WordPress Toolkit

Envato Authors Theme Authors
41

It’s a great tool! I’ve integrated my framework for testing and worked well, but i will wait for a while to update my themes.

Also I’m not sure it’s the best solution, I always thought that simple notification by sending email to buyers after theme is updated would be enough.
+1 for sending email notifications
42
stmcan said
Also I’m not sure it’s the best solution, I always thought that simple notification by sending email to buyers after theme is updated would be enough.
+1 for sending email notifications

That’s what I do also. I send email/twitter update notifications.

It’s really helpful when you do an update to wait a few days for feedback before sending notification. This way, just in case something was missed in testing we can fix it before send out the notice. It protects most existing customers from little bugs and is a very good system.

43

  1. Awesome feature!

  2. I think password login would be better suited for login then API key - If I was a buyer, I could share my API key with 8-9 friends without any risks but I would never share my password ( access to deposit and the other critical stuff )

  3. When will this be ready for plugins ?

44

Since posting and reading the thoughts of others, I’m leaning toward this being an over-engineered and negative solution.

I tend to agree with what @Parallelus said:

I estimate I’ve had 10 requests in the last 3 years for automatic updates. As far as I’m concerned this is not even close to a top priority for the marketplace. It feels a lot like a waste of resources unless there are future plans related to this which I’m not aware of.
  1. For un-informed buyers, this will make licensing more confusing.
  2. For end users, clicking ‘update this theme’ may break the site.
  3. For pirates, it makes distributing copyrighted material even easier.

What is the real problem?
Authors can’t inform buyers of updates.

Why?
Because authors don’t have a buyer list (another rabbit hole entirely).

It’s disappointing that Envato focused on a WordPress solution to a problem that affects all items. Even more so that it introduces new and worse problems.

A simple “email buyers an update notification” button solves this in a cleaner way for the whole marketplace.

Digging deeper, an underlying problem is Envato doesn’t (visibly) keep versions of items. This is groundwork for bigger (more necessary) functionality like paid upgrades:

P.S. I’m glad Envato is discussing this in a public forum. Openness is good.

45
Parallelus said

The current system protects against overwriting modifications. Not to generalize too much, but most WP users aren’t all that knowledgeable when it comes to coding. If they make a customization it’s likely they won’t realize it can be wiped out by 2 clicks to update the theme. This is further exaggerated when a developer uses a theme and turns it over to a client.

+1

46

I completely agree with the majority of concerns expressed by other authors, especially by Parallelus and sevenspark.

I wish you guys re-consider your decision to make it mandatory, at least not for a while. If I had a choice I would not implement this right now. We want to make sure that the benefits clearly outnumber the potential issues.

47

Just to be clear, you don’t HAVE to use this, do you?

48

Please, could someone give an example of how to use this in theme ? And, I’m beginner in themeforest so I’m not sure about that api keys too … Does the buyer have to enter it’s username and api key or seller ? Sorry for the noobness … :slight_smile:

49
LandonWilson said

Just to be clear, you don’t HAVE to use this, do you?

internq7 said

I completely agree with the majority of concerns expressed by other authors, especially by Parallelus and sevenspark.

I wish you guys re-consider your decision to make it mandatory, at least not for a while. If I had a choice I would not implement this right now. We want to make sure that the benefits clearly outnumber the potential issues.

  • You DO NOT have to use the plugin or the library if you don't wish to. Using them is NOT mandatory
  • The only thing that has become mandatory is to upload a "theme only" version of your theme when submitting a new theme to ThemeForest even though right now the field is marked optional:
50

An updated version of the plugin and the library are now available for download on Github.

They include minor enhancements. In particular we have introduced caching. Since themes aren’t updated on minutely basis, both the plugin and the library cache their results for a short period of time to avoid contacting the server every time they are used. This should make the process feel faster to use.

Please let us know if you find any issues.

51

Hey guys! Thanks for your feedback and bug reports so far! For anyone who was having issues using the plugin with WordPress Multisite, the latest version now rectifies this issue.

As always, please let us know if you experience any further issues.

52
DenonStudio said
LandonWilson said

Just to be clear, you don’t HAVE to use this, do you?

internq7 said

I completely agree with the majority of concerns expressed by other authors, especially by Parallelus and sevenspark.

