Comment on Stallion Responsive WordPress SEO Theme by SEO Dave.

Stallion WordPress SEO Package Have today (August 10th 2014) released Stallion Responsive 8.1, for current customers should be available as an update on your Dashboards.

Done really well for a release time frame, was aiming for the end of July and taking into account testing I’m pretty much on schedule: first time ever :-)

One feature bug, actually an issue with WordPress widgets. If you add new options to a widget WordPress doesn’t have an option to set defaults if the widget is already used. In this update I’ve added multiple new options to the “Stallion SEO Posts Widget” and the “Stallion SEO Recent Comments Widget” which means right after upgrading to Stallion 8.1 those two widgets are missing settings and don’t work correctly (widget output is blank).

It’s a very easy fix, go to “Appearance” >> “Widgets” and edit all instances of those two widgets you currently have on a sidebar. When the widget options drop down click the “Save” button at the bottom and the default options will be added. This isn’t an issue for new installs or adding another instance of the widgets, the defaults are set automatically when the widget is dragged and dropped. Bit of an oversight for WordPress core not to have a check option for if a widget has new options so defaults can be added automatically.

I’ve added several new options to those widgets, so check the defaults work with whatever you had before. You might have to increase the default numbers (set to 5) to match the number of posts you are loading. Really cool features, you can set how many of the links have thumbnails and excerpts now.

For those updating you can update the main parent theme under your dashboard, the free child theme has to be installed manually, this is because a child theme is for making modifications and if I added an auto update feature (I could) it would delete any modifications: AKA support nightmare….

Download the child theme zip file, unzip on your computer and use FTP to upload to /wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/ making sure if you’ve made any modifications to the child theme you have a backup copy offline so you can add the modifications back in after update.

There’s no major changes to the child theme, there’s the latest version of the timthumb.php file and have included the Stallion mobile menu image for all the theme colours (will explain why below). So there’s no major code changes to the child theme, don’t NEED to update to 8.1 if you’ve made loads of mods to the 8.0 child theme.

Stallion Responsive 8.1 sees a major improvement in the Stallion Colour Scheme Creator feature, the 8.0 version required manually copying the CSS rules and the backup PHP code, in 8.1 it’s all automatic.

When you save a colour change two files are automatically created, they are saved in the child theme under

/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/colors/ – saves the css file

and

/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/mydefaults/css/ – saves the php backup file

This means Stallion will automatically find and use both those files without messing around with creating new CSS files or PHP files and uploading via FTP to use them.

Does mean you have to be a little more careful in saving your new colour schemes, if you edit a default colour scheme the CSS file is automatically saved to /wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/colors/ and used by WordPress if you later choose to use that colour scheme. The original CSS files are NOT changed, they are still under /wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/colors/ but WordPress will preferentially use the file from the child theme folder.

If you make a mess use FTP to go to

/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/colors/
and
/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/mydefaults/css/

and delete the relevant files for the colour scheme you edited and Stallion will again use the files from

/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/colors/
and
/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/mydefaults/css/

Can then start again.

If you do plan to make new colour schemes or edit current ones best to install the v8.1 child theme because the mobile menu images are now included in the child theme. If you don’t update to 8.1 you’ll have to manually copy the relevant mobile.png images from:

/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive/colors/images/
to
/wp-content/themes/stallion-responsive-child/colors/images/

Lots on new features with Stallion Responsive 8.1, many related to performance, run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights Tool and compare to my results using Stallion Responsive 8.1 and W3 Total Cache for CSS minification etc…

http://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fstallion-theme.co.uk%2F

For those holding off buying at $100, please be aware the price is going up to $200 just as soon as I’ve sent out an email to all Talian 5 and Stallion WordPress SEO v7 customers letting them know Stallion Responsive 8.1 is available for $100. One week after the email is sent the price goes up and will not come back down in the near future, I’m also not offering any discounts at $200, it’s going to be a fixed $500 price period.

If you want my awesome SEO work which would be a bargain at $1,000, pay for it or use an inferior theme like Thesis or Genesis with Yoast WordPress SEO ROFLOL. Go checkout sites running Thesis and Genesis with the Google PageSpeed Insights Tool and also ask how a plugin like Yoast WordPress SEO can improve SEO performance by changing title tags?

David