Two weeks ago when we launched theWooNav we knew it was something special and would be well received by our users, together with our recent release of WooFramework V2 our theme development was certainly hotting up. Then, out of the blue, we were contacted by Jane Wells of the WordPress Core UX development team who was planning the final iterations of the menu management system’s core features for WordPress 3.0. Unknown to us Jane had been playing around with our WooNav functionality:
We have a developer working on it, and have gone through several rounds of community feedback and iteration, and it strikes me that what we’re probably going to end up with is a lot like what you guys have in your Custom Navigation option, so I thought I’d get in touch with you guys to talk about it
After a few emails it was pretty obvious that this made perfect sense for both us and the core team. It would save the WordPress developers hours of coding to build something that already existed and did the job well, and WooThemes would finally be acknowledged for it’s work in furthering WordPress theme development.
The WooNav in it’s existing state.
We are excited that we can give something substantial back to the core after a somewhat hesitant decision to GPL license our themes a few months ago. This proves to us, and hopefully others, how the GPL license should be correctly utilized to benefit others.
Kudos must be given out to Jeff Pearce, who was employed late last year by WooThemes and undertook the WooNav system as his first official development project for us. Not a bad first splash in the water we must say!
What excites us even more about this relationship with the WordPress core team is what Jane said to us in her email:
This year I’m hoping to work on ways to bring the commercial WP-based companies and core closer together, as opposed to what sometimes feels like a weird rivalry, so this would be a nice beginning for that
What’s next?
Jeff has already begun working with Ryan Boren (one of WordPress’ lead developers) on porting the WooNav into “patch form”, which will then in turn be submitted to the core of WordPress. Feature freeze for WordPress 3.0 is this week and we’re hoping to have ported the WooNav to the core ASAP, so that the community may start discussing the functionality, after which we will continue to work with the WP developers and the community on improving and finalizing the functionality for WP 3.0.
“Unfortunately” this impacts our users, since these developments mean we have to delay the integration & roll-out of the WooNav to all our themes. Whilst the implementation thereof will stay 99% the same, we don’t want to potentially duplicate work for ourselves and have decided to wrap-up the porting & development of the WooNav into core WP first, before integrating it with all of our themes.
You can however rest assured that by the time WordPress 3.0 hits your web browser, we’ll have included support for this amazing functionality in all of our themes. So this new awesomeness from the two W’s is not far off and all WooThemes will soon be able to enjoy it in all of its glory.
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stuff like these really delights me. good work done by wooteam.
Truly impressive. Well done guys.
Amazing news guys – huge congrats 😀
Great stuff! I have been playing around with the Woo navigation at the weekend on the Canvas theme – managed to build about 3 websites in an hour and also showed my girlfriend the Woo backend and she wants to build her first WordPress site!
Nice to know your hard work has been spotted!
Ooh… Hope you weren’t spending Valentine’s Day teaching your girlfriend the ins & outs of the WooFramework… But if you did: massive kudo’s to you bro! 🙂
That’s great news, really demonstrates what sets Woo Themes apart – and saves me some serious fiddling.
One of the things that excites me about developing a new site is the chance to play with all the new toys you guys keep adding to your themes.
you guys ooze with awesomeness!! total domination.. definitely a win especially for the WP community at large..
Jeff – you’re a rockstar mate…
After attacking you guys so viciously last year for your “page and category” nav system, this is a gigantic turnaround. Sincere congratulations 🙂 It’s also heartening to see the WordPress honchos acting in a rational and logical way. That’s a good sign for the future of WordPress.
The only rotten thing for us is having to wait a bit longer for full integration. It’s such a joy not having to hack the code for a decent nav.
What’s the estimate on when WP3 will launch ?
I have no idea with regards to the release of WP 3.0, but I believe their roadmap indicates March 2010. 🙂
Last time I checked it was mid-April 13th or 15th… 😉
BTW Congrats to the team for that amazing feature !!
I see they have changed this now to show April 2010 instead, so guess that they’ll be waiting for us to wrap up this. 🙂
Cant wait to try it out! Nice one!
I’ve always followed WooThemes work even if I never subscribe but seeing how you guys give back to the community makes me think that your just not offering a service but rather contributing with huge milestones to what WP is as a core. If only more theme companies would contribute this kind of work rather then having it as feature within there themes I would see more market for these kind of companies.
Seriously congratulations for making such a huge contribution to WordPress!
That sounds like a great win-win. Thank you guys for being so willing to give back to the WP Community. You help make WordPress truly the best CMS.
