Recently we've been getting some help from Fly with our server infrastructure and we're big fans. They have written up a case study about working with us and it's an interesting read.
We're proud to announce a brand new theming engine and 3 new built-in themes.
Modern (shown above) is a simple new responsive theme with updated fonts and typography that will be the new default for new blogs you create on Posthaven. [Github]
Lanyon is a theme that we adapted for use on Posthaven from the open source Jekyll blog theme created by Mark Otto. [Github]
Ilun is a dark theme created by Posthaven cofounder Brett Gibson. [Github]
Of course the original classic Posthaven theme [Github] will remain for all blogs created thus far. We also created a minimal theme [Github] that is helpful for new theme creators who want something with as little CSS styling as possible.
How to use Themes now
On your dashboard, just click the new Themes tab in Site Settings:
If you scroll down, you'll see Available themes. Just click "Preview" to see a preview of what your blog would look like with that theme, or "Use" to switch to it now.
How to customize or write your own themes
All of our themes come standard with support for SCSS using rake. You can also upload any image, fonts, or other assets using our command line tool. The theme engine is built using the very battle-tested Liquid gem created by Shopify.
It's an advanced feature for folks who already know HTML and CSS and know their way around a text editor and command line.
Here's a quick preview of how easy it is to get going from the command line:
Ready to go? Read the docs to get started.
Thanks again for your ongoing support.
We are getting quite close to releasing themes for Posthaven. We have all sites running on our new theming engine and now need to finish up the new themes we are working on to make theming useful for everyone.
If you are among our more technical users (i.e. you know your way around the command line and know HTML and CSS), and would like to try building your own Posthaven theme get in touch at help@posthaven.com and we will get you started.
You've asked for it and it's here. Search on every Posthaven blog. Try it now from the homepage of any blog, in the sidebar:
You can also click Archive to get a browse-able archive of every post thus far.
Search on the archive page is actually 100% realtime thanks to the amazing Algolia Search API, which is the underlying service we use to deliver such a lighting fast feature.
More from us shortly, but enjoy and let us know if you run into any problems.
Happy New Year, Posthavenites. Theme engine efforts continue, with an initial internal alpha already done. More on that is coming. In the meantime, we're doing some new years cleaning and fixed a bunch of bugs.
Maintaining software is a lot like gardening — you've got to remember sweep and weed alongside your major landscaping projects too.
-
Strikethrough— Now you can click the Strikethrough button in the post editor which can be handy for lists you might be keeping. - Private post bugs — We saw some confusion around when a private post would get published. We've made that much more clear by making the primary action on private posts say "Save Private Post" so you'll always know exactly what you're doing.
- Facebook Share button — It's official! The Share button is better for blog posts in terms of social media optimization. Posts show up better in Facebook when it's a share, and people are more likely to add their own comments to their timeline. It's a better experience for mobile too. So we've ditched the Like button and switched to Share 100%.
- Horizontal scroll bugs on mobile — Commenting and browsing on mobile should work better now that we worked through some glitches that would cause a horizontal scroll on mobile views of blog posts.
As always if you hit any bugs or have further requests, let us know at help@posthaven.com. We really appreciate the support.
Photo via halfrain