With this months template we are rolling out the next major version of our Gantry framework, Gantry 2.5. All along we have really tried to make Gantry be as template neutral and as flexible as possible for any of our own templates, or any custom templates you develop with it. With Gantry 2.5 we are trying to make it very easy to upgrade Gantry itself without touching the template. We are also providing even more power to your gantry template installs with some enhanced control of how you apply template stylings to your Menu Items. There are even some expanded advanced levels of overrides for those of you developing your own templates based on Gantry.

This latest post will provide some more details on the great features we’ve added to Gantry version 2.0. First of all, from the very start, we’ve endeavored to make Gantry as backwards-compatible, and as easy to upgrade as possible. What this means for the Reaction template, is that you can actually drop the entire Gantry 2.0 lib/ folder into your Gantry 1.0 version of Reaction, and it will just work in the same way it did before. However to take advantage of the 2.0 features you will need to update your templateDetails.xml file. We’ll be providing easy step-by-step instructions as well as a 2.0 version of Reaction when we’ve got 2.0 ready to go. All to-be-released templates from this point on will be based on 2.0.

So what’s in 2.0? Well the previous blog post provided a quick feature list of what we’re adding, but there are some really cool core features that I want to expand on.

RocketTheme is proud to announce our first ever promo code! Just in time for the holiday season we've made a 15% OFF discount available to all new club signups and upgrades, and it's good until December 31st 2009. If you have been thinking about upgrading to Developer, or perhaps another club membership such as WordPress or phpBB3, now's the time to do it! To take advantage of the discount, enter the following promo code during the checkout process:

rokxmas2009

The code is good for any of our RocketTheme clubs as long as it's a new signup or an upgrade, renewals are not covered. Enjoy!

With the release of the Reaction Joomla template, Gantry has seen the light of day and the response has been overwhelming. The Gantry Framework that underpins Reaction has enabled an unprecedented level of flexibility and customization that has exceeded our own goals and intentions. From the forums we have noted some useful features and we've added these to our list of additions and modification we already had slated for version 2.0 of Gantry.

In part 3 of this series of blog posts on Gantry we're going to delve into the how the body area of the template is controlled, and also how the power of Gantry Features allows you to add advanced functionality that fits into your customized layout with very little headache.

A few days ago I blogged about what we wanted Gantry to be, in this post I'm going to delve into how Gantry looks and works. Gantry involves a bit of a paradigm shift when it comes to thinking about how a template works and is configured. We've tried to make this as simple as possible while still allowing the most flexibility so I'm going go over it from front to back.

This is Part 1 in a series of blog posts to provide some insight into the origins of Gantry and the functionality it provides...

A framework is a set of functionality that provides some structure and logic to support a rapid and simplified development process. Joomla! is built on top of the Joomla Framework that abstracts some core functionality into a reusable set of code that allows a fairly easy development process to create new, or extend existing functionality. The Joomla! framework is what I would refer to as a PHP-based web framework. Depending on the problem your trying to solve, there is probably a framework out there to suit your needs.

When I was writing the previous blog post about Mac applications I had a need to add some custom <style> elements to provide the layout that I wanted. Now it's quite common for people to just input some tags in their content but don't do it! It might 'work' but it's not valid XHTML. All style declarations should be in the <head> element of your page. Unfortunately it's not very easy to add style declarations here when you only need them for one page. Traditionally you would have to edit your template CSS file and add the elements there. It's a hassle and also it means those styles are going to be in the CSS for every page of your site, if you need them or not.

Ok, so you've made the plunge and are committed to using a mac as your primary development machine. Congratulations, you've made a fantastic choice, and after 4 years after jumping in with both feet, i've never been happier with my decision. I'm going to save you a lot of time by getting you up to speed quickly on how to setup your machine with all the essentials that will make your development life easier and more efficient. For simplicity I'm going to assume you're a PHP developer and your source control system is Subversion.

2009 has been a very busy year for RocketTheme. At the start of the year we introduced our new RocketTheme version 2.0 site which was a complicated process to say the least. With that launch we also unveiled our phpBB3 Style Club that now contains nearly 30 fantastic styles for phpBB3. In June we launched our Extensions Club that provides access to some really unique extensions for a small membership fee. We also made this club complimentary for our existing Joomla template club members. This month we introduce our new WordPress Theme Club into the RocketTheme family.