, hosting, and themes all for one fee per month, Click here to sign up. No credit card required.

The post Announcing a Brand New Astoundify appeared first on Astoundify.

Introducing the Automatic Content Importer

For the past several years, we have depended on the default WordPress importer to enable users to get the theme setup like the demo. This was causing lots of unexpected issues and was very limited in helping our users get the theme setup “just like the demo”. Frankly, it was simply not good enough.

We have now created our own Automatic Content Importer which allows customers to quickly and easily import all the demo content with the click of a button. In addition to importing the demo content, the importer will automatically setup your menus, pages, widgets, theme settings as well as plugin settings! All this, with a simple click of a button.

You no longer need to configure your own plugins, menus or theme settings – the content importer will take care of it all for you!

Automatic Child Theme Creator

We always encourage our customers to use a child theme when setting up their Listify wordpress theme. This way, they can safely update their themes without losing their customizations.

With Listify 1.6, we have made it even easier to setup and use a child theme. With the automatic child theme creator, you no longer need to manually upload a child theme and activate it. The new setup guide,with the one-click child theme creator will take care of this for you.

Automatic Theme Updates

Another major issue our customers have been facing is the manual updating process of the Listify wordpress theme. With Listify 1.6, we now introduce our own Automatic Theme updater. You no longer need to manually download the updated theme files, only to manually upload them into your website. With the new One-Click automatic updater, it will take care of it all for you.

Additional Updates and Fixes

• New: Transparent fixed header for the Homepage hero area in Customize ▸ Content ▸ Home
• New: Choose the size of a page’s title area from the Edit Page screen.
• New: Allow listing map to appear on the right side of the screen in Customize ▸ Listings ▸ Search Page
• New: Allow default mobile view to be changed in Customize ▸ Listings ▸ Search Page
• New: Allow listing filter content box style to be set in Customize ▸ Listings ▸ Search Filters
• New: Allow listing filter meta information to be toggled in Customize ▸ Listings ▸ Search Filters
• Fix: WooCommerce 2.6.4 compatibility.
• Fix: PHP7 compatibility.
• Fix: Do not scroll map on mobile until focused.
• Fix: Button colors when using the Outline button style.
• Fix: Avoid extra clusters when using FacetWP.
• Fix: Customizer javascript error in Safari.
• Fix: Ensure cover image can be removed from Edit Listing page.
• Fix: Image aspect ratios on Single Listing Hero Gallery.
• Fix: Don’t output Autocomplete and Locate Me functions with no Google Maps API key.
• Fix: Don’t output single listing map with no Google Maps API key.
• Fix: Remove nested <h2> tag in Homepage Hero area.
• Fix: Full width pricing table on mobile.
• Fix: Let the Google Maps API server key be set separately.
• Fix: Respect “Disable Comments” customizer option in galleries.
• Fix: Disable Jetpack Mobile Theme module.
• Fix: Disable Jetpack Photon module. https://github.com/Automattic/WP-Job-Manager/issues/576
• Fix: Exclude company logo from gallery images.

Make the Upgrade

We highly encourage all of customers to make the move to Listify 1.6. Go ahead and update your theme (it will be last time you need to do it manually).

As always remember to take a complete backup of your site before making any changes and feel free to contact us via support for any questions or concerns.

The post Listify 1.6 – Content Importer, Child theme creator, and more appeared first on Astoundify.

In this theme release we’ve been focusing on improving the theme’s performance, both on the front-end and on the inside of the WordPress admin areas like the customizer.

We’ve also improved the overall FacetWP integration with more improvements to come! we’ve added new featured listing styling options, a new alternative blog layout, new listing and home page overlay styles to bring some more glitz to your sites, added a new style kit called “Classic” to match our live demo, new WooCommerce 2.6.+ compatibility and much more, read the whole list of changes to the theme here.

Grab a copy while it’s hot!

View The Demo and Update Your Theme or Purchase The Theme ($64) on ThemeForest.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Adam Pickering
Co-founder, Astoundify

The post New Theme Update: Listify 1.5 appeared first on Astoundify.

What’s new?

• Improved speed and performance.
  Some of our customers have reported a slight decrease in the speed and performance of the theme. Our developers have made lots of changes which are aimed at improving the overall loading time of the theme, specially for sites with several thousand listings.
• Company logo field.
  My personal favourite new feature of Listify! Users can now choose to enable company logos to be uploaded as part of the listing submission. This enables listing owners to have separate company logo displayed on the listing card rather than having the author avatar.
• Listing card image customizer option.
  Related to the new company logo field feature, users can now choose if they want to display the company logo or the author avatar from the theme customizer. You can even choose to have the listing displayed in a circle or square.
• Single listing hero styles: standard (featured image) or gallery slider.
  This is a major feature that we are introducing in Listify 1.4. Choose between the classic hero image as the cover for listings, or they can now choose to enable a background image gallery slider.
• Recent posts widget for the homepage.
  Yes, it is finally here. Display your latest blog posts on the homepage with the same beautiful style as the rest of the theme.
• Option to disable InfoBubble (map pin popup) Autopan on map.
  Some of our users have asked for the ability to turn the info bubble option off for the map. We listened and now they can.
• Automatically move to the next submission step coming from the pricing and plans page.
  Another favourite of mine: users are now automatically sent to the submit listing form if they come from the pricing and plans page. This prevents users from having to re-confirm which package they are selecting before they can start entering their listing details.
• Listing grid design tweaks: move “Favorite” heart to the top right of the card.
  Minor tweak, that makes a big difference – we love it!
• Option to open listings from archive in new window/tab.
  Another minor tweak that we know our users are going to really appreciate. Admins can now choose to have listings from the results page open up in new window/tab. This way, users can stay on the results page and continue their search for the perfect listing.

