It’s here, it’s here! We are so excited to introduce our new Link in Profile plugin for WordPress! Link in Profile integrates directly with your WordPress blog and provides a unique page template that’s meant specifically for your Instagram profile link. With our template, choose to feature your latest post (or feature a specific post, tag or category), or dive straight in to our customizable Links section. With this feature, you can highlight up to eight different menu buttons, all of which can be linked to the URL of your choice. Plus, the colors are completely customizable!
Link in Profile gets really fun with our new Products section. In this area of the page, add in a rewardStyle, LiketoKnow.it, or ShopStyle widget, and feature up to 6 different image thumbnails. You can get creative by linking to your favorite products, or use the image spots to link back to specific posts or categories (see how we used it to link to important parts of our shop site, here).
The best part about Link in Profile? Because it is living as a Page on your WordPrress site, anyone who taps on your Instagram profile link is heading directly back to your blog! This also makes it easier to track analytics directly from your WordPress dashboard, to see what users are clicking on and interacting with.
Link in Profile is compatible with most WordPress.org themes, not just ones by us!Below, take a look at some of our favorite features of Link in Profile, then shop it here. You will love how customizable it is (and easy to use, at that!)! Keep reading “New! Our Link in Profile plugin!”
(and customization inspiration from our customers!)
When we launched <em>press, we were very excited to see how our customers would make our themes and plugins their own, through the various customization options we gave them. What we weren’t expecting is for our customers to take such a huge interest in what we lovingly refer to as “Code Hacks”—short snippets of CSS that can be customized with minimal code knowledge for a truly unique look.
It started with one simple request, one simple tweak. And as more and more customers wrote to our Help Desk and swapped ideas in our customer Facebook group—sharing their own creative ideas for tweaking our themes—our private database of code hacks grew. So we published them on our website as our Code Hacks Library. Now it has become a special part of what we do here at <em>press. Today we’re sharing our current favorite Code Hacks from our library, and some customization inspiration from our customers.
Theme Hacks
Our best-selling theme is Presidio, and it shows, as most of our code hack requests are specifically for that theme. Most of the code hacks featured below are for Presidio, but we’ll point you to the same code hacks for other themes where applicable!
Customize the featured post
One of our favorite features of our Presidio theme is the ability to feature a post — whether it’s always your latest, or one you want to highlight from your archives. Many of our customers have taken this feature a step further and made it a truly unique part of the design of their blog. Try adjusting the featured image to suit your photography perfectly, or customize the post details with a new background color or border.
We love the look of swapping out widget backgrounds for borders instead. It’s a fun way to add a pop of color but still keep the overall look light and airy. Experiment with different border widths, and use 0to255.com to find lighter shades of your accent color that could work well for borders.
We use a light gray background site-wide for various details — widgets, interstitials, and scrolling navigation, all of which can be adjusted using one of our favorite code hacks. If you want to add a pop of brighter color to your site, try adjusting just one, like Amanda did with her scrolling navigation. Or, choose a lighter color and switch them all out for a unique look. (Swap the navigation bar and footer background colors in Brevier, over here!)
Want your header to stand out a bit more? We love the idea of adding a background color! This one has a few more pieces to pay attention to, but we think the end result is worth it. (We’ve got one for Miramar, too!)
Though our One Color Pack and Two Color Pack plugins can help you swap out the Read More button color (among other things!), there’s only so many color options we can code in. Maybe you’re looking for a specific color, and you just want it for your buttons. This code hack will help you do just that! We have similar code hacks for Miramar and Archer as well.
Most of our code hacks for plugins are for our customers who aren’t using a theme created by<em>press. Since we have control over our own themes, we’re able to add styling as needed to make sure our plugins look pixel perfect across our own themes and inherit the styling we want. With other themes, our plugins simply have to inherit the existing styling from that theme. Sometimes, it looks great, while other times, fonts and sizing need to be tweaked a little. Enter our code hacks!
Shop the Post
The best place to start if you want to customize our Shop the Post plugin is our tutorial on styling the plugin with CSS. It will walk you through making it your own step by step! For something a little more plug-and-play, try out our code hacks for changing or removing the border and editing the title.
Have you seen pop ups with a photo on the side that spans from top to bottom? By default, our pop up has some padding around the entire box, but with our code hack, you can move it to the edges of the box. A small change, but we love the look! This works best when your image is taller than the content on the right.
This one is for Grid users who aren’t using a theme by <em>press. By default, Grid will inherit styling from your theme based on heading and paragraph styling, but it may not be the specific fonts you want. You can use our code hacks to change the filter menu styling, and you can hide the page title — or swap out the provided CSS with your favorite fonts instead.
Have you used our Code Hacks Library to create something amazing on your blog? Share your link below in the comments — we’d love to see! Is there anything you want us to add to our library, or a coding tutorial you want to see on our blog in the future?
