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Howdy Friends,

Summer may be coming to an end, but we’re not slowing down at Themeco HQ. As a matter of fact, our next update is just around the corner, and it's a big one! Let’s take a look at what you can expect.

SUPER DUPER LOOPERS

When we introduced Loopers in 2020, it was a game changer for website builders in WordPress. Since then, we’ve continued to expand this feature and even released Super Loopers to help you takes Loopers to the next level.

Today, we have another exciting feature to announce with regards to Loopers, and it’s one we know you are going to love. Simply put, we are creating a new Looper API. This API will allow you to add new Providers and Controls for all Elements that accept a Looper Provider.

What this means is that integrating new Loopers will be even easier for you (and us). You can also look forward to several new Looper Providers including:

1. API Looper - Power Loopers from an API (more on this in the next section).
2. WooCommerce Upsells & Cross-Sell Looper - Easily loop through a product's upsells and cross-sells, for the current product or a specific product.
3. CSV Looper - A new generic file input control is also being created to support this and will be available to most Control APIs.

There are a couple more we have in the works including a Comment Looper and Breadcrumb Looper.

API POWER

Utilizing the vast array of APIs available on the internet has become an essential part of many businesses. It's even more important when it comes to building a website.

Since Cornerstone is the most advanced website builder on the market today, we've decided to tap into this paradigm in a new and exciting way — by bringing APIs to Dynamic Content without coding!

You'll be able to quickly set custom endpoints, headers, request types, return types, and start integrating with your chosen API. It will even offer caching options, allow-lists, and a Looper Provider option. This won't be enabled by default, but you can turn it on as needed.

This is a significant step towards an entirely new frontier of integrations, custom web apps, and more, all powered by Cornerstone.

INNER DYNAMIC CONTENT

Yet another exciting feature introduces the ability to use Dynamic Content inside your Dynamic content string! This will expand Dynamic Content functionality significantly by allowing you to reference dynamic data with dynamic data.

As an example, take this Dynamic Content which grabs the post title from Dynamic Content that returns a post id. {{dc:post:title post="{{dc:acf:post_field field='post_id'}}"}}

For the Dynamic Content aficionados in our community, this will be a powerful new addition. It's one of the last stops on the Dynamic Content train until we implement a Template Engine which will unlock a way to do math and loops without having to write code or use Loopers.

THE QUERY BUILDER

Along with Loopers, creating a Query Builder has been a highly requested feature. And we've got some good news for you. The beginning of this project is coming in our next update with a sort by meta field and search by meta field.

This is our first step towards this powerful new builder, and for starters, controlling your queries with ACF (or other plugins that utilize meta fields) will be easier than ever. This used to require either an external tool or a rather complicated Query String.

IN SEARCH OF MOBILE SUPERIORITY

This cycle will also address mobile issues related to the Off-Canvas and Modal Elements. Accordions are getting a brand new feature to control the scroll of the page where an Accordion opens (helps reduce the page “jumping” on a smaller device).

The old Disable Body Scroll feature was lackluster on mobile and desktop causing multiple scrollbars and an inefficient way to lock the page. This new implementation is loosely based on Redfin and AirBNB’s Modal Elements.

FA6 + PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

The ultimate two for one special. Not only will a new version of Font Awesome 6 be coming in our next update, SVG support is coming which brings a significant performance gain to sites utilizing icons.

You will see overnight performance improvements if you switch to the new SVG Mode in the Font Awesome section of Theme Options. You won't be required to do this, but it will unlock major performance improvements and a great new feature. There may be some very slight icon appearance changes from the old version to the new one (changes on Font Awesome's end).

How Font Awesome currently works is that it acts like a web font. The problem is that when you're including Font Awesome (now), your including every icon. SVG is the opposite of that, and you are only outputting the icon that you're using. With the SVG approach, you can mix and match infinitely and you'll only pull through the icon(s) that you are specifying.

Again, you are not required to switch, however we encourage you to do so to take advantage of all these new features and performance improvements. For existing sites, we're going to load through both Webfont (old way) and SVG (new way). For new installs, SVG will be on by default.

Quick side note. It's easy to forget all the premium tools that are included in Cornerstone, many of which you'd have to pay for separately, on top of creating the integration. Just the price of FA6 alone is as much as our entire Pro Theme! In addition, you have a development team keeping that feature integrated into all the other powerful features of Cornerstone.

TIMELINE

If all these new features weren’t exciting enough, perhaps the best part is that testing begins in September! We’re planning to begin the beta around the middle of the month, so stay tuned to Facebook and Twitter for the latest.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY

We’ve seen an incredible response to Cornerstone Charts.

We’ve already added several new features since launch, and more are on the way! With new chart integrations, new videos, and new examples — we’re going to help you visualize your website data in some truly remarkable ways.

It’s a little too early to revel everything just yet, but up first is improvements with ACF, WooCommerce, and external databases.

If you haven’t already done so, pick up your license of Cornerstone Charts today. As a matter of fact, now is the perfect time...

BODACIOUS BUNDLES

Save 20% on Cornerstone Charts plus all of our other Max Products PLUS Pro Unlimited with our Themeco Bundles. Lifetime deals and unlimited use. It doesn’t get any better than this!

All my best,
Kyle