The Blog

With some extra hands on deck at Obox there's been a lot of things going on at HQ. Here's what you can look forward to in the coming weeks.

Old Post is a new tumblog (as you can see we building a collection fast!) designed by Gavin Elliott. It's grid based layout along with infinite scroll functionality makes it ideal for casual bloggers and photographers.

Special attention was paid to the actual design of the post layout grid. Subtle touches such as the paper and color scheme give it an "old" feel.

This year has proved to be an explosive year for Obox as a company... we can't complain however this has brought on some challenges in terms of capacity.

Earlier this year we decided to hire Nick Hamze to work for us part time as a junior developer. So far he has done an excellent job and without him we wouldn't be able to launch all the awesome themes we have this year.

That being said we are now in a position where we need to hire a full-time PHP developer.

Since the release of mag.Press we have changed the way that we code our CSS and we have also worked to create theme-wide widgets which we can carry over and simply re-style.

Elements such as Popular Posts, Feature Post sliders and footers are now global which means shorter lead times between theme releases and easier bug testing etc.

Press is still by far our best selling theme but it was built on our first method of CSS and WordPress coding. Given its popularity we still try our best to keep it up to date, so over the weekend we re-aligned the CSS to bring it in line to our modern themes. You can get the latest update from your profile or via the one-click update button in your WP-Admin area.

Some of you may be asking what is cooking at Obox Themes. Well I thought it's time to give you a quick run down of what to expect in the coming weeks.

Our Posterous themes were meant to be released last week however there have been some requests from Posterous HQ for minor changes to certain parts of the designs. As soon as those are done we hope to be releasing 3 awesomes and all of them free.

Second on the list is our latest WordPress theme, mag.Press, which will form the base for all future themes in terms of the core tech that we will be using. One of the more exciting bits that will come out of mag.Press is a new Font Management tool.

One of the issues that pops up from time to time is the request to upgrade from a Single Pack to a Dev Pack. This used to mean that you email us the request and then we would create a coupon which you could use at checkout to then update your purchase to a developers license.

Well that is now no longer required! We have now included an "Upgrade to Dev Pack" button in your profile. The cost of upgrade is only $50 so if you purchase the Single pack and then realise that you require the PSD's you will only have to pay in $50 to upgrade.

Today we are happy to announce a major upgrade to our OCMX Framework!

Since creating the Obox Mobile Framework we have been able to move some of its functionality to OCMX. Expect to see more updates in the future but for now get ready for these awesome nuggets.

We recently got contacted by Sachin Agarwal, CEO of Posterous, asking how you installed the code of your Premium Posterous theme onto your site.

We went on to explain the copy & paste process which resulted in Sachin making an awesome offer.

"What if we give you a form so that users can submit their code to us?", said Sachin.

"That would be amazing", we said.

And with that Sachin was gone. Three days later and the code was ready.

So what does this mean for you? Well, it is time to kiss 'copy & pasting' goodbye! We have now implemented a method which allows you to simply press one button and BANG your theme will be installed onto your Posterous site for you!

With Obox Mobile, auto updating was pivotal to the plugin, so this time there was no excuse to put it off for future releases. Starting at the plugin.php file, and making my way all the way through the include files and functions, I stumbled upon the cass-wp-upgrader.php file, which had the WP_Upgrader gem inside, which brings me to the reason that this post exists in the first place.

Someone visits your site via their mobile phone. The whole page tries to fit on the tiny screen, the fonts are beyond small and clicking on a link involves fingers the size of an ant's leg.

Far from ideal.

And then Obox Mobile steps in. Obox Mobile is a Mobile Framework that will seamlessly convert your WordPress site into a mobile friendly experience when people visit it via their phones.