I finished my semester exams, there is project presentation on 25th November. After that I’m completely free for almost 2 months. Here are somethings I planned to do in this one month vacation and the following one month.

When I first created SWIFT it was just a simple theme to fit my needs with minimum features. I decided to put in a little more effort and release it under GPL licence for use by fellow WordPress users.It happened to be one of the best decision I ever made.It got good feedback and appreciation from the WordPress community right from the first release and the swift user base is growing monotonously. There are several features that were added upon request by Swiftlers since it’s release. As I havent planned these new features before coding the first version of theme, the code became complex in the process of  adding new features and made it tough to release updates and add more features. So I decided to write all the code of SWIFT again and  release it as version 5.0 or SWIFT Reloaded.

The new version will be

• Beautiful, both inside and outside.
• More user-friendly.
• More efficient and fast.
• More easily customizable.
• Translation ready.
• You can easily create child themes.

There still lot of new features coming up in SWIFT, this time I’m not going to list the features here. You will have to wait for the release of v5.0.

Apart from the update I have planned lot of things for the blog like

• I’m going to write a post about the making of SWIFT. It will include the lessons I learned in the process of developing  SWIFT, resources that helped me in the process.
• ShowCase of blogs making the best use of SWIFT to give you ideas and inspire you to customize SWIFT.
• Some CSS and WordPress tutorials.

I’m also going to learn JavaScript and Photoshop to build some graphic heavy and eye catchy themes.

Wish me Luck

If you have any suggestions, or require some new features in SWIFT please drop them in comments.

Suggest features to be added in SWIFT v4.0

I thought v3.0 would be the last major update for SWIFT, but for the love and popularity it gained this week I decided to release one more update with lot of new features.

Here are the features that are most likely to be added in v4.0. Please report bugs and suggestions as a comment.

• Drop down navigation for categories and pages.
• Option to disable rounded corners in the navigation area.
• Magazine and newspaper layout option for home page.
• Option to diable RSS link in top navigation area.
• Wide header option.
• Tooltip integration.
• Option to choose whats displayed in the tabs section.
• Custom styling for contact form 7
• Automatic Image resizing script, to make it easy for those who have large images in their earlier themes.
• Floating rss and twitter icons.
• 3 custom templates namely
  1. Wide template.
  2. Single slim sidebar.
  3. Left Sidebar-Content-RightSidebar. ( This will also be included in homepage layout options)
• Option to choose between 2 slider.
• Background colour for footer.
• Floating twitter and RSS icons.
• Option to enable WMD for comments, a simple lightweight HTML editor for blog comments.
• Font resize option for visitors.
• Jump to top link.
• Widgestised ADS.
• A small author info section at the bottom of the post with an option to disable it.
• Option to choose font style, size and various other font properties of various elements on the page like
  1. Main content area.
  2. Blog name and Tag
  3. Navigation area.
  4. SideBar and sidebar titles.
  5. Post title.

Awesome content slider in SWIFT wordpress theme

I’m currently working on SWIFT v3.0.0, you can check it in action at GeniusHackers.Com. I would like to have your valuable suggestions and feedback to make it the best. Let us together make premium quality themes available for free.

Whats new in version 3.0.0

Light weight tabbed interface

1. Cleaner code, customization will be more easy now.
2. Featured post slide show.
3. Tabed interface.
4. Better comment styling to match the overall look of the theme (Check the screenshot below)
5. Sexybook marks and related posts are most common plugins on wordpress powered blogs,  so I styled them to match SWIFT. Just install them and you have the fancy styling ready. (Check screenshot below)
6. Swift v.2.1.4 has post content width of 620 pixels, It’s too wide to for easy reading, so reduced it to 580 pixels in v.3.0.0. This also gives more room for sidebar.
7. Switches to minimal mode with a single click.
8. Option to add adsense ad at the end of post.
9. Widgetised banner ads, now you can choose where you want your banners to appear.
10. Option to choose font and other font properties. (3 built in configurations)
11. Integrated  page navigation.
    

    Page navigation integration in SWIFT.

Clean and fancy comment styling to match the overall scheme.

Clean styling of Sexy Bookmarks and YARPP plugins

One of the several BUG fixes in SWIFT

Features still under consideration..

• There is a handy post thumbnail plugin,  I’m trying to integrate it in SWIFT. Not sure if I can make it.

WordPress post thumbnail plugin

• May add tool tips feature.
  

  Tool Tips

Note: GH is not using the default colour scheme.