Thesis 2.0’s first update, 2.01 was rolled out a couple of days ago, and I think you’re going to love it even more than Thesis 2 itself.
While Thesis 2.0 brought:
- a cool way of managing your design in easily re-arrangeable blocks
- a sweet method of keeping your CSS code tidy and light with packages
- CSS variables to provide you with a place to keep and use standard colors and other snippets across your CSS code
…Thesis 2.01 just put the cherry on top of the sundae. First of all, it was a huge pleasant surprise for me to see the update notification in the bar inside my Thesis Admin area.
Gone are the days of hearing about updates weeks or months later, then chasing down the upgrade zip file, deactivating and deleting the premium theme, and then uploading and reactivation manually. Not to mention re-doing any settings or customizations you may have applied.
The Thesis 2.01 Update Process
The Thesis 2.01 update was delivered seamlessly, just like any theme from the WordPress repository. I clicked the “Update Now” link in the header of my Thesis admin, and it took about 30 seconds or less for the update to be downloaded and applied.
From there I only got more impressed. Inside the Skin Editor, I discovered a new button labeled “Manager”. Now I think, the button could actually labeled something a little bit more exciting, to go with what’s really lurking behind that door, because I had no idea what I was going to find. It turns out that the “Manager” is managing backups of your skin settings.
Thesis 2.01 Backup Manager Benefits
Now, you can not only backup your skin settings, but you can also download the backups as Export files, and restore them elsewhere. This means that your designer can work on your design on a dev-sandbox blog, and then move the whole design once it’s ready. As Chris Pearson points out in his own blog post announcing the update…. this means you don’t need to hand out your FTP password or your WordPress Admin details to your designer.
Additionally, you can see your design changes and all the ways those changes may affect your blog and fix bugs before you jump in with both feet.
Lastly, being able to take a backup of your skin settings means you don’t have to lose your design if something happens to your blog.
Well done Chris! So far, I’m really loving the new Thesis 2.0. How about you? What would you like to see Chris Pearson and the DIY Themes gang roll out next?
Leave your comments below.