Mantra 2.5.0 is nearing 5 years with a tear

Mantra

The good

Updates celebrate milestones; updates bring fixes and improvements; updates build and expand upon collected knowledge. But sometimes updates can also bring hurtful changes.

Mantra 2.5.0 is in a happy/sad mood – celebrating almost 5 years of existence but losing part of itself at the same time.

Just like with her sisters we have set up an alternative solution. As we previously announced, we decided to retain the settings page functionality and move it to a separate plugin.

The bad

Starting with this update you will need to perform the extra step of installing our Cryout Serious Theme Settings plugin to be able to configure the theme. But that step is all that’s needed because we’ve done everything necessary to make the transition as easy as possible – both by recommending the plugin in your dashboard and by publishing it to the repository, so everything can be done easily with just a couple of clicks.

If you’re already using the plugin due to WordPress 4.4, update the plugin to at least version 0.5.6 and it will automatically detect the new Mantra update.

As a side effect of the settings move, the presentation page is now disabled by default on fresh theme installs (since there is no way to configure it until the plugin is installed). To restore the presentation page, simply go into the theme settings (after installing the plugin) and enable it from the Presentation Page section.

If the settings page is empty after both updating the theme and installing/updating the settings plugin, force refresh your browser. This will solve any caching issues that may cause issues.

The ugly

With this update we’ve also had to remove all SEO options previously integrated in the theme – such options are no longer accepted in themes for the past two years as they are considered plugin functionality. If you were relying on Mantra’s SEO, we strongly suggest installing a SEO plugin.

Changelog:

  • REMOVED THE THEME SETTINGS AND ADDED SUPPORT FOR THE SEPARATE THEME SETTINGS PLUGIN
  • Integrated TGM to recommend and auto-install the theme settings plugin
  • Removed existing SEO options (per WordPress Theme Review Guidelines)
  • Fixed settings page to handle changed H3 to H2 headings in WordPress 4.4
  • Added above and below content area widget areas to page templates (including custom page with intro)
  • Fixed header site title to not use H1 tag when homepage is static
  • Add warning in settings page when pp enabled and static page is set
  • Fixed WordPress 4.4.1+ issue with plugin/theme notifications being moved in the Layout settings section
  • Added version information to style/script enqueues on both frontend and dashboard to fix caching issues between updates
  • Fixed PHP notice in settings page when theme news are not available
  • Rewrote readme file and added changelog into readme
Mantra is a clean, highly configurable and totally free WordPress theme. For more info check out the theme's page.

3 Comments

  1. Thank you for the update. I have been using it, modified, on a basically closed blog. Works better than ever, and with the addition of Cryout Serious Theme Settings, makes managing a child theme even easier.

  2. Thank you so much for this theme. This is my second time to use it. It is a great theme. I came back to it after trying some other “free” themes that you start using then get to a point that something doesn’t work like you think it is going to until you go to the pro version… seems to be a lot of that out there.

  3. Thank you. We’ve used Mantra on specialneedsjungle.com (a non profit blog site) since 2013, though are now looking at a change to Fluida – your themes are great, thanks for all your work. We are often complimented on our looks!

This article is closed to new comments.