I‘m very excited to announce the availability of the SmallBiz 3.0 WordPress Theme!
Thomas and I have been following each of the WordPress 3.0 beta drops, and attended WordCamp in San Francisco this April to make sure the SmallBiz theme shines on WordPress 3.0.
Along the way we discovered some of the cool new features in WordPress 3.0 and put our roadmap together for future releases of the SmallBiz WordPress Theme.
In this release, we’ve updated the theme to take advantage of many of the new capabilities in WordPress 3.0. We’ve also given the SmallBiz Options Panel a complete makeover, and made many other nice tweaks and changes to the style sheets.
New features in SmallBiz 3.0
Native WordPress Custom Menus
In this release, we’ve adopted the new WordPress Menus that are now part of the core in WordPress 3.0. Previously, sub-menus were implemented on a theme by theme basis. We put a lot of work and testing into that feature, and it’s nice to have that as part of the WordPress core now.
SmallBiz 3.0 supports WordPress 3.0 custom menus
Visual Font Color Choosers
Now we’ve added a color picker control for all of the color choices in the SmallBiz Options Panel. You can just point to the color you want and BAM! Now you’ve changed the color without having to know the color code.
Font color chooser
Redesigned Options Panel
We’ve completely revamped the SmallBiz Options panel; it’s organized into sections now, to make it easier to scan and it looks prettier too.
Redesigned WordPress Options Panel
Change background color and image
In SmallBiz 3.0, we fully support the WordPress 3.0 capabilities to change your background color, or background image.
Select Home Page
We’ve also included the ability to change the home page from the default that we provide, right in the options panel. This new drop-down makes it easy to change which page is displayed as the home page when someone visits your website.
WordPress Website Home Page Selector
Multisite Support
We’ve also made sure that the SmallBiz Theme works with the new Multisite support built into WordPress 3.0. In this latest version of WordPress, the ability to create a blog network has been rolled in. This capability was previously only available as part of WordPress Mu, and now it’s part of every WordPress install.
SmallBiz 3.0 supports WordPress 3.0 Multisite
SmallBiz 3.0 requires WordPress 3.0 – because it depends on many of the new features in that release it will not work on WordPress 2.9.2 or below.
Note: SmallBiz Themes v1.6x still work with WordPress 3.0; you don’t have to upgrade.
I’m super excited about WordPress 3.0, and SmallBiz 3.0. And they work together like a charm! Have you tried WordPress 3.0 yet? Let me know what you think!
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Can this theme be used for directory .like a yellow page. I am actually looking for something like this. can you show any demo sites
@Static Caravan – you would need a plugin or something to build a directory site. I’ve done them before in WP and it is possible. Here are some example websites based on the SmallBiz Theme.
Hey Don,
Wondering, can you make this theme mobile compatible as well? Or should we just install some plug-in to do that?
That will definitely impress my clients, and a whole lot of people are using their smartphones to surf the web so this would be a great selling factor for your product as well.
@Hassan,
Great suggestion! Yes, the SmallBiz theme is mobile device compatible, and we’ve even released the ability to have mobile specific landing pages. See the video here.
can you recommend a directory plugin that will
1. help me build a directory of local hotels
2. compatible with SmallBiz 3.0
thanks