The last major release of Storefront saw us add many accessibility improvements and achieve the “accessibility ready” tag on wordpress.org.
That release went a long way towards making Storefront a more rounded solution for store owners looking to make their online shops accessible to the widest audience possible. Storefront 1.5 carries on that theme of enabling, and achieves another coveted tag on wordpress.org.
Here’s a look at some of the biggest chances in Storefront 1.5.
Storefront speaks your language, even in RTL
↑ Voltar Para o TopoThe primary feature of this release is support for right-to-left languages in Storefront core.
Every aspect of Storefront has been adjusted and tested to support WordPress installs that have a right-to-left language configuration. The aesthetic will now be perfectly mirrored, even down to the smallest details like icons and default settings in the Customizer.
If you installed WordPress in a right-to-left language, Storefront will automatically recognize that and intelligently load an entirely different set of stylesheets that have been tailored to that language. This is an improvement on the traditional RTL support standard which simply overloads an additional stylesheet on top of the primary one (essentially loading two files, where only one is necessary).
WooCommerce is a global eCommerce solution, it’s only right that Storefront is a global theme solution for WooCommerce. Storefront 1.5 provides this and more.
Integration with more extensions
↑ Voltar Para o TopoThe total number of customer facing extensions that Storefront integrates with out of the boxes is increased to 11 in 1.5 as we added support for WooCommerce Deposits and Product Bundles. There are also updates to the Composite Products integration ensuring compatibility with the latest version.
Revamped 404 page
↑ Voltar Para o TopoWe’ve revamped the 404 page template to better direct customers to what they’re looking for.
Previously this page featured a post/page search and links to post archives, which was great for blogs. However, Storefront is meant for online stores, so we decided to make this page more useful to folks browsing a shop.
The new 404 page now includes a product search box, links to product categories, featured products and popular products. Hopefully your visitors won’t end up on this page too often, but if they do they’ll now see more contextual content.
Scrolling header cart
↑ Voltar Para o TopoThe Storefront header cart is a really handy feature. It gives visitors permanent access to important information such as their cart total, and the number of items it contains. On hover it also reveals the carts contents.
This works great when there are only a few items in the cart, but as more items get added this dropdown becomes unwieldy.
Storefront 1.5 elegantly addresses this by giving the cart dropdown a set height which simply begins to scroll as more items are added.
Featured images appear for pages
↑ Voltar Para o TopoWe’re all familiar with adding featured images to posts, but pages can have featured images too. In previous versions of Storefront we didn’t cater for this and they simply weren’t displayed.
Not any more! As of Storefront 1.5 if you added a featured image to a page, it will appear on the frontend directly above the page title.
Many other minor fixes, improvements, and a video!
↑ Voltar Para o TopoYou can read about all the changes in Storefront 1.5 in the Changelog, and checkout our awesome video about Storefront.
Some more Storefront goodies!
In addition to Storefront 1.5, we recently released ProShop, a new child theme aimed at sports and gear stores, and a few other goodies.
Storefront Reviews
Storefront Reviews in action” width=”1308″ height=”558″> Storefront Reviews in actionReading a positive review can be what tips the decision to purchase for many customers, but many sites hide reviews away on individual product pages.
The Storefront Reviews extensions enables you to display reviews on your homepage in a variety of styles, or anywhere on your site via the included shortcode.
Storefront Blog Customiser feature release
The 1.1 release of the Storefront Blog Customiser extension saw 2 new features added:
- Homepage Component – You can now display recent blog posts in the homepage template.
- Independent Layouts – It’s now possible to set blog post layouts independently for archives / single posts.
Try Storefront 1.5 now, and stay tuned for even more
That’s all for now. Ready to try 1.5? Update via your WordPress Dashboard, or download the theme here to give Storefront a try on your WooCommerce site.
We’re hard at work designing and building a new Storefront child theme aimed at electronics stores. The much anticipated Storefront Mega Menus extension is also in development. Stay tuned for updates on these exciting new products.
Remember, if there’s a particular feature or product you’d like to see, submit an idea on our ideas board. We’d love to hear from you!
Have any thoughts or questions about Storefront? Let us know in the comments.
