• Updated inline documentation throughout.
• Complete simplification and re-cajiggering of HTML structure and class and ID names. This is likely to screw up your existing child themes. Beware.
• Speed and logic optimizations all around, including minified and combined javascript (reversable with the ‘debug’ option).
• Permalinks for Rolling Archives and livesearch (finally).
• Rolling Archives now caches 5 pages to either side of its position for faster navigation.
• Configuration of amount of widget containers (thus sidebars) is now automatic, depending on whether they are active or not.
• Added ‘Below Page Header’, ‘After Posts’ and ‘Page Footer’ widget areas.
• WP media manager’s horrible embedded CSS is now removed by K2.
• Cleaned up the options page.
• Support for WordPress 3.0: Multi-sites, the menu system and custom backgrounds.
• Removed various deprecated functions.
• Removed our styles sub-system entirely. Use child-themes instead.
• Single attachments, shown with image.php, have been updated.
• Option to disable K2′s styling (style.css), for more control and much nicer child theme CSS.
• Automatically resizes the smallest of the large YouTube embeds (560px wide) to 500px width (to cancel, remove/overwrite k2_resize_embeds() in your child theme).
• Added support for using k2-loop-category-<slug>.php
• Added option to use the page name when page is selected for home.
• Removed asides functionality (use semantic class, CSS and plugins instead).
• Added styling for the visual editor in the admin.
• Added comments pagination.
• Moved ping- and trackbacks inline with comments.
• Check to see if a version of jQuery later than the one we ship with (1.4.2) has been registered and don’t overwrite it. This really ought to be native to WP.
• A plethora of bug fixes and compatibility tweaks.

Go get it and let us know if it breaks. Meanwhile we’re on the brink of locking localization strings for the translators (the .pot has been updated, and we will do our utmost to not change any strings between now and 1.1, so you should be safe).

Did I mention K2 now supports twenty different languages!?

Important: This release contains significant changes to… well, everything. Backup your database, just to be on the safe side. We haven’t seen any wonky behavior, but on the other hand we won’t be held responsible if it kills you kitten either, so…

PS: I’ve set up K2 on Twitter, as that seems to be what all the youngsters are raving about these days.

The revision number for this version is 932, and here’s the changelist:

• Translation files (.mo) are now read from /languages/ in preparation for 1.1.
• Fixed has_post_thumbnail checking to improve compatibility with WordPress 2.8.
• Removed a couple of pure database calls in favor of core WP functions.
• Fixed rolling archives navigation showing atop of Lightbox.
• Updated a couple of translation strings.
• Fixed size of edit link in ping- and trackbacklist.
• Fixed #855: Absolute instead of relative links for WordPress’ theme editor.
• Escaped API updates.
• Fixed livesearch icons showing on initial load on IE8.
• Hide certain unneeded navigation elements when rolling archives are active.
• Cleaned up livesearch JS.
• Various CSS updates.
• Made pages accept normal comment/pingback links.
• Top menu handles too many items more elegantly.
• Added support for automatic feed links.

Meanwhile we’re already up to six translation in our new i18n repo, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, Spanish and Turkish (Update: And now also Latvian and German), and I couldn’t be more thrilled. But the more the merrier, so get in touch if you’d like to do a translation for K2.

Now skip on over and download 1.0.2.

What is K2?

This is K2. You’re looking at it. K2 is a theme for WordPress based on experiences learned during the development and release of Kubrick, the default theme of WordPress since version 1.5.

K2 comes with a handful of elegant features, such as live search and live archives, as well as support for a variety of plugins. And most importantly, K2 was built with people like ourselves in mind; people who prefer to do their customizing through CSS files and child themes rather than through rigid options and presets.

It’s seen about half a million downloads in its lifetime, and is as a result pretty solid by now.

Onto the 1.0 Announcement

I never thought it would take this long, but then I never thought K2 would live this long either. I chalk it up to hard working folks like Steve and Eric, who helped keep K2 alive in my absence over the past year. Also of course, we wouldn’t be here without the help of Chris, Ben and Zeo. And, ehm, me. Thanks guys!

So what does 1.0 mean for K2? Well, first of all it means that K2 is at the best place it’s ever been. It’s solid as a rock both in terms of features and WordPress integration as well in terms of compliance with traditional web standards as well as microformats and ARIA. We’ve cleaned up in the codebase and K2 has lost some weight here and there (smallest download ever I think). And leading up to this 1.0 release, we’ve spent some time polishing up the interface details.

K2 was always meant to be a practical framework-ish theme, rather than a stunning looker. And as such it has a pragmatic beauty to it perhaps, but it’s real power is in its customizability through CSS (and of course child themes, though that’s a tad more complex, and in most cases unneeded exactly because we spent so much time on optimizing for CSS customizations).

Ode to SBM

It’s worth mentioning that the last remnants of the old SideBar Manager, or SBM, have now been removed from the codebase. It started out as a fully-fledged replacement for WP’s lacking widgets system and ended up as a patch-of-sorts to the widget system, allowing for widgets to be placed only on specified pages. But in the end, while the native widget system is still very much in need of an update, it didn’t feel right for K2 to try and cover that particular area of the administration interface. And besides, other plugins for doing just that exist already.

