Changelog
Release Notes
Every feature, every improvement, every fix since v1.0.0.
Page 2 of 20 — 576 releases, newest first.
Home Studio Pro: section heading pack, bands and spacing, per-section card options, and Palettes 2.0
Added
- Every post-list section on the homepage (latest, most read, recommended, opinion, videos, related, gallery) now has a subtitle, a "view all" label and target (empty = the chosen category or the next page), heading alignment, a section background band (soft, brand or dark) and vertical spacing.
- Per-section card options that override the Cards tab only for that section: image ratio (16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4, 21:9), excerpt, meta row, category badge and title size. Category selection stays a one-click chip picker.
- Palettes 2.0: eight curated palettes (Ink, Ocean, Forest, Ember, Rose, Sand, Slate, Coral) that set all eight colour roles for light and dark mode at once, with AA text contrast. Clicking a palette also switches on optional colour roles, so it applies fully; the Default palette restores the theme colours.
Search Studio: a theme-independent search experience opened by the header button
Added
- Customize → Layout → Search: choose what the search button opens — full-screen overlay, top panel, dropdown under the button, or the search page. Placeholder text, results as you type (first 8 hits inside the box), suggestions before typing (categories, most read, or both), keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+K and /), and an optional header button for themes that ship none.
- The theme's own search button is captured, so the experience works even when a theme's script is out of step with its template. Keyboard navigation in results, Esc to close, focus returned to the button, scroll lock; dark-mode safe colours and line icons.
Fixed
- On two customer sites the header search button did nothing because the theme script looked for different element ids than the template printed; the script now falls back to the template's ids, and Search Studio bypasses the problem entirely.
Customizer colours no longer override a theme's dark mode
Fixed
- On themes with a dark-mode toggle, the customizer wrote its light text, background, surface and border colours unconditionally, so switching to dark mode kept white cards and dark text in the new blocks, the quiz card and several theme areas. Those colours now apply to light mode only; the theme's own dark values take over in dark mode. Brand colours, fonts and sizes are unchanged in both modes.
Dark-mode safe blocks, a cleaner sidebar table of contents, author card only on posts, quiz dark mode
Improved
- Sidebar table of contents redesigned: numbered entries with thin dividers, the active section in the brand colour, no side bar.
- A new release check activates the quiz plugin, builds a sample quiz, opens its standalone page and the shortcode embed, scores answers on the server and checks the instant-feedback guard and the dark-mode stylesheet.
Fixed
- On dark themes whose colour variables use different names, the new post-page blocks (read this next, related, navigation, boxes, 404) could fall back to light-grey text that was unreadable. Every fallback now derives from the surrounding text colour, so the blocks read correctly in light and dark alike; the reading toolbar also follows the theme's own dark toggle.
- The sidebar author card printed on category, tag, author and search pages, where it repeated the page it was on and took space for nothing. It now appears on single posts only, whatever its visibility setting says.
- The quiz card stayed white on dark themes that switch mode with a toggle; it now follows the theme's surface, text and border colours in both modes.
Cleaner, editorial look for the new post-page blocks: no coloured side stripes, gradients or emoji icons
Improved
- The in-article "read this next" box is now an editorial block with thin top and bottom rules, an uppercase label row, thumbnail, title and a circular arrow; the single-line strip keeps label and title on one line.
- Blockquote designs: "left colour bar" became "thin rules (top and bottom)" and the card design lost its side stripe. The members-only banner uses a solid brand colour, the author box cover band is solid, and the reading toolbar uses line icons instead of emoji.
Error and empty-state pages: smarter 404, no-results and empty-category designs, maintenance / coming-soon page and members-only box designs
Added
- 404 page gained an image / illustration, background colour, extra HTML, "Did you mean?" suggestions (the closest posts matching the broken address) and an optional countdown redirect to the homepage with a "stay here" button.
- Empty-state designs for no-search-results and empty category / tag pages: friendly card, explore (search + categories + recent posts) or minimal, with custom heading and text; works on every theme's own empty block.
- Maintenance / coming-soon page designed from the customizer: dark, light or brand-colour style, heading, text, countdown, "notify me" email form (Newsletter plugin), social icons, logo and background. Maintenance answers 503 so search engines wait; coming-soon answers 200 with noindex. Signed-in admins keep seeing the site.
- Members-only content box designs (soft card, blurred preview + card, brand-colour banner) with custom heading and text; theme default keeps the current inline box.
