Category: MediaCenter

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How to safely update from MediaCenter v1.x to v2.x

Since we released v2.x, we have received requests from our customers on how to safely update MediaCenter. Here are general steps :

1. Backup your website and your DB

This is the first and the most important step before updating. This is irrespective of theme or plugin. Anything can happen during update and cause the website to crash. In that case we need to rollback, so it is important to backup your website and database. You can read more about backups here : https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Backups

2. Move all your custom code and translations to a child theme

The best practice is to make all your custom changes to your child themes. This makes sure that your custom changes are preserved during updates. Here is a detailed guide using child themes to override parent theme’s functions. http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/a-guide-to-overriding-parent-theme-functions-in-your-child-theme–cms-22623

3. Rename the wp-content/themes/mediacenter folder to wp-content/themes/mediacenter-old

Lot of our customers have simply uploaded the unzipped mediacenter folder into themes/mediacenter/ and checking on overwrite via FTP. This is so wrong because the latest version have remove lot of files which needs to be removed. Uploading to the same directory will not remove the files that need to be removed and it will cause lot of issues. You need to rename the folder and not upload files to the same folder by overwrite.

4. Upload the new theme either via WordPress Upload or FTP

To reiterate, you should never be uploading to an existing mediacenter folder via FTP. You should rename the folder and upload the new theme.

5. Upload the child theme

Always use child themes. It saves you lot of time.

6. Update your child theme with custom changes from step 2.

7. Check Custom CSS

Some CSS classes especially for product items have been renamed. So if you have had written custom CSS to product items, you may want to recheck it and update the custom CSS.

8. Update translations

Open your .po file. Use poEdit and click on update from pot file. You will find the latest pot file in mediacenter/languages/mediacenter.pot. Once you update strings from pot file, you can save them to wordpress’ language folder using mediacenter-en_EN.po style or to child theme’s languages folder.

The above are general steps to update the theme. If you are facing difficulties please do let us know via our support and we’ll help you out.

Thanks,

Ibrahim

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MediaCenter v2.0.0

Today we are happy to announce the release of MediaCenter v2.0.0. It is a major release and in this post we’ll explain what changes we have done :

WooCommerce

Earlier we had overwritten almost all the WooCommerce template files. This means that whenever there is an WooCommerce template update, we will have to update the theme again and make sure the latest updates do not break. In this version, we have removed all the template overrides and all template requirements are achieved used WooCommerce action hooks and filters.

What does this mean to the end-user : Going forward WooCommerce updates are going to be smoother and there will not be any outdated template files. This also means that lot of woocommerce plugins will be supported quite out of the box.

Moved from LESS to SASS

We have moved all our LESS code to SASS. This means the CSS will be compiled faster and will join the increasing SASS developers community. We have also implemented direction controller so that RTL version of the stylesheet is not just the override version instead a standalone version.

What does this mean to the end-user : A step for the future and easy code maintenance for our RTL users.

Removed Visual Composer Overrides

We had earlier overwritten 3 elements of Visual Composer which are vc_row, vc_accordion and vc_toggle. Now we have removed the overrides and have completely made use of Visual Composer’s inbuilt features.

What does this mean to the end user: You can now make use of full power of Visual Composer. This may cause some of the pages (like home pages and about pages) to be contained instead of stretching full width. In this case, you will have to click on the settings icon of the row and choose “Stretched”. Ref : http://www.awesomescreenshot.com/image/551123/39e37f9f7df36f597c6f8af799f9df51

Load Text Domain Order

Now the theme loads the .po files in this order wp-content, child themes and in the themes folder.

What does this mean to the end user: Now the user can save all the translations to wp-content/languages folder instead of in mediacenter/languages. In this way the translations are not lost on update. Before updating to 2.0.0 make sure you backup your translations.

The above are some of the major changes. Under the hood we have made sure the code is more flexible and easy to update. If you face any difficulties during update, please do not hesitate to contact our support and we are happy to help.

Thanks,

Ibrahim

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What is new in MediaCenter v1.0.4

Hello there,

This is a minor upgrade and it mainly concentrates on issues that were introduced on v1.0.3.  Major Issues that were fixed are :

1. Bugs in Checkout Process – Calculating shipping costs, updating cart had issues and they are fixed in this version.

2. Disabling Live Search – It didn’t work and now it is fixed to work.

3. Images were overlapping after v1.0.3 that is fixed.

4. Responsive and RTL issues were fixed.

We also introduced some new features like :

1. Vertical Menu is now available as a Widget.

2. User can now choose whether to crop their product images or not.

3. We have updated the .po files

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MediaCenter WP Theme v1.0.3 released

We are happy to announce the availability of MediaCenter WP Theme v1.0.3. This is a major update and we have included lot of exciting features. Please take a look at Changelog.txt for detailed changes.

Here is a round up of the various features available with v1.0.3

Product Live Search

Lot of our customers and potential buyers have asked us about the availability of this feature. With v1.0.3, we have shipped this feature built-in. We have used Twitter typeahead.js to build our live search. Typeahead.js is a flexible JavaScript library that provides a strong foundation for building robust typeaheads.

We have also used Bloodhound.js, a suggestion engine which computes suggestions based on the query and Handlebars.js for templating.

Sticky Header

Now you will be able to choose if you want the main navigation to stick to top when the user scrolls down. This option is available only for Header Style 2.

Revamped Search Bar Area

Earlier the search area had issues with display. Now we have revamped the code and added options in MCOptions panel to let the user decide what they want to show.

Default Product View

Now we can set the default product view as either Grid or List. There is also an option which can be enabled to remember User selection of view. For example, if a user has chosen grid view, the view will be preserved throught the pages. This is achieved using cookies.

More Speed

We have used W3 Total Cache to achieve high speed. When tested with YSlow, we are able to achieve a performance score of 91 with overall grade A. We also acheived 87/100 in Google PageSpeed. We have used plugins for demo purposes which are unavoidable by tuning the performance a higher grade can be acheived

Latest Owl Carousel

We have upgraded the carousel to owl 2.0 which has advanced features including RTL compatability.

Bug Fixes

  • Broken Shipping Calculator
  • States did not switch on changing the countries on Checkout page
  • Transients weren’t deleted when products were added to brand
  • RTL issues fixed
  • Better RTL compatability
  • Pagination link fix
  • Dropdown on hover issues
  • Responsive issues fix