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GeoPlaces V4 development began few months ago and since then requests for news and information about it keep popping up at Templatic. Well, here’s good news for you. If things go according to plan the beta version of GeoPlaces V4 will be available next week (before Christmas).

The alpha release available in the forum was a quick release so that we get input from you guys about what you want to see in the new upgrade, it proved to be really helpful. Thanks!

Here’s a quick list on what’s coming…

Gigya Plugin integration: This helps you login via different social sites without having to register.

Price options: You can create price packages instead of just the standard two options. You can also have category specific prices. On top of that you can have different pricing for listing a post on the homepage :)

Recurring PayPal payments: Define a specific period and you will be able to charge for recurring payments via PayPal.

Blocking of IPs: Spam IPs can now be blocked using Manage IP.

Managing permissions: Manage permission on which user group has backend access and which doesn’t.

Splash homepage: You can have an optional splash page on the homepage where your visitors are given an option to select a city. After selecting the city the homepage will change accordingly.

Claim ownership: Business owners can now claim ownership of a place directly from the listing and admin can judge it accordingly.

WP Mega Menu: The famous WP Mega Menu plugin and styling is now supported in the theme.

Some of the other Enhancements & Bug fixes:

• Custom post types for Places and Events instead of just events.
• Listings (Place and event) are now properly organized as per currently selected city.
• Per post zoom level specification
• Ability to add video embeds in listings.
• Enhanced Localization with proper indication messages.
• Completely redesigned and recoded multiple image uploader. No flash.
• Registration disabling improved.
• Image issues with multi site now corrected.
• Nested categories on home page map.
• Listing order of places and events can now be set individually
• Event listings are now default sorted to upcoming events (due date)
• Send to friend / send inquiry and email notifications are corrected.
• Get directions code re-written from scratch.
• Permalinks for events now work better.
• No pre-selection of current city when adding an event or place.
• Satellite view improved in map
• Preview page differences fixed.
• Email notification

The list goes on. There are many many changes & improvements that were asked in the forum and helpdesk.

The beta version will be tested thoroughly by us and the community before going final. Final version will be available then after (mid January.) While bug reports and enhancements are welcome, no new features will be added after the beta is announced.

Keep an eye on this blog and our social media channels (twitter & facebook) when beta version is announced next week. We’re excited. You? :)

WordPress 3.3 aka “Sonny” was finally released! You can download it by clicking here.

We have been playing with “Sonny” for a while now and are happy to confirm that all Templatic themes work great. We had some compatibility issues with our eCommerce themes so please make sure you update your eCom theme before installing WordPress 3.3. If you spot anything out of place be sure to let us know right away either by submitting a ticket in HelpDesk or by creating a thread in our forums.

WordPress 3.3 is bringing a couple of new shiny things to play with. Most important (and obvious) changes are the sleeker Dashboard, drag-n-drop media section and a new toolbar for easy access.
Have you tried the new version? What is your favorite new feature?

We are back with theme of this month and happy about the efforts put-in by the team. We’d like you to know that a couple of energetic youngsters have joined our team so that’s an added excitement. While some of our folks are busy with GeoPlaces 4, we have managed to create another geo-based theme, a location guide of sorts, WPLocator WordPress Theme.

As previewed earlier, WPLocator is all about locations and maps. If you were expecting portal theme with lots of features, sorry to disappoint. WPLocator is about keeping things simple and to the point.

For example, lets say you wish to create a Store Locator mini site for a retailer brand or “chocolate shops in paris” or “Places I have been to” kind of travel journey site etc.

WP Locator theme occupies your entire screen with the map you have selected from your wp-admin and showcases it in beautiful manner at front end. You can have details about the content, user comments etc.

Not only that, the standard WordPress blog and regular features are also included for those who wish to have WordPress regular pages and posts as well in their site.

Plus, the theme comes with Style & Color settings in the backend so you can change basic colors yourself as per your choice.

Overall, we are sure this theme will be useful to almost everyone for creating this unique kind of “mini map directory”.

Demo the theme here and head over to Sales page and Buy the WP Locator theme. 

So, what do you think of this theme? You like?

Other note: Next top priority in our list is to push beta version of GeoPlaces V4. We think we will be able to push to beta version before end of this month. Stay tuned!

Share & Win 

Like this theme? Want to have it? Help us spread the word about it and who knows, maybe you’ll be among 3 lucky winners who will get it. Just like the past couple of Share&Win contests, the same rules apply here. You can win the theme by tweeting about it (clicking on the Tweet icon below), by sharing/liking this on Facebook (the Share icon below will take you to the Facebook post) or by being the fastest one to provide a correct answer to our contest question. The question will be posted on our Twitter and Facebook feeds sometime in the next 2 weeks. Use the first set of social icons to participate in the contest.