About
Great update, thanks James & Co. 🙂
Thought I’d provide a bit of feedback as an end user (not a developer/designer) and a relatively new WooThemes customer.
I like the basic premise of Storefront, of starting with a lean and mean shell to build onto. I have absolutely no problem paying for added functionality because, as an end user, it means I have some more control over simple things without getting a Developer involved. I have installed Storefront and purchased the two design extensions (Customizer and Designer) plus the woo commerce product add on.
Where you’ve lost me is in the vast array and limited functionality of these extensions. Forget about cost, I was very surprised at how little each extension will do. For instance I expected way more from Storefront WooCommerce Customizer, an extension that touts itself as allowing me to “get complete control of your WooCommerce shop, personalise it to match your brand / audience”.
I guess that at this point (version 1.5 and almost a year in) I would expect to be able to do a lot more with each extension and be able to do a lot more with Storefront overall without having to get a Developer involved. It would be much simpler to have a single design extension that could ‘unlock’ a lot more functionality, even if the cost was a lot more. Now that you are releasing more extensions, which on one hand is great, I can’t help but look at them and think “why can’t they just bundle these together, charge me higher annual fee and be done with it”. Now I’ve got to decide each little thing I want , adding each one on, worry about having to renew/update each one etc etc. etc. It feels like the makings of a big mush pot.
I think you’ve got the makings of a great product in Storefront, but the number of options you have are quickly becoming overwhelming from a decision making standpoint. Bundle them all together as a pro or premium set and be done with it, or at a minimum have a couple of levels. And then get on with developing some really good child themes and a lot of them. I think you’re really missing out on the needs of that ‘middle ground’ target market that you seem to want to hit…those of us that want something more robust than Shopify but who aren’t developers/designers.
Again, this is feedback, not a complaint. Take it as you like.
Cheers.
Hi Erick,
Thanks so much for your feedback here.
As we build out features to enhance Storefront, bundling will certainly be an item on our radar to explore. The aim of keeping smaller pieces separate is to ensure you can install the pieces you need without being left with features you don’t need (something we learned when bundling features directly into themes).
We’re looking forward to sharing more child themes with everyone. We have a few currently in development and are very excited to share them. 🙂
Thanks for the constructive feedback. I’d love to know which specific features you’d like to see in the extensions and would encourage you to write about those on our ideasboard. Keep in mind though that our intention with the Storefront extensions is to keep them lean with a focus on doing one thing well rather than lots of things “OK”.
The extension bundle is an interesting idea and definitely something we’re considering.
Hopefully there is a plugin for the woo shortcodes coming because the storefront theme unfortunately is limited right now with the shortcodes. I realize the shortcodes cannot be loaded into the .org repository but it would be great as a plugin as to avoid the bloated page builder approach. Good news to see storefront getting some love but I would love the basics of shortcodes to come back as it means storefront is alot less customizable right now.
Which shortcodes in particular do you miss, and where do you use them?
We’ve explored the idea of a shortcode plugin some time ago and would prefer to revisit the idea from scratch and include only the shortcodes most often used. 🙂
Hey Matty, I guess the shortcodes I religiously use would be the columns for sure and the buttons from time to time. Social media shortcodes I do use but not as much. If I was to really be restrained I would go with those to start. The columns are just so handy right across the theme.
If you haven’t already done so, please vote for the idea on our ideasboard.
A shortcode plugin is something we’ll definitely look into if there is enough demand.
Time to update my old shirts store. It’s been doing moderately good, and I expect the sales to jump a bit after the update.
Cheers!
That’s great to hear, Ciprian! Let us know how your sales go over the next few months. We always love hearing how WooCommerce and Storefront are helping store owners. 🙂
Sounds great!
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StoreFront looks like very flexible and extensible theme.
I will give it a try.
Consequently, I plumped for a different execution where you
can highlight current thoughts of signal, whether they certainly were
put using this plugin.
Maybe I am not finding it, but I would think that a woocommerce theme would have a landing page template built into it. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Do I have to install a plug-in to create a simple landing page with this theme? If so, what is a good one that IS compatible with woocommerce and this theme? I’m not finding much help on this topic out there.