Happy New Year! We’re kicking 2019 off with a bang, friends. There’s so much fun stuff coming down the pipeline here at <em>press themes, and we can’t wait to share with you! Today, we wanted to loop you in on two big projects we’ve been working on: upgrades to our site, as well as changes to our plugin product licensing, which will launch next week.
First, the website!
One of the biggest things we worked on over the holiday break was making a few big updates (or really, upgrades!) to our website. First, we’ve added an FAQ page, a great new resource for customers looking to learn more about us and how we work. We’ve also done a light re-design and reorganization to our Help Desk! Our goal was to make the (many!) help articles we’ve written easier to read and browse through. As our Help Desk grows, we hope it remains a useful resource for all new and current customers. And on that note, if you are a current customer, be sure to pop through and browse articles related to your purchases—you might learn a few new Code Hacks!
Finally, we’ve made a HUGE update to our customer My Account area. The screenshots below tell the full story, but bottom line: we wanted this area to be usable and helpful for our customers! Your My Account area now features tabs for navigating your purchases, links to your active downloads, and even a spot for you to activate your licenses (key if you want to receive updates and new feature releases from us!). We’ve also created an environment to manage your contact and billing info.
The biggest and most important change is the new Support tab. Here, current customers can submit a support ticket, and it’ll land straight in our Help Desk inbox. While you’re still welcome to email us directly at hello@empressthemes.com with any questions, our system will automatically flag requests coming from the My Account Support tab, and we’ll prioritize those first. So, when in doubt, head to your My Account area for assistance!
Where exactly is the My Account area? You can find yours by clicking on the “My Account” link in the top right of our website, or by going to empressthemes.com/account.
New: Plugin Licensing
Eagle eyed readers might’ve noticed two things in the site changes mentioned above: sections in our FAQ page about product licensing, and a new tab in the My Account area that reads “Renewals.” These pieces each pertain to a change in how we’re licensing our plugin products.
Here’s the scoop:
Since our launch in October of 2017, we are so proud of the community that’s been built here at <em>press. Not only do we love the feedback we get from you over Facebook and via email, but we pride ourselves on great customer service. From day one, we’ve been committed to listening carefully to customer feedback, and integrating ideas and upgrades into existing products, so that they could grow with and adapt to your sites. In short, we want our products to be usable and flexible, for the life of your blog.
Over time, we’ve realized that in order to maintain a quality level of service, and invest time and money in improving products for you guys, we need to move our plugins to an annual license fee structure, beginning January 16, 2019.
What does that mean, in layman’s terms? Essentially, for all plugins purchased from January 16th onward, your purchase includes a license which is good for one year from the date of purchase. Having an active license gives you access to all product updates, new feature releases, as well as customer support for any questions you have about the product! After your year is up, your license will automatically renew (at 20% off!), so that you can keep receiving updates and support. If you don’t want to renew, that’s okay—you can keep using the last version you downloaded for as long as you want. You just wouldn’t receive any new product updates or access to our email Help Desk moving forward (though, you could always renew your license in the future, if you wanted!).
Our goal in moving to this type of payment system for plugins is to provide you guys with the highest quality products that are compatible with WordPress, always. We also want to continue providing the high level of customer support we already do, through places like our members-only Facebook group, as well as our Code Hacks program, which offers free, small customization code snippets for our products to any customer who asks.
The really good news? If you’ve already purchased a plugin from us in the past, nothing’s going to change for you! That’s right—if you were an early adopter of <em>press, any plugin purchase you made before January 16 is exempt from these new licensing rules. You’re set for life, and will receive complimentary upgrades and support for all purchases you’ve already made! Any plugin purchases you make after January 16 will be subject to the new annual licensing renewals program. But, don’t forget, all plugins will renew at a 20% discount, which is our way of saying thanks for being a part of the community!
With that in mind—if you’ve been thinking about buying a plugin from us, this week is the time to grab it! From January 16th onward, all plugins will renew annually. So buy your plugin now if you’d like to be grandfathered in with our current purchase terms! 🙂
We know change can be hard. But our hope is that with these changes (and SO many great products to come in this year!), we can continue growing <em>press to make it a super valuable resource for you, as you continue your blog journey. If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to let us know!
This is just the tip of the iceberg, you guys—we have even more website upgrades and new products all comin’ atcha in the next two months. Stay tuned!
xo,
EmPress Themes offers WordPress themes and WordPress plugins for style bloggers, fashion bloggers, beauty bloggers, and lifestyle bloggers. Whether you need a magazine style theme to showcase your content or a minimal theme to highlight your writing and photography, consider EmPress your one-stop shop for a flexible, customizable, and shoppable blog for your content publishing needs.
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