The most notable is the ability to change the navigation dropdown type.
Up until now, the only way to activate a navigation dropdown was to hover over the parent item.
You now have two other options found in "Customize > Layout": Click - Menu Item and Click - Arrow
"Click - Menu Item" makes it so you can click the entire menu item to activate and deactivate the dropdown menu.
"Click - Arrow" makes it so you have to click the arrow to activate and deactivate the dropdown menu.
Of course, "Hover" is still default.
New Dropdown Arrows
Our old dropdown arrows have been replaced with the angle-down Font Awesome icon.
If you'd like the old ones back, or want to switch to a different Font Awesome icon, just ask me in the forum and I'll give you some CSS.
Back to Top Button
Another new feature in 1.3.24 is the back to top button found in "Customize > Layout" - it's a simple feature, but one that a lot of people have expressed interest in.
Container Width and Typography Controls
You can now specify a pixel value for your container width and typography controls instead of being stuck with using the slider. This helps if you have a specific value and don't want to use the slider to find it, or if you want to choose something outside the confines of the slider.
Changelog
Here's a complete list of what's changed.
Add fixed width class to menu fallback search icon
Add subtle fade back to slide down drop menu
Clean up some CSS in style.css
Add container width input field in addition to slider for more control
New Feature: Click menu item to open dropdown
New Feature: Click arrow to open dropdown
Change navigation dropdown arrow to Font Awesome icon
Change "Header Layout" option name to "Header Width"
Change "Navigation Layout" option name to "Navigation Width"
Change "Footer Layout" option name to "Footer Width"
Improve schema.org handling
New Feature: Add Back to Top button option
New filter: generate_back_to_top_icon
New filter: generate_back_to_top_scroll_speed
New filter: generate_back_to_top_start_scroll
Move archive title to template-tags.php and attach it to archive.php with hook
Add ability to use your keyboard tab key to move through navigation items/dropdown menus
One major change is that GeneratePress no longer uses the bundled .pot files for translation. If you're using GP in a different language, please update your language on WordPress.org here.
Here's a full list of what changed:
New hook: generate_inside_comments
New hook: generate_below_comments_title
Fix javascript error in IE8
Adjust menu toggle icon line height
Remove query strings from Font Awesome calls
Reduce space between dropdown arrow and menu item
Improve touch functionality on hover dropdown menus
Center alignright and alignleft images on mobile
Remove WP default hide site title/tagline control from Customizer
Remove woocommerce.php file as integration is handled by hooks
Open sub-menu in mobile menu on item click if URL is # or empty
Prevent elements within fieldets from overflowing in WebKit
New function: generate_construct_site_title
New function: generate_construct_logo
New function: generate_construct_header_widget
Clean up generate_header_items function
Float dropdown arrow to the right when navigation is in a sidebar
Remove language files to allow WordPress.org language packs to take effect: https://translate.wordpress.org/projects/wp-themes/generatepress
This is a major update to GP Premium with tons of new features and bug fixes.
Some noteable features in this update is the complete rewrite of the Page Header add-on, including new options like video backgrounds, merging the page header and site header, and the ability to change the site logo/header on a per page basis.
Page Header also moved all options from "Appearance > Blog Page Header" to "Customize > Blog Page Header".
Another awesome new feature in this update is the Mobile Header feature in Menu Plus. This allows you to set a minimal mobile header to your website to save space and look more stylish on mobile devices.
Here's the full changelog of what changed:
Quick bug fix dealing with a javascript error in Safari due to the new Page Header options.