Tweet

The time has finally come to announce the winners of our WP Locator contest! First off we would like to thank all of you who participated and spread the word about this beautiful theme. Just like last time two lucky souls were selected at random and one person won the theme by being the quickest to answer to our question. So, the three winners are:

• Arun Balasubramanian. Arun won the theme by liking our post on Facebook. Be sure to visit his Facebook page by clicking here
• Edmundo V. Pérez Garza. Edmundo won the theme by retweeting. You can check out his twitter feed by clicking here
• The last winner is Dennis Metcalf. Dennis won the theme by being the fastest one to answer our contest question. You can follow Dennis by clicking here.

Again, thanks everyone who participated!

If you visited our support forum today you probably noticed certain changes. Instead of a short Support Tip in the header now there is a special topic with guidelines on how to request help when something goes wrong or what do to when you need help with customizations.

Other than that we’ve made small changes to the forum design, namely the user info within a specific topic. We’ve fixed the problem where avatars would break the design and also added extra info like the number of posts, date of registration and user location. I’d like to ask all of you to open the user control panel and add your avatar and location.

However, the changes you just about read are all pretty trivial. The biggest change will come over time. We decided to treat the forum as the primary source of support here at Templatic. We’ll publish more and more content on the forums and instruct our users to use the forum instead of helpdesk. Don’t worry, we won’t force anything at the moment. If you feel more comfortable in helpdesk feel free to continue using it.

We believe that forums can help both you guys and our staff when it comes to theme support. On top of that we have some other ideas on how to engage the community to use the forums instead of helpdesk; but all in due time :)
If you have any suggestions on how to improve our forum (both the technical aspect and content-wise) feel free to write them in the comments below or send them to my email.

Thank you!

Some of you probably noticed we’ve been publishing daily tips on our Twitter and Facebook accounts. These tips include articles from various sites on the web, theme-related tips and other useful info. We’ve received good feedback from you guys so you can expect more useful information in the upcoming months

In case you missed a couple of tips during the month we’ll be compiling articles like this one. These articles will hold all tips from the previous month. Since we started mid November this article will contain all tips published from then on

Templatic tips of the day for November 2011

November 14
You have the divs name but can’t find the theme file? Use PRGrep -> http://ow.ly/7sKYW
 
November 15
You can still participate in the DigitalBox contest and win the theme! http://bit.ly/WPDigi
 
November 16
When in doubt, test it out! http://test.templatic.com/
 
November 17
Not sure how to organize your nav bar? Custom Menus have the answer http://ow.ly/7wN59
 
November 18
You can help us improve our theme guides. Head over to http://ow.ly/7ydmL and leave your suggestion
 
November 19
Daily Deal v2 was recently released. If you’re using the theme make sure you upgrade.
 
November 21
Need help setting up your Templatic theme? Head over to our forums and describe what’s wrong http://templatic.com/forums
 
November 22
Learn more about handling broken links http://ow.ly/7BNRt
 
November 23
Click on the following link to learn more about all the benefits of WordPress MultiSite
http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/17/wordpress-multisite-practical-functions-methods/
 
November 24
Here is a really interesting article about 10 things you need to know about WordPress 3.3
http://technosailor.com/2011/11/17/10-things-you-need-to-know-about-wordpress-3-3/
 
November 26
If you created an awesome site using one of our themes be sure to include it in our Showcase. It’s a nice way to get some extra traffic. http://templatic.com/showcase
 
November 28
Geo Places users, don’t worry. You’ll be able to export all your v3 data into v4 using a new “export” feature.
 
November 29
Do yourself a huge favor and ALWAYS backup before doing anything risky with the theme. Yes, it’s annoying, but you’ll tank yourself later :)
 
November 30
If your visitors can’t register make sure you have “Anyone can register” checked in General WP setting

About time we show you a preview to next theme. Scheduled to be released early next month, our next theme is all about the location map. Yes, we have GeoPlaces theme to cater to this but its much too advanced and many users need a simple theme that lets them add places on a map and create location guide websites.

WP Locator, our next theme will cater to this purpose. You can create a dedicated small site to serve different purposes like store locator for big brands, a site dedicated to the places you have traveled, location guide on specific topic for example “Chocolate shops in London” and so on.

Of course, the theme will have regular WordPress features, like dedicated blog and features you usually see in WordPress themes. Along with that, with this theme you will be able to add a place from wp-admin, add photos and content about the place, etc. The full screen homepage will list all the places as a map marker. You click on that and you will be taken to that full screen page showing map of that place while showing you details of the place.

We are excited about this simple, yet unique theme. What do you think?