In-article "read this next" and newsletter / button boxes, byline separators and auto-loading the next post
Added
- In-article "read this next" box placed after a chosen paragraph: card with image, single-line strip or a small list of one to three posts; label and source are configurable. Works on every theme through the common content hook.
- In-article newsletter signup or text + button box after a chosen paragraph, in card, lined band or minimal designs. The signup posts to the Newsletter plugin with the same protection fields as the popup and tags subscribers with the "inline" source.
- Byline separators (dot, pipe, slash or stacked) and byline style (small caps, small and muted) for the post header design and the themes' common byline rows.
- Auto-load the next post (experimental): when the reader reaches the end, the next post opens below on the same page and the address updates; up to three posts, without ad or comment blocks.
Reading Mode 2.0, share-selected-text bubble, last-updated badge, tag block designs and a follow-us strip
Added
- Customize → Post → Reading experience now controls the reading toolbar: on/off, corner, tool set (text tools, sepia, focus, listen, print), reading time and the resume reminder. The Settings → Advanced switch remains the site-wide default.
- Share-selected-text bubble: selecting a sentence shows X / WhatsApp / copy; the quote travels with the post link.
- "Last updated" badge at the start of the content, only when the content changed or always, with a custom label; the date matches the structured data.
- Tag block designs (filled pills, outlined, #hashtag, minimal, hide) and an end-of-post follow-us strip (named chips, icons only, thin line) fed by Settings → Social.
Fixed
- Reading Mode loaded on every page and could appear over the first card on the homepage; on post pages its text size applied to the whole page and the reading time counted header and footer text. It now loads on single posts only, scales only the article content and counts only its words.
- Reading Mode labels were Turkish on every site and the voice was fixed to Turkish; labels now follow the site language and the voice matches it. The toolbar no longer overlaps the back-to-top button, the progress bubble or the up-next card in the same corner.
Reading indicator placement is one clear choice; theme and universal table-of-contents switches merged
Fixed
- The reading progress indicator showed only an on/off switch and hid its placement options until toggled. It is now a single choice: theme default, off, the theme's own bar (where the theme ships one), top or bottom bar, left or right rail, percent bubble or minutes-left bubble. Thickness, colour, gradient and corner appear as soon as a universal placement is chosen.
- Themes with their own progress bar or table of contents no longer show a second switch next to the universal one; the single choice drives both, so a bar or contents box never prints twice.
Customizer settings grouped into titled section cards
Improved
- Every customizer tab now lays its settings out in titled section cards instead of one flat grid: Post (header, reading experience, sharing, author box, comments, navigation, related posts), Sidebar (where it appears, position, widget design), Cards (design, category badge, content), Layout (announcement bar, call-to-action, header, footer, buttons, elements, colour mode) and Advanced (custom code, back-to-top, 404 page). Each card shows a short description and its setting count.
- Cards whose settings are all hidden by a parent switch hide themselves, and fixed multi-column rows collapse to two or one column when the panel is narrow (for example while the live preview is open).
Post page pro: reading indicator placements, table of contents, universal related posts, new navigation designs and an up-next bubble
Added
- Reading progress indicator now has six placements: thin bar at the top or bottom, vertical rail on the left or right, a percent bubble, or a minutes-left bubble; plus thickness, colour, gradient fill and bubble corner.
- Table of contents generated from the post's H2/H3 subheadings: box, numbered, collapsible or floating on wide screens, with a custom heading, depth choice and active-section highlight while scrolling.
- Universal related posts block on every theme: grid, list, title-over-image, horizontal cards or numbered titles only; heading, count, source (tags/category), columns, excerpt and placement before or after the navigation. Hides the theme's own block and the studio section so nothing prints twice.
- Previous/next navigation gained two designs (arrow circles, split halves), a block heading and editable labels.
- Up-next bubble: once the reader passes 70% of the post a dismissible card for the next post appears in the corner; corner is selectable and it stacks cleanly with the back-to-top button and the progress bubble.
Category badge styling on cards: seven looks, custom colours, size and letter case
Added
- Customize → Cards now styles the category label on every card: brand fill, soft tint, outline, dark, light, frosted glass over images, or custom background and text colours; plus four sizes and letter-case control. Works on every theme and on the universal card looks; theme default keeps the theme's own badge.
Distinct icons for every customizer section and an end-to-end form check
Improved
- The customizer navigation showed the same bookmark icon for Header, Archive, Media and Mobile; each section now has its own icon.
- A new release check logs in, saves the real customizer form across seven sections, confirms each change on the homepage, a post and a category page, then resets and confirms nothing is left behind.