Here is also a list of some of the bug fixes that we have resolved in Listify 1.4:

• Tab and term list widgets.
• Comment sorting.
• When a location is cleared from search on the homepage do not use radius search when redirected.
• Only pull images from the current listing on the map popup.
• Only show “Listing Owner” on comments if the listing is not posted by a guest.
• Allow icons to be deselected in the customizer.
• Allow magnific popup library to be translated.
• Setup Guide redirection on initial activation.
• Calculate map offset dynamically to avoid a gap in certain instances.
• Remove link from listing package tags.
• Center radio bullets.
• Update TGMPA library.
• Turn off POI for the Mapbox color scheme.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will be more than happy to assist you. Make sure to also browse through the Listify documentation for detailed instructions on how to use the theme.

The post Listify 1.4 appeared first on Astoundify.

What’s New?

• New: Polylang support.
  With version 1.6, users can now fully integrate their comments and reviews into multilingual sites using Polylang.
• New: Restrict reviews based on a purchased listing package.
  Some of our users may have noticed this in the last release, but we are now officially introducing this feature. Website admins can now choose which of their paid packages will enable their users to moderate their own reviews. This enables website admins to sell premium packages to users who want to have the ability to control their reviews.
• Fix: Allow guests to post multiple reviews.
  The bug that prevented guest users to post reviews if another guest had already posted a review has been fixed. Users can now post reviews without having to register an account to bypass the “already posted a review” message.

As always, please proceed with caution when updating your plugins. Make sure to take a complete backup of your site. If you have questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us via support.

The post WP Job Manager – Reviews 1.6 appeared first on Astoundify.

What’s new?

• New: Add a link to view stats from the Listings Dashboard.
  Users can now easily access their listing stats from the job dashboard rather than having a separate menu item to view the stats.
• Fix: Ensure expired listing stats are still displayed.
  All stats will remain visible until the listing itself is completely deleted from the site. This gives users an opportunity to look back at their expired listings and decide if they want to relist.
• Fix: Ensure filled listing stats are still displayed.
  Users can now see how their job listings performed after they’re filled.
• Fix: Date range view on Internet Explorer.
  Users who are on Internet Explorer can now use the date range view to filter their stats.

A reminder to always perform a complete backup of your website before you make any updates. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to submit a ticket over at our support site.

The post WP Job Manager – Stats 1.4 appeared first on Astoundify.

While website admins have always been able to moderate the reviews, the old interface did not allow admins to modify the ratings left by users. With 1.5 admins can now completely modify all the reviews left on the site.

With this, website admins can now modify any abusive ratings and comments, giving admins full control over their sites.

WP Job Manager – Reviews 1.5 also includes some critical bug fixes, more specifically, the lingering bug preventing users from posting on multiple listings.

As always if you have any questions about WP Job Manager – Reviews plugin or issues updating please contact us via the support portal.

The post WP Job Manager – Reviews 1.5.0 appeared first on Astoundify.

This update includes an improved user interface for managing claims allowing users to easily and quickly manage, approve or deny claims. These changes are especially helpful on large sites with thousands of orders or listings.

With the latest version, listing durations are also updated when a claim is approved. This means when a claim is approved the associated listing’s duration reset to the length originally set when the listing was first created.

Lastly, we’ve introduced several bug fixes and performance tweaks as well as improved setting descriptions and help-text to make the plugin more user-friendly.

You can update to the latest version via your WordPress dashboard or you plugin purchases page.

As always if you have any questions about WP Job Manager – Claims Listings or issues updating please contact us via the support portal.

The post WP Job Manager – Claim Listings 2.5.0 appeared first on Astoundify.

Version 3.0.0 of Jobify is a total rewrite of the theme. Yes, that’s right. We completely rewrote the theme to improve its performance and to make the theme much more extensible. We can now integrate more features at a much faster pace than before!

With the rewrite, Jobify now has complete support for all official WP Job Manager Product add-ons (see compatible add-ons) and also more support for official WooCommerce add-ons such as social login.

WooCommerce 2.5+ is now required to run Jobify wordpress theme and is used to handle all account management tasks. It also provides additional functionalities throughout the theme.

We’ve also managed to include some very neat functionality and visual changes to go with the core updates of JObify. Here is a complete list of changes to Jobify 3.0.0:

• Setup Guide to help you get your website set up like the demo in minutes.
• Minor style updates to provide more consistency and easier maintaining in the future.
• Update icon pack to Ioniocons: http://ionicons.com/
• Full support for all official WP Job Manager add-ons.
• Full support for WooCommerce.
• Rewritten mobile views for better mobile experience
• Set a custom address format for Jobs & Resumes in “Customize > Jobs/Resumes”
• Hundreds of stability improvements and code hardening.
• Easy role selection when creating new accounts.

Please do not update directly on your production server. You should always test the update on a staging server first.

Please thoroughly review our detailed documentation on how to safely upgrade to Jobify 3.0.0.

As always if you have any questions about Jobify wordpress theme or issues updating please contact us via the support portal.

The post Jobify 3.0 is here! appeared first on Astoundify.