Doesn’t time fly by? While preparing the documentation for our new release – version 5.6.2 available now – I discovered that it is 4 years to the day we released the final beta of our new and shiny V5.0. Seems like yesterday. Well – maybe last month anyway. So not quite the 4th birthday of V5 but getting real close.

So – what is 5.6.2 all about? Well – apart from the usual round of bug fixes, tweaks, little enhancements here and there and the start of a major overhaul and optimisation of our JavaScript, 5.6.2 focuses a little more on new installs, help with navigating the admin and overall performance in both the admin and the front-end. And the Facelift?

Introducing Barebones

We thought our original ‘Default’ theme that has been pre-supplied with V5 from the start and has stood us well these past 4 years, was starting to look a bit long in the tooth. So we would like to introduce our new theme – Barebones – which will, from now on, be packaged up on all new installs as well as being made available on our store in the coming days.

We are a little excited about Barebones. We wanted a clean and simple look but one that still maintained the full scope and support of the many Simple:Press features. But from the point of view of bundling the theme on all new installs things are even better:

• Fully Responsive – use the same theme on all devices
• Utilises Glyphs instead of icon images – dramatically cutting down server requests and boosting performance and load times
• Delivered with a colour customiser tool to make it easier for our users to blend it in with their website and WordPress theme.

And the name? Well – it started life as a cut-down, lower functionality theme but we liked it too much to leave it like that. But we kept the name!

For all our users running the ‘Default’ theme then it is not going to disappear and will continue to be maintained and fully supported. It’s just, let’s say, been demoted!

The new Admin Task Glossary

When you have a plugin like Simple:Press that has so many optional settings and components, we understand that the scope of the Admin itself can be daunting and many things get lost and many gems remain undiscovered. We hope that our new Admin Task Glossary will help – especially for new users – to pinpoint the tasks being searched for and loading up the correct location – just when it is needed.

As to the rest – well, if you reported an issue in 5.6.0 or 5.6.1 then hopefully we have a fix for you. As always you can review the change log from the forum admin toolbox. and if you are running a custom theme then you can check out any changes that may effect you in our usual Codex Template/Style Changes document.