Release
Notes

Howdy, everybody! You know the deal with these, so let's get right down to business. It is very likely that you're familar with the code editor in Cornerstone found under Settings. This update of X brings our syntax highlighting friend into the Customizer as well. Where you would previously edit custom CSS and JavaScript in an old fashioned textarea, you can now do this “in style” using a proper code editor.

Once you arrive at the Custom section of the Customizer, simply click on one of the new Edit Global CSS or Edit Global JavaScript buttons to reveal the code editor and get to work!

This release also features the latest third-party addition into the family of X Extensions. Give a big welcome to The Grid, which is now installable from the Extensions list in your dashboard. The Grid allows you to show off any post types in a fully customizable and responsive grid system. It is perfectly suited for displaying your blog, portfolio, e-commerce or any kind of Wordpress post type.

And last but most certainly not least, after many weeks in the making our overhaul of the Addons admin interface has arrived! This is much more than just a facelift as we have completely rebuilt the onboarding process from the ground up in an effort to make the setup process as quick, smooth, and easy as possible.

The streamlined onboarding process begins even before you see the new admin interface by installing Cornerstone automatically for you. As Cornerstone is a required plugin when using X, we have found that sometimes users will encounter issues by forgetting to install Cornerstone after activating X, which can lead to visual problems when downloading demo content, setting up pages, et cetera. We have been able to eliminate this step completely so that when you now activate X under the new system, Cornerstone is automatically installed and ready to go. Hooray for automation!

Next, you'll be greeted by the all new Addons page:

Take note of a couple things:

• While visually updated along with an improved workflow, everything still functions as it always has.
• The previous Addons interface, which was broken out into multiple pages for each function (validation, managing Customizer options, et cetera) has centralized all of that into one page, which means no more clicking back and forth or working through dropdowns. Everything is immediately available.

Product validation is now a guided process. Enter your purchase code, and X will work with our community site to automatically assign your site to the license in your Themeco Account.

• The code is verified in your Themeco account, and assigned to your site. This is already setup for all your existing sites via the old API key method, and will continue working.
• The code is verified in your Themeco account, but doesn't match your site. You'll be notified, and given a link to your licenses page to take a closer look.
• The code exists in your Themeco account, but doesn't have a site assigned. The site you are validating will automatically be assigned.
• The code is a brand new. You can login to an existing account or register a new one. If you're already logged in, it will confirm with you before proceeding to use that account.

Depending on which situation above you find yourself in, you may be redirected to our community center to take some additional steps before coming back to your website. Once validated, the Addons page will look like so:

The remaining sections on your page will now be unlocked and available for you to use:

• Automatic Updates – Shows you the installed version of the theme, along with the latest version available, which will help you know if you need to update. As stated in the final section, this data is checked every 12 hours, but if an update is available that you know of and you are not yet seeing it in your admin interface, clicking the Check Now button will update that data for you.
• Support – Features quick links to the Knowledge Base where our documentation is stored as well as the Forum if you have a specific question you wish to ask that is not covered in the materials available.
• Extensions – This is the new installation hub for all Extensions provided by X. If you wish to install an Extension, simply click the Install button and everything will be setup for you in real time without any page refreshes. Once a plugin is installed, the green checkmark in the circle will appear in the upper left corner and the Install button will change to a Go Activate button, which will take you to your Plugins page to manage your active plugins.
• Approved Plugins – This section features quick install links to all of our third party plugins that we might provide some type of integration with. While all of these are freely available on the WordPress Plugins Repository, we wanted to make them easily available to our users via the backend so they can have our approved tools at the ready if you need them for a particular project.

We hope you all enjoy the new admin interface as much as we do! Many weeks of testing and prototyping have gone into this revamp, which was geared solely at improving the onboarding experience for our users to make it as simple and hassle-free as possible. Adios, until next time!

Cornerstone

It's ready! Cornerstone v1.2.0 introduces full support for using Cornerstone in other themes (requires an additional license, which can be purchased at CodeCanyon). As always, users will continue to get a copy of Cornerstone for free with each X purchase.

The main addition to this release was the styling that is used with other themes, but we've also been working on a slew of other improvements, with the focus of improving page builder usability.

We've also introduced the new home page for Cornerstone. It has a dedicated top level menu item, with a beatiful design to match X. You'll notice that when X is active, Cornerstone will piggyback off of X's validation, so you won't need to validate Cornerstone directly. Standalone users will be able to validate Cornerstone using a CodeCanyon purchase code when those are available for purchase.

Along with the home page, the settings page has been completely redesigned to suit, featuring new selection controls for post types and permissions. Because any number of plugins can add post types or user roles, we hope that the new controls keep that interface as clean and consistent as possible.

You can see the full list of updates in the sidebar. Here are the details on other notable changes are:

Improved Excerpt support. When used with posts, Cornerstone is able to derive an excerpt from the content by extracting everything that is in paragraph tags. You can also set manual excerpts directly in the page builder in the settings pane.

New indicators while dragging. Cornerstone allows elements to be hidden based on screen size. Previously it was difficult to reposition elements when using this feature, as you couldn't consider the hidden elements position. We've changed this so when a dragging interaction starts, indicators appear showing where the hidden elements are located. This allows you to place the element you are dragging exactly where you intend it to go.

Auto publishing of new pages. If you create a new page, and don't specify the status, Cornerstone will automatically publish it on the first save. This is more consistent with clicking the "Publish" button in the WordPress post editor, and saves the step of having to update the post status from draft.

Better HTML support. Many elements such as the Callout, Prompt, Google Map Marker and Text Type, now have better support for using HTML in the content.

Better AJAX handling performance. As a front end builder, Cornerstone is constantly talking back and forth with the server (via AJAX). We've made some adjustments to handle this more gracefully. We've also added a new error detection layer that will allow Cornerstone to recover from errors that happen server side. For example, if a 3rd party plugin outputs a PHP notice, it will no longer effect Cornerstone. In fact, any PHP errors will be piped up into the javascript console, a boon for developers as they can more easily debug custom elements and shortcodes.