Customizer audit close-out: forked themes get every universal panel, dead-setting sweep clean
Fixed
- Sites running a forked theme now see the same universal customizer panels as every stock theme (colours, typography, header, archive, elements, media, mobile); one fork was missing the post featured-image switch its template already read.
- A final dead-setting audit across every theme found no setting without a visible effect.
Elements, media and mobile controls plus a default colour mode on every theme
Added
- Appearance: button size, weight and uppercase text; form field style (rounded, pill, underline, square); blockquote style (colour bar, large quote mark, card, centered); table style (striped, bordered, minimal); link hover effect. Each applies across the theme's own buttons, forms and article content.
- Media: corner radius and shadow for images inside posts, slight zoom on hover, caption style, and click-to-enlarge (a self-hosted lightbox with Esc and click-outside to close).
- Mobile: text scale for small screens, hide the sidebar on mobile, and a fixed bottom bar with Home, Search, Share (native share sheet where available) and Back to top in light, dark or brand style.
- Default colour mode — light, dark or follow the device — on every theme with a dark palette; a visitor's own toggle choice always wins.
Archive Studio, hero content control and universal related posts on every theme
Added
- Archive Studio (Customize → Archive): switch category, tag and author pages to a universal layout while keeping the theme's header and footer — four header bands (minimal, colour band, cover using the category image, centered), card look (grid, list, masonry, title-over-image, horizontal), columns, posts per page, sort order, description and post count, and an optional sidebar fed by Sidebar Studio. Author pages get an avatar, bio and social links header.
- Hero content: choose what the homepage hero shows — featured posts, latest posts, chosen categories, or manual slides you write yourself (title, text, image, button, link) — plus image darkening, hero height and text alignment. Any choice other than Theme decides renders the universal rotating hero with the existing slide, speed and arrow controls.
- Related posts: a universal related section with post count, source (shared tags, same category, or mixed) and a card look, available under the post layout on every theme; themes with their own related block switch to it when a card look is chosen.
- Customizer fields that depend on a parent choice now stay hidden until that choice is made.
Header Studio: announcement bar, header button and social icons, transparent and smart-sticky header on every theme
Added
- Announcement bar above the header: text plus an optional link, four styles (brand, dark, soft, outlined), shown on all pages or the homepage only, dismissible with the visitor's browser remembering the choice.
- Header button (subscribe, contact, shop…) in solid, outline or pill style, optionally opening in a new tab, and a social icon cluster fed by Settings → Social links — both placed inside the theme's own header on every theme.
- Header behaviour: transparent over the homepage hero (returns to normal on scroll), sticky mode (theme default, always pinned, smart hide-on-scroll-down, or not sticky) and a shadow choice.
- All of it is off by default; nothing changes until you turn it on under Customize → Header.
One colour system and one typography panel on every theme, portable settings, and full export
Added
- Colours: every theme now exposes the same eight roles — primary, secondary, text, muted text, page background, card surface, border and link — each with a light and a dark value. Where a theme did not offer a role, an optional field appears: leave it off and the theme's own colour stays exactly as designed; tick Customize and your colour is written to every variable name the theme uses.
- Typography: heading and body font pickers on all themes (blank keeps the theme font), plus heading weight, letter case, letter spacing and an article text width preset. Everything is off until you choose it.
- Settings now travel between themes: fields that mean the same thing under different names (breadcrumb, share buttons, author box, colours, fonts) resolve to each other, so design packs and imported settings land correctly on every theme.
- Export includes homepage, post and sidebar layouts and the version history; import restores them.
Fixed
- The personal theme's custom CSS and HTML fields used a plain text box; they now use the code editor like every other theme.
Universal homepage cards: boxed surface, breathing room and a saner horizontal layout
Improved
- The universal card looks (grid, list, masonry, title-over-image, horizontal) now sit in a proper card: a surface background with a hairline border and soft shadow, the image seated flush into the card's corners, and a generous body padding so titles and meta no longer hug the image or the page background.
- The wide horizontal look uses at most two columns (one on narrow screens) instead of squeezing three thin cards side by side; list and showcase side cards got matching padding.
Edge HTML caching is now opt-in, so saves are visible at once on every host
Fixed
- Hostinger's CDN (and similar edge caches) treated the s-maxage hint on HTML pages as a five-minute store that none of jekcms's purges could reach, so a saved customizer change, a new post or a menu edit kept showing the old page for up to five minutes. HTML responses no longer advertise an edge lifetime by default — jekcms's own page cache still keeps pages fast — and hosts with a working purge integration can turn edge caching back on with a single constant (JEK_EDGE_HTML_TTL).
