I also did the long-overdue task of combing through the theme (which was based on the old Sandbox theme) and removing all deprecated function calls. Scary.

Also in this release are a few new translations from intrepid translators: Polish (props Paweł), French, (props Vermont), and Indonsian (props Cahya).

As always, the download is on the project page if you’re too impatient for it to show up on WP.org.

The Erudite 2.6.1 is a maintenance release packing a lot of power for such a little increment. It includes:

• Better support for the upcoming WP 3.0’s custom menus. You can now explicitly set a menu as your “Header Menu”.
• Properly internationalized some strings that weren’t previously. If you’re a translator, update to the newest the-erudite.pot in the translations/ directory.
• Removed previous use of get_the_modified_author() in favour of get_the_author(). I have no idea why I thought the former was ever a useful idea.
• Added a Swedish translation. Props Fredrik.

EDIT: I neglected to add the Norwegian translation to 2.6.1, so 2.6.2 includes that. Thanks Rune!

As always, you can download from the project page while waiting for it to show up in the themes directory.

In 1.3 I tweaked the label UI handling to work properly with recent updates to label handling for custom post types, and cleaned up the code a bit. Go to the project page to download 1.3.

2.6 includes support for WP 3.0’s new nav menus, which puts you in full control of your header. If you have only one nav menu, it’ll use it. If you want to user more than one nav menu, be sure to call the one you want in the header “Header”. If you don’t have any nav menus, it’ll fall back to 2.5’s pages or category behaviour.

Some other things that were included:

• A Belorussian translation
• an option to disable visual editor styles
• lots of code cleanup - got rid of some deprecated functions

Also, The Erudite is now on github! I’m probably going to move all feature requests/bug reports over there, as the comments section on the project page has gotten pretty unwieldy.

WordPress 3.0 is almost ready for prime-time, and with it full support for custom post types. You can read about the technical details of adding a custom post type, or why you should use them. The WP team have done a great job with bringing this functionality into the upcoming 3.0 release, but one thing that’s puzzled me is (current) lack of good support for 1) custom URLs for that particular post type only (something like http://yourdomain.com/movies ) and 2) custom templates for that post type. (I’ll be using this to move portfolio items to a “portfolio” post type.)

But, that’s nothing a little code can’t fix. With the helper class I’ve made, the following is possible:

1. Custom URLs for a landing page for your post type, with full pagination & feed support. (eg http://yourdomain.com/movies/, http://yourdomain.com/movies/page/2/, http://yourdomain.com/movies/feed/ )
2. Custom landing page templates: if you registered “movie” as your post type, you can use movie/index.php or movie.php in your theme directory (falls back to index.php if they don’t exist)
3. Custom single page templates:  WP already looks for single-movie.php (and falls back to single.php). This function allows you to use movie/single.php - great alongside movie/index.php for better theme organization.
4. adds classes to body_class() and post_class() for that post type.

Usage

After including the SD_Register_Post_Type class and the helper function sd_register_post_type(), all you need in your functions.php file (or wherever you choose to run this) is the following line:

sd_register_post_type( 'movie' );

That’s it. Call it again with a new argument for another post type. Repeat as many times as you need post types. I’ve set good default arguments to pass to register_post_type(), but you can override them with your own. (Read more about the $args here, here and here.)

sd_register_post_type( 'movie', $args_array );

Also, grammar pedants know that adding an “s” suffix is not appropriate for all plurals. In the case of post type “movie”, our URL landing structure is http://yourdomain.com/movies, which works fine. But, for irregular plurals, the function accepts an optional third argument:

sd_register_post_type( 'person', $args_array, 'people' );

The above URL structure would then be http://yourdomain.com/people for the post_type “person”.

One note that’s very, very important: your custom URLs won’t work until you go to Options → Permalink in wp-admin and re-save your current URL structure. This will flush WP’s current URL structure and add our new rewrite rules. This is computationally expensive and you don’t want it happening every time, which is why I’m leaving it as a manual operation. You’ll only need to do it once (or after changing the third plural argument).

I also learned this month from WP core team member Andrew Ozz that it’s possible to style the visual editor. Now you’ll have a much better idea of how your prose will look before you press Publish:

You’ll also note above how easy it is to add an epigraph to your posts.

Finally, thanks to Dennis Meulensteen for providing a Dutch translation. If you have a translation you’d like to contribute back to The Erudite, let me know in the comments or get in touch.

To download, go to the WP Themes Directory or, if 2.5 isn’t available there yet, to the project page.

1. A dark theme option
2. An option to use categories instead of pages for the top menu

I figured throwing in a whole new color scheme justified a 2.0 designation. Although I still like the original color scheme the best, the new one has its appeals:

Head on over to the project page to download it! (It’ll also be on the WordPress.org themes repository soon)

You can download this release over at the project page, or from the WP.org themes directory whenever they update it.

2.8 polishes up the already stellar 2.7 admin interface with the ability to view and install themes directly, as well as hugely improved widget management. The last item means that we’re going to see a lot more themes making more extensive use of widgets I think!

Speaking of themes, my free theme The Erudite was tested on pre-release versions of 2.8 and should work perfectly out of the box. And, since it’s in the WordPress free themes directory, you’ll be able to add it right from the admin interface in 2.8!

You can download this release over at the project page, or from the WP.org themes directory whenever they update it.