Vantage 4.0 Preview
We’re finally ready to reveal the new look and key features coming in Vantage 4.0! It’s by far our most advanced theme yet. In addition to a design refresh, the code under the hood has been almost completely rewritten.
Our main goal was to update the design and make the theme much easier to customize and use.
Promotional Video
We had our own punch list of items to enhance but also took constructive criticism from our customers. The most common requests were:
- Update the outdated design
- Make it easier to customize the look and layout
- Better compatibility with plugins
- More action and filter hooks for developers
We took this feedback to heart and did our best to include these requests (in addition to other items). Here’s a high-level list of what has changed.
- Refreshed the UI to adopt modern aesthetics
- Improved overall theme customization options
- Better support for popular WordPress plugins
- Improved extendability for 3rd party developers
- Removed modules better fit as plugins (events, maps api, reviews, etc)
- Stripped out features that caused option bloat
- Added the Foundation Framework (v6)
- Enhanced Google Maps with auto-complete location search, new marker options, and geocoding features
- Replaced schema.org microdata with json-ld structured data format
- Adopts WordPress theme best practices
We’re using the native WordPress customizer for easy color changes. Each page module can be moved to any position you like. For example, on the single listings page, you can move the photo gallery above the main content module or move the comments/reviews modules to the top of the page. In addition, sidebars can be moved to the left or right side…or even removed completely.
We’ve basically made it super easy to drag and drop content blocks (modules) into whatever location you like!
Also, we’ve added a nifty new feature to allow cover photo (aka large header photos) to be added to many different locations. These include the home page, single listings & categories, blog posts & categories, author profile pages, etc).
When Will this be Available?
There’s still a lot of work to be done and bugs keep popping up but we’re targeting an end of the year release launch.
Update Mar 18, 2017 – We’ve patched up the Updater API and fixed some bugs in 4.0. Look for 4.0.1 to appear next week for download. Note: Existing customers will be able to download it but the migration script from 3.x will not be available until 4.1.0. That means you can install it on a fresh copy of WordPress and everything will be setup correctly but using it on your existing 3.x site, it won’t work properly.
Update Mar 11, 2017 – We had to pull the Vantage 4.0 release down due to some unforeseen issues with our Updater API. The plan was to allow existing customers using 3.x (who didn’t want to upgrade) to manually download 4.x so the auto update wouldn’t notify them of an update and on click, blow away their existing site. Turns out it wasn’t working correctly and the API needs some additional work. We chose to err on the side of caution so more customers wouldn’t be affected. We apologize for this “false start” and will be working the next several days to resolve the issue. If all goes well, we will re-release 4.0 later next week.
Update Mar 9, 2017 – Vantage 4.0.0 has been released! We’re still updating our marketing material and docs so things will slowly be rolled out. In the meantime, you can download it and tinker with it.
Update Feb 22, 2017 – We’re back to Vantage work after a few weeks off. Unfortunately during these past few days our Jenkins CI server crashed and we had to completely rebuild it. Artem and I spent several days working on that instead of Vantage code. 🙁 That server is very important as it runs tests and automatically builds our products into .zip files (from our Github repos) to deploy to our file hosting server (where you download things from). Without this server working, we couldn’t release any of our themes. So….we’re back online finally. So from here, we expect another two more weeks of development time before release. That puts us at March 9th, 2017.
Update Jan 29, 2017 – I’m going to be honest. We’re completely burnt out and need a break. The stress, pressure, anxiety and lack of sleep is taking a toll on our bodies. Our dev team (myself and Artem) have been working so hard on this release non-stop for months and we physically cannot continue coding and testing until we get a few weeks break. I hope everyone understands and is able to wait a bit longer (two weeks break plus one-two weeks more dev time). It’s painful, I know but we’re actually human and need some time to recover. Thank you for understanding.
Update Jan 14, 2017 – We’re really really trying to get this launched and we’re sooo close….however, last minute bugs keep popping up which push back our launch date (sorry sorry sorry!). We also have some personal things that are taking us away from work time (e.g. my 11 month old daughter is teething so sleep = very little).
Sorry to disappoint — especially for those waiting to start their new site. Don’t worry, we’ll have a special promotion for you once we launch! Keep checking back on this post for updates.
Jan 6th, 2017 Update – The Vantage 4.0 demo is now live! Disclaimer: It’s a work in progress so things may change as we make updates or fixes. The official demo with access to a user account and the backend, will be available once we launch later this month.
Update Dec 21, 2016 – With the holiday season in full swing and some technical setbacks, we won’t be able to deliver 4.0 before year-end. We are very disappointed as we hoped to release it next week. The good news is, we’ll have a public demo available soon for everyone to check out. New ETA? With Christmas and New Year holidays this week and next, our team will be taking a much needed break. We’ve been working ’round the clock on 4.0 so it’s time to recharge our batteries and then return for a final sprint to finish up the theme. With that being said, January 15th is our new target date.
Is it a Free Upgrade?
Yes, if you’ve got an active subscription to either Vantage or Club or are a legacy customer (with lifetime updates), the upgrade will be free. If your subscription has lapsed, you can easily renew once 4.0 comes out and get access right away.
Here are some screenshots (subject to change):
Single Listing Page
Single Listing Contact Owner
Listings Category Page
Single Blog Post
Manage Listings Page
Edit Profile Page
Public Profile Page
Responsive Design View
Admin Setup Guide Page
So what do you think? We’d love to hear your feedback!
