Web & Tech

A new version of Paradigm theme for Zenphoto CMS is released to address recent changes, introduced prior to official release of Zenphoto 1.6.3 on June 4, 2024.

In May I’ve managed to add past releases of Paradigm to Github and from now on plan to use that repository for code and versioning management. Github will allow me to frequently update theme with fixes, accept code contributions and make introduction of new features much faster. Major releases will still be announced on this blog and I’ll keep pages for official instructions, history of changes and release packages here too.

Paradigm gets a version bump to 2.0, as I should have done it for v1.6 due to breaking changes to Options. Number of changes is less impressive, but some are quite significant and forced me to rewrite all code once again.

I’ve added support for Multiple Layouts plugin with 1 alternative layout for Albums (more to follow) and FlickrFeed (make sure to update your version to the newest one, as previous won’t work due to changes on Flickr). Featured Images plugin is now included in official Zenphoto package and adds several functions, which were utilised by this version of Paradigm.

To protect custom user flies during updates and to speed up load times by eliminating 404 responses for unused custom CSS file – I’ve moved custom Logo and custom CSS into ‘uploaded/design’ directory and enabled selection of those files in Options. Another new Option is an ability to choose custom Preview image for OpenGraph/Twitter Cards in the Options from files in the same ‘uploaded/design’ directory.

Another massive change – support for full theme localisation (I really hope I found ALL text strings that needed translation)!
I’ve added Russian translation as well, to get the ball rolling.

Bug reports and features suggestions are welcome (and you can submit them via Github too).

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A new version of Paradigm theme for Zenphoto CMS comes very soon after previous release.

If version 1.5 was a collection of stuff I was working on for a almost 5 month, here and there, adding and fixing stuff, as I had a bit of time to work on it, version 1.6 is a beast of different kind.
When my life feels out of control and long-term, mid-term and short-term plans are gone out of the window yet again, I see myself again and again taking on this kind of work: code, solitude, problem-solving and being in control. Working on my web-projects and anything adjacent is almost therapeutic, it allows for regaining control in at least one section of my life and works as a “palate cleanser” against stress. That’s how I was able to check off so many items from my Paradigm To-do list, including some major items, that were actually planned for Ver. 2.0!

I’ve added support for several plugins and added more options for existing implementations, but my major concern was cleaning up of the code and reworking Options, as this was a major setback, that impacted speed of my work and was just a pain to look at. While working through it all, I’ve found a lot of small bugs and plan to report or just submit my solutions, when I have more free time.

Changelog and my notes are below. Bug reports and features suggestions are welcome.

I’ve also added new screenshots to the Screenshots of Paradigm ver. 1.6 Gallery on my Demo site.
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A new version of Paradigm theme for Zenphoto CMS was once again mostly implementing features born out of my own needs while working on a new website. As I’ve decided to cut myself some slack with content upload and spread it out intentionally through at least a year, I was able to pay more attention to CMS side of things, look into features for a better SEO and, in the process, catch some bags in Zenphoto and Paradigm and report or fix them.

Several issues were reported by users (Ewgeniy & Mark) for which I’m very grateful, as I wasn’t using those features myself and were not likely to catch bugs there anytime soon, also discussions with ChristianS on Zenphoto forum gave me a few ideas for future features (probably for version 1.6). So, if you have any ideas or noticed anything weird/not working – drop me a line.

Most additions add even more flexibility for displaying your content without any need to edit theme files.

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