I think this is a fantastic addition to WordPress arsenal. Also heartening to see that Jane wants to bridge the gap between WordPress core and Premium theme authors such as us. Good news all round! 🙂
You’re on the cutting edge, guys. I knew it the first time I bought one of your themes.
Kudos to Jeff!
Excellent work! I am quite excited for this functionality to be integrated.
Wow… I can’t wait this featured… I will try on….
Wow Jeff, talk about making an entrance. Good stuff! Also I’m happy to have played my HUGE part in this, the two small Icons 😛 I’m sure it wouldn’t have been possible with them!
Seriously though I was very impressed when I heard this and really happy for the whole team! Well done!
Hehe Liam; you *know* that those two icons are absolutely integral to the design, right?
hehe…thanks Liam…the icons rock 😉
I knew WooThemes were something special. Glad I have good taste!
I think many of us watching the GPL arguments unfold assume there’s bad blood between the WordPress team and commercial developers. It’s awesome to see this debunked! You guys do amazing work- and it’ll be neat to see other contributions you make. Cheers both to Jane and Woo!
Well, I’d personally say that your perception of WP vs commercial theme developers holds some substance, as the vibes hasn’t always been positive and I think the communication in this regard has been shitty (which perpetuates a much more negative vibe, than the one that actually existed).
But yeah, we’re extremely optimistic about this as well and we’re glad that this is finally a bridge that we get to cross (first!).
This is definitely a huge step forward. Congrats Woo.
Now the rest of the world will know what we have known all along: you guys rock!
This is to be very useful plugin. I would recommend to my friends.
This is amazing!! you guys really rock, congrats to the woo team!
Congratulations WooThemes! I’m a big fan of your work. Keep it up.
This really is an impressive development. To see wordpress embracing the development which market based solutions achieve is a very interesting twist. This to me shows that Woothemes is not only on the right track…but may actually be driving what users expect from wordpress functionality!
I really like Woothemes’ work! It is a cornerstone of my web developer job. I found a problem with the Custom Navigation. I use Czech language, which contains some special characters (for example: ěšÄřžýáÃé – hope they display correctly here), but no problem with utf-8. The custom navigation displays the names of pages with some of the special signs converted to ascii code and some of them replaced by question mark. Screenshot http://twitpic.com/13jynv/full .
This is definitely something we will be addressing with the WP team.
There is also a problem with Norwegian characters. æ, ø, and å fails. There seem to be a problem with latin1 vs utf8 somewhere..
I think it is a more intelligent way to work and far more productive when people and organisations work together so this is really good news. Well done for all the hard work and I am glad that you guys are now getting the deserved recognition for the awesomeness!
WordPress powered by Jeff Pearce, I like it, nice work guys.
This really is a win-win for everyone – The Woo Team, the WP Team, and developers everywhere that really contribute to making WordPress what it is. It really shows what good can be done by coming together in a positive way to create a solid product.
This looks really fabulous! I look forward to trying it out.
But please please, people, learn one grammatical thing: “it’s” is a contraction for “it is.” If you want to talk about something belonging to it, please use “its.”
It’s not that hard to figure out its proper use…
Sorry, I can’t help myself…
Congratulations you guys.
great work but…
before you integrate the WooNav in WP 3.0, i would like to snuggest that’s you create it as plug-in for WP 2.9 to test it out, specially for web designers who have wordpress as CMS for several clients, and have never use woothemes before, and also for any wordpress user, so he gets familiar with WooNav instead of integrate it suddenly in wp 3.0 , even it seems like Piece of Cake, but test it out on other wordpress themes make it more reliable and well tested.
great partnership lesson for any company, and every body is winner.
keep it up guys.
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It’s already integrated in WP 3.0 core, and I’m sure there will be a lot of testing before it is released to make sure it works with all themes 🙂
Great work Woo Themes and thank you for contributing to the core. We all benefit. I just purchased your Developer Club Membership to both support your company and provide my customers with great themes.
Congratulations for integrating WooThemes to WordPress 3.0! Now it won’t be difficult to put pages in menus. Unlike now wherein we have to tinker with the php part in order to put page links on the menus. 🙂
wow, you’re great man. nice works
Wowser, you guys know your onions alright, never used you guys before for a theme (although hear about Woo in general very often)
You have to be pleased with that though a real feather in your cap so to speak!
It’s great that the menu system is being updated in WP. That’s one of the only things that needs updating, in my opinion.
Wow — that is so awesome, guys!! A HUGE congratulations to all of you! 🙂