Franz Josef 1.6 has just been released, and along with it we’ve released the much anticipated custom page builder feature, the Franz Josef Stacks addon!
Stacks allows you to easily and quickly create unlimited, complex, and completely unique page designs with just the clicks of a mouse. Your custom layouts will automatically be responsive too, thanks to the deep integration with the Bootstrap framework that Franz Josef is built on. The drag-and-drop interface and pre-built layouts will get you started quickly so that you can spend more time being creative.
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- The visual drag-and-drop interface is so intuitive and easy to use that there’s no learning curve at all.
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- Almost every part of the layout is customisable – background colours, borders, paddings, margins, column numbers and widths. You can even set the component to either span the whole width of the site, or contained within the standard Franz Josef width for better readability.
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- Almost every component of Franz Josef is available as Stacks that you can use and re-use in any number of different configurations across any number of pages.
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- The end result? Achieve elegant, complex, and unique layouts in no time at all. Less time setting up, more time to get creative. Win for everyone.
The Stacks addon is available for only $14.50 – literally a steal for what you can achieve with it and the time it will save you. You can also get the all four of Franz Josef’s paid premium addons with the Franz Josef Addons Bundle, and save 20% over their individual prices.
Smart image selection
Franz Josef 1.6 also introduces smart post image selection for display in the slider and posts listing pages. If a post does not have a featured image, Franz Josef will look at all the images uploaded for that post, as well as all image galleries inserted into the post. It will then pick the most suitable image to be used by looking at the dimension and aspect ratio of the images.
For example, the slider has a very long width and relatively short height. It also has a large dimension, which is typically 1920 pixels wide on full HD screens. Franz Josef will search through the images in your post and find one that has the dimensions closest to the slider’s dimension so that it will not appear blurry and pixelated. It will also find the image that is as rectangular as possible to match the slider’s aspect ratio so that there is the least chance of cropped heads. It scores each image based on these criteria, and use the image with the highest score.
Naturally, featured images have higher priority, so if your post has a featured image, that will almost always be used. In extreme cases where your featured image is too small or the orientation is different (portrait image for a landscape slider, for example), the theme may choose another available image in the post that may be better suited for the occasion.
Previous & next posts links
We have also added the previous & next posts link to single post pages to keep your visitor engaged and increase content consumption. On top of that, you have the option to limit the links to posts within the same category for better relevance to what your audience is reading. This works especially well if each post has only one category assigned to it.
Previous & next posts links in single posts page. The feature also includes custom excerpt if the posts have it.
We’d love to hear what you think of the latest features that we’ve developed into Franz Josef, so sound off in the comments section below. If you have any burning wish for features that the theme does not currently have, shout it out too. Fingers crossed they’ll make their way into the next version.