We started out wanting to fix a couple of minor details on our Family Tree theme. What started out as a couple of changes rapidly snowballed into a studs-out rebuild of the entire child theme.

Since the original version was built on the first release of Genesis, we wanted to make use of several of the feature upgrades that have occurred in the last several releases of both Genesis and WordPress. We have focused on usability, addressing common support and customization requests we’ve gotten over the first year of release.

We’re really excited about several of the design, usability and coding upgradesthat make up this massive upgrade! Here are some of the features we’ve included to make Family Tree even easier to use:

INTRODUCING SHORTCODES

We’ve added several shortcodes to Family Tree 1.2 that should make it much easier to add images and copyright or other notices below images in Posts or Pages.

Full Width featured image

[featured_image size="one column"]

The above shortcode grabs a Post or Page’s Featured Image and resizes it to fit perfectly in a full-width layout.

Two Column featured image

[featured_image size="two column"]

The above shortcode grabs a Post or Page’s Featured Image and resizes it to fit perfectly in a two column layout.

Three column featured image and alternate

[featured_image size="three column"]

[featured_image size="three column alt"]

The above shortcode grabs a Post or Page’s Featured Image and resizes it to fit perfectly in a three column layout. Since two of the three column layouts have a narrower content area than the third, there are two different shortcodes.

Copyright

[copyright]Your content here[copyright]

By wrapping content in this shortcode, the text will get smaller and center below the image above it. The content between the tags can contain any html you would like it to…bold or italic text, even links!

USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS

We’ve been paying attention to your support and customization requests, and have made Family Tree 1.2 much easier for the end user to customize. We think you’ll love these new time-saving additions!

EasySlider Widget

You can read more about the Easy Slider widget here. The main thing to take away is you can now add posts *or* pages to your slider, and have a lot more control over what items go into it.

Widgeted Home Page

The home page of Family Tree is now completely widgetized with Main Content, Ad Bar and Footer Widget areas. Customize the display of your homepage by dragging and dropping a widget. The Featured Post and Page widgets are styled for you out of the box, or go crazy and throw in a SlideDeck or Featured Post Teasers grid to really shake things up!

Social Media Plug-in Enabled

We’ve made sure to build in styling for the Genesis Social Profile widget. Add them to your header, sidebar or footer widgets and build your social media presence!

Support for ads built in

The ad widget in the center of the homepage is flexible enough to serve almost any size ad – from 125×125 blocks to leaderboards, just drag in a text widget and paste in your ad code. Want to get really fancy? Try an ad plug-in like AdRotate.

Column Class Styling Included

Family Tree leverages the new Genesis 1.6 column classes. You can easily create two, three or four column layouts right in a Post or Page.

Footer Widget Ready

Uses the Genesis 1.6 way of including footer widgets. A single line of code enables or disables them. Drag and drop a widget and you’re ready to go.

CODE IMPROVEMENTS

Updated CSS

Boy, have I learned a lot in a year.

The CSS has been revamped, making it easier to change the header, footer and background (and get them all to line up), the sidebar wraps are more efficient – there are hundreds of little tweaks to the stylesheet that make it easier to customize.

Smarter Links with :focus

All hover links have had :focus added to them, so items will highlight when a user tabs through options on a page.

DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS

After a year of living with the theme, I realized a few design upgrades might be in order, as well. Like I said, I’ve learned a lot, and wanted to inject some of that knowledge into the upgrade.

Updated Slider Dimensions

We know the old slider was too narrow—so we’ve redesigned it to be the same dimensions as a 6×4 photo. This should make getting images into the slider easier to manage.

Progressive Enhancement

We’ve taken advantage of a number of CSS3 progressive enhancements that make the visual experience richer. Things like rounded corners and shadows are all handled using CSS properties.

Updated Typography for Typekit

We’ve chosen some new Typekit fonts that have better on-screen hinting for an improved visual experience.