I wish you guys re-consider your decision to make it mandatory, at least not for a while. If I had a choice I would not implement this right now. We want to make sure that the benefits clearly outnumber the potential issues.

  • You DO NOT have to use the plugin or the library if you don't wish to. Using them is NOT mandatory
  • The only thing that has become mandatory is to upload a "theme only" version of your theme when submitting a new theme to ThemeForest even though right now the field is marked optional:
It is not mandatory for buyers to install the plugin/library but authors have no control over who uses the plugin so they can't control how their theme is being updated.
A lot of authors include their own internal way of using the theme for update notifications, how would that work now with this plugin?
IMHO, you should give the authors the option to choose whether or not the "theme only" version of their theme will be uploaded.
53

Hello – I’m using the Podium Theme for my website for two days now and noticed that NONE of the page Titles are showing up on the Home Page using Internet Explorer. Please, I’ll appreciate any help to resolve this. My website is http://www.intraplangroup.com

Another issue I’m having is the Slideshow (Using Alternative Slideshow) . On Google Chrome – There are vertical lines across the Slides which is distorting the images I’m not good with codes – Please let me know how these could be fix. Thanks

54
orjense said

Hello – I’m using the Podium Theme for my website for two days now and noticed that NONE of the page Titles are showing up on the Home Page using Internet Explorer. Please, I’ll appreciate any help to resolve this. My website is http://www.intraplangroup.com

Another issue I’m having is the Slideshow (Using Alternative Slideshow) . On Google Chrome – There are vertical lines across the Slides which is distorting the images I’m not good with codes – Please let me know how these could be fix. Thanks

hi, this is a general forum and a completely different topic than support…

if you need help with a certain item its best to contact the author directly from their profile page or in the comments section of them item(on the page where you actually purchased the item theres a tab above the preview image)

55
cosmincotor said

I tried to update my theme and got this error:

Optional WordPress Theme Your ZIP must contain a single folder at the top level, which will correspond directly with your users' /theme/YOUR_THEME_NAME/ folder. No folder was found at the top level, only files.

The ZIP contains only one folder, with the theme in it.

Any tips ?

I have the same problem. How to solve it?

56

Great news! Will update our theme shortly.

57

Hey everyone, it’s been a little while since you’ve heard from us on this, so I just wanted to give you a quick update that we are working on solutions to some of the issues raised and hope to have another release ready soon to address some of them.

Keep an eye out! :slight_smile:

58

I read this thread and got confused with the whole mandatory thing. I found out the what was what after reading the succeeding pages.

As with the others I have a few issues regarding it when it comes to edits being wiped, etc… although I think this has potential.

Just to share I do theme updates this way:

  1. User see's an admin notification that there is an update to the theme if they're currently using it. I have an XML file online that contains the latest theme version and gets checked by the theme every 15 minutes.
  2. Buyers just re-download it again and install the new version. But since it's a new version it gets installed in a different folder to prevent file overwriting. e.g. themename_v1.0 and themename_v1.1. All the previous theme configurations get carried over to the new installed version, and they can just switch to the old version if something goes wrong.

Oh and I encountered a fatal error when I tried to implement the library. The Envato_Protected_API class gets redefined and throws an error. The cause would be is that I had the Toolkit plugin installed and I also implemented the library. A fix would be editing line 12 of class-envato-protected-api.php to:

if (!class_exists('Envato_Protected_API')) include_once( 'class-envato-protected-api.php' );

EDIT: sorry got confused, I removed some stuff I said because I thought you’ll need to use both the plugin and library. lol. I just realized those are 2 different things.

59
flashmaniac said
cosmincotor said

I tried to update my theme and got this error:

Optional WordPress Theme Your ZIP must contain a single folder at the top level, which will correspond directly with your users' /theme/YOUR_THEME_NAME/ folder. No folder was found at the top level, only files.

The ZIP contains only one folder, with the theme in it.

Any tips ?

I have the same problem. How to solve it?

I have that problem too. I've tried below:
  • theme.zip->theme directory (named like theme)->theme files
  • theme.zip->theme files
For both cases I got the error. What could be wrong?
60

This is a try.