[theme-reviewers] Best way of warning people before upgradeing

[Daniel Fenn]

Please excuse me as this is written on my phone, I like the idea of
having a link to my clog post when there a new version of my theme. I
really didn't think that people would want to hack my nice theme to
add things such as a menu bar and so on. Not only that this theme does
not work with all PHPBB styles and therefore code changes are needed.
Thank you for the ideas and links guys :)

On 16/07/2011, Sayontan Sinha <sayontan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here is an approach I use to accommodate version-specific changes:
>
>    1. I post an article on my site whenever there is a new version of the
>    theme, complete with the change log, potential impacts etc.
>    2. I have a "Version checker" function built in the theme. There are
>    multiple ways to do this:
>       1. You can use the native calls that WP uses on its theme
>       administration pages. There is a function called
> theme_update_available,
>       which uses a call to get_site_transient('update_themes') and
> then determines
>       if there is an update. You can use the same call (without the printf
>       statements in that function) to check if there is a new version.
>       2. Alternatively you can directly query your site's feed for a post
>       tagged with the new version (or with the new version number
> included in the
>       title). This you can do either by hardcoding the link to your
> feed (it is in
>       the admin panel and not a public-facing link, so that is allowed), or
> use
>       the much smarter approach suggested by Justin
> here<http://devpress.com/blog/customizing-plugin-and-theme-file-headers/>
>       .
>       3. You can hook the version checker to the admin pages and don't make
>    it display anything if no new version is found. That way if a particular
>    version has no specific release notes then it will not display a link.
>    4. When your version checker determines that a new version is available,
>    it automatically displays the link by saying, "There is a new version
>    available. Please see the <link>release notes</link>"
>
> In your post with the release notes you can include any special warnings
> such as putting changes in child themes, or making changes to certain
> options or files etc.
>
> Till such a time as a "Readme" parser is implemented this approach will work
> to direct users to your change log.
>
> Sayontan.
>
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 9:14 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at themeid.com> wrote:
>
>> Child Themes should be the answer to all this and if I were you I would
>> make that your number one priority and letting know your users that in the
>> order to keep their "edits" Child Themes are the only way to preserve
>> that.
>> Take a look at http://chrishajer.com/wordpress/upgrade-plugin.png and see
>> what they have done with this, maybe you can do something similar.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Emil
>>
>> ----
>> *Emil Uzelac* | ThemeID | T: 224-444-0006 | Twitter: @EmilUzelac | E:
>> emil at themeid.com | http://themeid.com
>> Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:44 PM, Daniel Fenn <danielx386 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Hello all,
>>>
>>> I just submitted an update for my theme for approval and I'm worried
>>> about
>>> people upgrading and losing any file edits that they may have made.
>>>
>>> Is there a way to warn people in the wordpress dashboard that they should
>>> make a note of any changes that they made and that they will need to put
>>> the
>>> changes back in after the upgrade?
>>>
>>> I've made a post on my blog and forum about it, but not everyone go over
>>> there.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Daniel Fenn
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> theme-reviewers mailing list
>>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
>>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> theme-reviewers mailing list
>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Sayontan Sinha
> http://mynethome.net | http://mynethome.net/blog
> --
> Beating Australia in Cricket is like killing a celebrity. The death gets
> more coverage than the crime.
>


-- 
Regards,
Daniel Fenn