So instead of spending our time patching that system for an ever-changing WordPress, our time is probably better spent on more theme-specific functionality, like the rolling archives or livesearch systems, as well as keeping up with new WordPress features, like for instance Post Thumbnails.

Semantics

Furthermore, we’ve got more semantic classes than the pope. Browser type, language, current layout type, date, day, year and so on. View Source and check out some of the BODY classes; they let you do some pretty cool stuff using only CSS (like honoring Pirate Day for instance).

Compatibility

K2 is as always meant for use with the latest version of WordPress, which is of course 2.9. That said, we’ve done our best to retain compatibility and as such K2 should be backwards-compatible all the way back to 2.5. As always, if you have any problems, let us know.

The Road Ahead

There are two major things on the program for the 1.1 version of K2: Localization and Documentation. Capital letters and all.

We’ve had a lot of localization efforts from the community since we started, and it’s always been a dream that we would be able to ship those localizations with K2 and provide an easy way for it to ‘just work’. So that’s something we’ll be spending some time with. If you’re a localizer, or if you’d like to be one, head on over to our localization page and do your thing. We’ll get some more in-depth tutorials up as soon as the holidays give us some breathing room.

Also, it’s long been a dream of mine to see K2 properly documented. Not only in terms of what it can do, or how it does it, but also for things like how to actually do a localization, where it may be a bit hard to figure out how to get into it in the first place. So I’d like to do something about that.

And of course we already have a lot of other ideas, which will also start seeing the light of day in the coming weeks.

Enough Talk. Download!

So merry Xmas, and hop on over to download your present already, and remember to file issues, and if you have any questions or comments, let us know in the support forum.

Subversion & nightly users: this release is revision 810. A list of bug fixes is here.

Download: K2 1.0-RC8

If you’re using the K2 Sidebar Manager, you will need to turn it off in K2 Options before upgrading to K2 1.0-RC7. After you have upgraded to K2 1.0-RC7, copy k2-disable-widgets.php (found at k2/app/includes/) to your plugins folder and activate it. This applies to all versions of WordPress that K2 supports.

Download: K2 Release Candidate 7

For the brave, here’s a list of file changes:

Changed files:

• app/classes/archive.php
• app/classes/header.php
• app/classes/k2.php
• app/classes/options.php
• app/classes/sbm.php
• app/display/options.php
• app/display/sbm/modules.php
• app/includes/display.php
• app/includes/info.php
• app/includes/sbm.php
• app/modules/aboutcurrent.php
• comments-ajax.php
• comments.php
• functions.php
• header.php
• image.php
• js/jquery.humanundo.js.php
• js/jquery.js.php
• js/k2.functions.js.php
• js/k2.sbm.js.php
• k2.pot
• rollingarchive.php
• sidebar.php
• single.php
• style.css
• theloop.php

New files:

• app/includes/k2-disable-widgets.php
• css/humanmsg.css
• css/options.css
• css/sbm.css

Removed files:

• app/includes/k2-sbm-loader.php
• app/includes/sbm-direct.php
• css/core.css.php
• css/gzip-header-css.php
• css/humanmsg.css.php
• css/options.css.php
• css/sbm.css.php

New features:

• An option to dynamically reduce the number of columns to fit screen size.
• Support for Theme Style Sheet.
• Hooks and PHP support for Styles: mod K2 without needing to change the code.
• WP 2.5: Avatar support.
• WP 2.5: You can now manage uploaded header images through the Media Library.
• WP 2.5: Image gallery template.
• Various bug fixes.

Download: K2 Release Candidate 6.

We cannot fix what we don’t know about, and we won’t know about it if you don’t file a bug. And we do want to fix as much as possible. So, if you have a problem, first check the list of current bugs, if there isn’t already a similar issue, file a new one.

And of course, if you’re an IE7 expert and you have some time on your hands, let me know, cuz we could sure use your help.

We’ve been throwing in some serious hours over the last couple of weeks to make sure we were ready for WordPress 2.3, which is on track for release a few days from now, and which, due to fundamental changes, breaks v0.9.6. So if you’re planning on grabbing WordPress 2.3 as soon as it hits the shelves, you’ll want to upgrade to RC1 as soon as possible.

A word of caution however: Because so many things have been upgraded since v0.9.6, a lot of the code hasn’t actually seen as much usage as the v0.9.6 code, and thus you should hold off until RC2 with upgrading if you like your stability over your ‘bling’.

So, what’s new? Well, to be honest there’s just too much to list. The most obvious stuff will be… well, obvious, and the rest should just make everything a little bit better. In other words, you’re better off just take her up for a trial run.

And as usual, please file an issue for any problems you run into, and we’ll look into it as soon as possible. And if you see Steve or Ben around, let them know they did a hell of a job over the last couple of weeks.

PS: For safety purposes, v0.9.6 is still available.