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Howdy Friends,

February was a great month at Themeco. We saw the launch of Max and concluded our continuous development test. We also launched a new video series and shared some upcoming product news. Let's begin...

Max

We saw an incredible response to our newest service, and we couldn't be more excited. As a matter of fact, the first episode in our next Course & Expansion Pack, Super Loopers, is coming your way next week!

If you haven't already, now is the perfect time to join as the price will continue to increase as the library grows. When you purchase today, you're able to lock in the current pricing for life! If you have purchased Modern Sliders or Gridorama, there is special pricing in your account dashboard for a limited time.

Continuous Development

Throughout the month of February, we tested continuous development with new updates released every Monday.

We're going to continue this test in March but modify things just a bit. Instead of doing a release every Monday, we're going to do releases on Monday, March 6th (the same day the first episode of Super Loopers launches) and then again on March 20th. The primary focus of these updates is on bug fixing and small improvements.

If subscribed, you will not need to update the theme to get the latest Max content. That is one of the great things about the service; all content will show up in real-time when it is released.

Classic Elements Phase Out

We also wanted to give you an update on Classic Elements. These were the Elements that were originally released with Cornerstone approximately seven years ago. Nearly four years ago we released a much more powerful Element library, and these original Classic Elements were kept in place for legacy purposes.

Later this year, we plan to phase out support of Classic Elements. What does this mean? It means that you should not be using them on new sites. For most of you, this is a moot point as few sites still use them.

There is a lot of technical debt with these Classic Elements, and it takes an increasingly large amount of time to continue to support them with our more modern framework. We will make sure they are in a stable place before the transition, but please do not use them any longer. By stable, we mean we will make sure they are functionally working, however we will not be further developing new features for them. For any new sites or pages, please only use the main Element library.

We understand that in a few cases there are certain Classic Elements that are not represented in the main Element library. If so, please bring it up with the team in the forum, and we'll add it to our notes to discuss. We can't make any promises as to whether certain Classic Elements will be rebuilt, but we will take a look on a case by case basis.

Also, keep in mind that even if there is not a 1:1 Classic Element match to the main Element library, many times there is a Themeco Template that recreates the old Classic Element functionality. This was how we "replaced" many of the Classic Elements.

Why? In part because the updated Elements are much more composable with a focus on low level abstractions that can be mixed and matched to create different combinations of Elements. For example, just within the Starter Site, there are four different pricing tables (all combinations of different Standard Elements). These can be found as Section Templates on the Templates Tab in Cornerstone.

Getting Started With Cornerstone

February also saw the launch of our GSWC Series. With the launch of the new interface, now is the perfect time to release this highly requested feature.

Whether you are a first time Themeco customer or have been around from the beginning, this series will help you learn all about the most advanced website builder in WordPress. More is on the way!

Coming Up

We recently began a discussion to share our thoughts about the future of Stacks.

In short, we are planning to develop two new Stacks. One will be a more minimal Stack that includes a base layer of styling and is inspired from our Starter Site. The other will be a blank Stack for more advanced users who want to map in their own options and styling. Both of these will be Pro only features, and we're looking forward to getting this project underway. We really appreciate all the thoughts and suggestions.

In even more exciting news, we have a new Lottie Element that is almost complete! Beta testing will begin soon. We plan to lean into our beta process as new features are ready to test, starting with the Lottie Element. If you are interested in participating, we'd love to have you join us. The beta group is a solid group of folks that only gets richer as time goes by.

All My Best,
Kyle

P.S. We have a new Cornerstone page launching soon with a great story behind it. Stay tuned.