= 1.2.81 =
Page Header: Fix javascript bug in Safari
= 1.2.80 =
Page Header: Fix iOS bug with parallax background image
Page Header: Move "Appearance > Blog Page Header" to "Customize > Page Header > Blog"
Page Header: Adjust proportional resizing
Page Header: Add generate_page_header_featured_image filter to force usage of the featured image over the custom field
Page Header: Add option to merge site header and page header with a transparent navigation
Page Header: Add option to include a video background in your page header
Page Header: Add option to replace your logo/header on individual pages/posts
Page Header: Improve metabox saving to prevent empty values in the database
Page Header: Minify parallax JS
Typography: Add input fields to font sizes to manually adjust them without slider
Typography: Adjust separators in Customizer
Typography: Add mobile font sizes for the main title, H1 and H2
Menu Plus: Adjust navigation width with container width in Customizer
Menu Plus: Fix sticky navigation spacer width
Menu Plus: Navigation float right aligns sticky menu items to the right
Menu Plus: Add new dropdown arrows to slideout menu
Menu Plus: New Feature: Mobile Header
Menu Plus: Separate options into panels
Menu Plus: Close slideout menu with escape key
Secondary Nav: Fix separator spacing below secondary navigation in the widget area
Secondary Nav: Add support for navigation click dropdown
Secondary Nav: Minify CSS and JS
Blog: Fix category/author page header when columns are set
Blog: Remove generate_blog_activate_masonry function and bundle it in with generate_blog_get_masonry function
Blog: Turn off masonry if we're on WooCommerce search results
Blog: Turn off columns if we're on WooCommerce search results
Blog: Minify CSS and JS
Colors: Add focus styles to navigation
Backgrounds: Add separators in Customizer
Backgrounds: Fix doubling up background images in the content when One Container is set
Spacing: Add separators in Customizer
Sections: Improve editor handling when visual editor is turned off
Sections: Use excerpt metabox on archives/blog if Sections is in use in single post
Sections: Fix bug where archives/blog loses layout if most recent post is using Sections
Sections: Minify CSS and JS
Disable Elements: Improve metabox saving to prevent empty values in the database
Italian translations added for all add-ons - thank you Roberto!
German translations updated for all add-ons - thank you Daniel!
This is a small release dealing with a couple small bugs in the Blog add-on.
This release also adds a button into "Customize > Blog > Post Images" which allows you to create the post image sizes you set.
Before, images were created if you slowly added the numbers for the sizes. Now, no new images will be created until you've typed in the numbers and click the "Apply image sizes" button.
Blog: Fix bug where full width post wasn't displaying in columns
Blog: Add a check for the blog content customizer control in the theme to prevent warning
Blog: Add button to apply post image sizes in the Customizer to prevent unnecessary images being created
GP Premium 1.2.86 has been released with a few bug fixes.
Users who were using the image resizer in Blog and Page Header were running into issues where the image wouldn't show up if they set a size larger than the original image.
The resizer will now upscale the image if necessary instead of not showing it.
Sections also had a bug where images were being blown up to 100% width. Users who are affected by this bug might need to re-add their images to the sections. I'm sorry for the inconvenience!
Blog: Allow resizer to upscale images
Page Header: Allow resizer to upscale images
Sections: Fix issue with images enlarging in Sections
These days, the speed of your website is crucial to your success.
Search engines like Google rank you much higher if your site is faster and more accessible than your competitors.
Knowing that, it's a no-brainer that you should choose a WordPress theme for your site which lives by those principles - fast and accessible.
As I continue to develop GeneratePress, speed and accessibility are two major factors behind almost everything that I do. From minifying scripts and styles, to removing unnecessary bulk, making GeneratePress faster and perform better is one of my highest priorities.
That being said, there's a handful of things we can do that will help you increase optimization even more. This article will list out some awesome tips for making GeneratePress one of the fastest WordPress themes available.
Removing Font Awesome
Font Awesome is, well, awesome. However, there's a LOT of icons, and if you're not using them, then there's no point in loading all of them.
GeneratePress requires some of these icons for various elements throughout the theme, so we can't full out remove them.
That's why GeneratePress has this nifty little filter to strip the icons down to only the essentials.
add_filter( 'generate_fontawesome_essentials', 'generate_fontawesome_essentials' );
function generate_fontawesome_essentials()
{
return true;
}
To show the difference made here, we can compare the size of the SVG file from Font Awesome (383kb) to the essentials SVG file (7kb).
You can add this filter using the instructions found in our Adding PHP article.
Reducing the amount of CSS and JS files being loaded on each page load will make a huge difference to your page speed.
Another perk with Autoptimize is it will bundle the CSS generated by your options in the Customizer into an external file, allowing your browser to cache it.
I suggest selecting these options:
Recommended Autoptimize CSS settingsRecommended Autoptimize HTML settingsRecommended Autoptimize JS settings
Note: You'll have to check the "Advanced Options" button to show these extra options.
Removing Query Strings
While this won't make a noticeable difference in your page speed, it will increase your ranking in speed tests.
