Exhale Theme: Version 1.1.0

I’m super excited to announce the next evolution of the Exhale WordPress theme today.

This release has 8 bug fixes, primarily dealing with styles for the block editor. I’ve also bumped the recommendation to using Gutenberg version 5.6+, at least until WordPress 5.2 is officially released.

But, the exciting stuff is the new features, so let’s hop right into them.

Google fonts integration

One of the big features that didn’t make the cut with version 1.0 was the ability to select a font from Google’s large directory of Web fonts. I made the decision to limit it to system fonts and build this feature the right way in 1.1.

I’m glad I did because it gave me time to see some more of the “bigger picture” of where I want to go in 1.2 and beyond with font selection. This felt more like an organic and natural step up than trying to work it into 1.0.

In this update, the Primary, Secondary, and Headings font settings allow you to pick from a selection of common system fonts or a selection of Google fonts. The 106 Google fonts included are all fonts that would work for regular body copy, which means they have regular, italic, bold, and bold + italic variations. This means that any font you select will be readable.

In future versions, I plan to allow more decorative fonts (those not suitable for body text) and limit them to just headings. We had to get past this stage 1 of Google fonts integration first.

Note that using Google fonts will increase page loading time. System fonts are faster, which Exhale will always use by default.

New block styles

Version 1.1.0 includes a handful of new block styles. These allow you to alter the appearance of a block in some way.

• Image Block:
  • Border (displays a border around the image).
  • No Border (removes the border from the image).
• Paragraph Block:
  • Highlight (by default, adds a top border to “highlight” the paragraph for things like alert boxes).
• Separator Block:
  • Dashed (displays a dashed separator).
  • Double (displays a double border for the separator).

Child themes

Perhaps the thing I’m most excited about in this release is the config system for child themes. Editor colors, default color settings, and default font family settings can all be configured via files in the child theme’s /config folder. Exhale sets up the defaults in its own config files, and child themes can override any particular setting they want.

What this does is allow child theme authors to easily skin the site without a lot of code work.

By just copying one or more of the following files from Exhale into a child theme, you’ll have a lot of customization options at hand:

• /config/editor-colors.php
• /config/settings-color.php
• /config/settings-font-family.php

With any luck, I’ll have the first official child theme (pictured above) ready to go before the end of this week. It will be available to all premium members at no extra cost.

Give version 1.1.0 a go

If you’ve already purchased Exhale, you can download the new version from your account page. To update via ZIP file, I recommend using the Easy Theme and Plugin Upgrades plugin.

Not using Exhale yet? Check it out →