Changes show up immediately on LiteSpeed hosting
Fixed
- On LiteSpeed servers (most shared hosting, Hostinger included) the built-in server cache kept every HTML page for five minutes after any change, so a customizer save, a new post or a menu edit stayed invisible until the timer ran out — a switched card look on the homepage kept showing the old design. jekcms now tells LiteSpeed not to store its HTML (jekcms keeps its own page cache and clears it on every change), and admin saves also send a purge so anything already stored is dropped at once.
Cleaner section settings panel with a live card-look preview
Improved
- The gear panel under each homepage section was re-laid out: every label now sits above its control at full width (no more clipped 'Card lo…' labels), the card-look picker shows a live miniature of the chosen look — grid, list, masonry, title-over-image, wide horizontal or the theme's own design — that updates the moment you change the selection, and settings the theme design does not read stay hidden until a universal look is chosen.
- The layout editor no longer squeezes into a 300-pixel column on laptop screens: the mini page preview now appears only on very wide displays, and section rows wrap their controls onto a second line when space is tight.
Homepage section details: card look, title and count on every section, plus category picker with uploadable icons
Added
- Every post-list section on the homepage (latest, popular, recommended, opinion, videos) now offers a Card look setting on every theme: keep the theme design, or switch to grid, list, masonry, title-over-image or wide horizontal cards. The universal looks honour the Cards tab switches and add column count and a category filter; section title and post count are editable on every theme.
- Category band: pick exactly which categories to show and in what order, show a category icon or image in three sizes, and show post counts. Upload a square image per category under Admin → Categories (512×512 recommended); it is fitted into a fixed box whatever its source size, with the initial letter as fallback. On the travel theme, picking categories replaces the fixed continent map with category tiles.
- Section settings the theme's own design does not read (columns, category filter) stay hidden until a universal card look is chosen, so nothing looks like a dead switch.
Fixed
- Several homepage sections ignored their title or count setting even though the customizer showed it: recommended blocks on travel, health and minimalist, and latest posts on pets and recipes now read them.
Customizer saves now reach the CDN edge immediately
Fixed
- Saving, resetting, restoring or importing in the customizer cleared the local page cache but never told the CDN edge, so on sites behind Cloudflare the previous design kept being served for up to five minutes — a card template switched from Detailed to Clean still showed the author name and excerpt. Every customizer write now purges the edge as well (and sends a LiteSpeed purge header), so the new look is live on the very next visit.
Post and archive extras: previous/next navigation, universal breadcrumbs, pagination styles and designed 404 pages on every theme
Added
- Previous / next post navigation on every theme: cards with thumbnails, a minimal line, or covers with the title over the image. Choose whether it follows the date order or stays inside the same category, and whether images show. It prints after sharing and before comments; a theme's own navigation is hidden once a universal design is chosen, and a Hide option removes it entirely.
- Universal breadcrumbs (Home › category › post) in four styles: chevron, slash, pill badges and small caps. Choosing a style hides the theme's own breadcrumb; with a post header design the trail prints inside the header, otherwise just above the theme's title.
- Pagination style for category, tag, author and search lists: pill buttons, outlined, bold square, or previous / next only — applied on top of the theme's pagination markup.
- 404 page designs under Customize → Advanced: Minimal, With search box, and Explore (search, most-read posts and category chips), each with an editable heading and description. The theme header and footer are kept; only the page body changes, and the theme's own 404 stays the default.
Customizer Pro: version history with one-click restore, design packs, undo/redo and a seventy-font library
Added
- Version history: before every save the customizer captures the current state — all field settings plus the homepage, post and sidebar layouts — into a per-theme history of the last twenty-five saves. You can label a save, see who made it and when, and restore any earlier version in one click; the state you are leaving is captured first, so a restore can itself be undone.
- Design packs: Editorial, Magazine, Minimal and Bold apply a matching set in one click — heading and body fonts, card layout and hover, badge shape, section title style, sidebar design, button shape, post header style, share position, author box and reading extras — together with a fitting colour palette. Only fields your theme has are filled; nothing is stored until you save.
- Undo and redo inside the customizer: every change to a control is kept in an in-page history, reachable from the sidebar buttons or with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z (Cmd on Mac). Text fields keep the browser's own undo.
- The font pickers now offer seventy Google Fonts across sans, serif, display, handwriting and monospace families, loaded on the site only when chosen.
Fixed
- The dead-setting audit now skips fields that layout cards manage and seeds the fixture with every social link, which surfaced three real defects: the finance theme never printed the featured image on posts because it read the wrong array key; the lifestyle theme's header and footer social icons read an always-empty theme file instead of Settings → Social links; and the copyright suffix field on the recipes and travel themes was saved but never printed because the shared footer bar ignored it. All three are fixed.
Homepage Studio: twelve universal sections on every theme, a layout-engine fix that had silently dropped sections, and a dead-setting sweep
Added
- Customize → Homepage now offers the full section set on every theme: latest posts (grid, list or masonry, with columns, category filter and paging), most read, category band (chips or tiles), category blocks, showcase (one lead + three), dual spotlight, newsletter band, call-to-action band, custom HTML block, headline strip, gallery strip and video row. Each section has its own heading, counts, columns, band style and category filter; sections are reordered, toggled and previewed live. Themes that ship their own design for a section keep it.
Fixed
- The layout engine ran every section template in its own loop scope, so a template that assigned a variable named theme overwrote the engine's own — every section after it was dropped without an error. Sections now run in an isolated scope and one faulty section can no longer take the rest down. On the lifestyle theme this had disabled the homepage layout entirely.
- A new dead-setting audit changed every customizer field on every theme and compared the rendered pages: four travel options that no template read were removed, a date format switch on recipe cards that show no date is hidden, the excerpt-below-title switch is hidden on five themes whose header never printed it, and reading time now reaches all news cards when you turn it on.
Sticky widgets that actually stick, one sidebar engine for every theme, and a sticky mode selector
Improved
- Customize → Sidebar gains a sticky mode: theme default plus sticky group, sticky group only, whole sidebar sticky, or nothing sticky. The per-widget default is now sticky only for the table of contents, so enabling widgets no longer turns the entire sidebar into a pinned block by surprise.
Fixed
- Marking a widget (for example the table of contents) as sticky had no visible effect on most themes, and when it did, several sticky widgets overlapped each other while scrolling. every theme now share one sidebar renderer: from the first sticky widget on, the remaining widgets stay on screen together while the ones above scroll away; a group taller than the screen scrolls inside itself.
- Themes whose sidebar was designed as a screen-high box with inner scrolling clipped the studio widgets; that rule now steps aside whenever a sticky group is present.
- The customer sites running forked themes ignored the studio's widget rows and kept showing only their built-in table of contents; their sidebars now render the rows you enable.
Sidebar Studio: sixteen widgets on every theme, page-by-page visibility, and six sidebar designs
Added
- Customize → Sidebar now offers the full widget set on every theme: search, about, author card, table of contents, recent posts, most read, trending, categories, tags, newsletter, social links, share, info box, image banner, call-to-action box and custom HTML. Each widget carries its own settings (headings, counts, thumbnails, look-back window, button label and link, sponsored banner, and more) and can be reordered, switched on or off and previewed live.
- Sidebar visibility per page family — homepage, post pages, category/tag/author/search pages and static pages — plus a per-widget rule that can also say 'everywhere except home'. Themes that never had a sidebar (starter, tech, entertainment post pages, travel's rail, recipes) gain one the moment you switch it on.
- Six sidebar designs — theme default, clean, boxed, cards, dark panel and centered rules — with width (narrow/normal/wide), left or right position, widget spacing and a whole-sidebar sticky mode. Everything is pure CSS applied only when chosen, so the theme default stays untouched.
Improved
- A new release gate switches every theme to the studio's widgets, checks that they reach the post page and the homepage, that visibility rules hide them, that design rules land in the stylesheet, and that a reset restores the theme default.
Reading experience controls, card layout variants, badge shapes, archive columns, a reading progress bar and a back-to-top button
Added
- Customize → Post gains reading controls on every theme: a drop cap on the first paragraph, left or justified text, three in-content link styles (underlined, brand color, highlight) and compact or relaxed paragraph spacing.
- A reading progress bar at the top of article pages and a back-to-top button (left or right corner), both in the brand color and both off by default.
- Customize → Cards gains a layout variant — title over the image, or horizontal with the image on the left — and a category badge shape (pill, rounded, square or text-only). Hero and featured cards keep the theme design.
- Customize → Layout gains the number of columns on category, tag, author and search lists (1–4), narrowing automatically on small screens, and Customize → Appearance gains a global button corner style (pill, rounded, square).
Fixed
- The health and travel themes did not run the shared footer script hook, so custom footer scripts from Settings never reached those sites; the hook is now in place.
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