Comments (457)
Thanks for the update David. If I could offer some feedback it’s please keep your customer base in the loop. I recall May blog post mentioning September as the release date so I suspect someone has edited the post to say ‘end of the year’ now.
There are some people out there that really love your product and this uncertainty turns them to look for alternate products. I actually renewed in the hope I could be the first to download the new version in September and start redeveloping my site. I feel that any advantage in the cheaper renewal is lost in this delay and growth in my own site is held off as a result. Until this post I actually wondered if I just threw my money away (like I did when I bought that buggy and unsupported User Locator for Vantage plugin).
Don’t get me wrong I can’t wait to release develop once V4 comes out. I just want to get in there and start tweaking with code! I check the release status page more regularly than I should be.
Anyway for code related feedback, I am sure others creating Child Themes would also really appreciate “if (!function_exists…” changes throughout your codebase to make the upgrades a little easier.
Cheers and look forward to those monthly updates on all things Appthemes 😉
– michael
Thanks for the open feedback, Michael. Development always seems to take longer than expected. We don’t intentionally slip past our deadlines but it’s an endless battle trying to decide where to draw the feature and code refactoring line. We could’ve released it in Sept but we wouldn’t of been completely happy with it.
Awesome feedback regarding the “function_exists()” code. We’ve added a ton of new action and filters to make things much easier for developers to build on top of 4.0. So you’re saying it would be beneficial to completely replace our core functions with your own in addition to using the action and filters?
Yeah I know David. The amount of times I have promised my wife and boss I’ll be finished by … hahaha.
I’m not a fancy developer, I use Vantage and customise my own child theme. It’s not a lot of functions I overwrite, just a couple. But each time an update comes out it overwrites the changes to the core theme and I have to go through update to if function_exists() again. We don’t expect you to have the perfect theme. I’m happy to research and extend as I don’t want my site to necessarily look or feel like every other Vantage theme out there.
A small investment in your team’s time would have massive gains for me (and no doubt others). Roll that fix across other themes (eventually) and you’re customers could be saving hundreds of hours per update especially those with multiple customers.
I don’t know if there is a performance loss by implementing or if there is even a better way to do it but its something that is a real bug bear to me.
Btw, another thought recurring events would be awesome. I appreciate that would be a tricky fix, seems simple but a lot of variations (1st Sat of month, every second week, last sunday of month, etc). Maybe a plugin developer could pick up on that.
And thanks for the update, looks like many others have appreciated it too.
Cheers David
Awesome.
Anything for responsive design?
Faster loading pages, SEO, AMP by default enabled?!
Also creating Mobile Apps (Android, iPhone and Windows) ?
It’s a responsive-first designed theme with lots of love for SEO using json-ld schema.org markup. AMP pages are on the roadmap but not for this initial release.
Can you explain what you mean by “creating Mobile Apps”?
FYI, Vipul put together a pre-release for Classipress. I thought it was a great idea and followed up after a while about a Vantage App. I was told support for the Classipress App was low and deemed it not viable to develop further.
What about converting this Vantage app in to Android or iPhone version of mobile App?
Do you have any plans for creating Vantage App to Mobile app converter?
Because, Mobile app users are increasing day by day.
No plans to make a dedicated mobile app. Maybe one of our Marketplace sellers will do it though.
Are there any plans to add private messaging so that users can communicate to each other via the site rather than via email? Perhaps adding support for Buddypress as this already has private messaging?
Private messaging will not be built in. It’s a great idea for a plugin though. BuddyPress support will eventually come as well. Just not in the initial release.
Good stuff. On an unrelated note, will there possibly be any plans for a Classipress refresh using some of the ground work you guys have laid with Vantage in the near future? 🙂
Absolutely. We don’t like to reinvent the wheel. 🙂 ClassiPress redesign is next on the list. No ETA though.
Please update Clipper as well. We need more feature and better design. There is no update for a long time and no more new theme release?
Thanks for update Vantage
Next redesign will be ClassiPress. Then either JobRoller or Clipper.
Please get clipper at first before ClassiPress :/
It’s nice to see some movement on this as you mentioned the old design is very outdated. Hopefully the home page isn’t limited to just the image or a slider and can be used to show listings as well.
I’d be excited if the importer on the current version worked as well. Even after the support looked at it still no resolution for a completely stock install.
The home page screenshot is just the top and doesn’t do it much justice. Below that area are several customizable modules (via widgets) such as latest listings, blog posts, callout boxes, etc.
The importer still needs a rewrite. 4.0 has changed a lot of things which we’re working through one at a time. 🙂
All the screenshots are broken : http://take.ms/hoeFG
That’s strange. I’m able to see them just fine. Wonder if our CDN has an outage somewhere….
David & Team-
Thanks for the critical update regarding v4’s progress. I am also happy to see that you have set a goal for your team on a completion, but as we all know, delays can change that. I appreciate that information, and I know many others do as well. I can only hope that you meet that deadline.
I was curious as to if this will have any functionality to create bookings. I know many users have inquired about this.
Thanks for the kind words, vmustang. Deadlines for software development have always been hard for us.
No booking functionality. We’re moving more towards a “less is better” model so our theme is leaner and easier to support. We’re making it much easier for developers to build plugins so that’s where a booking idea could take off.
Great news, i was starting to worry a little bit about you guys, good to see you improving your products, when will this be available for download?
Thanks, guiadelamujer. We’re targeting to release it by the end of the year. Still lots of work and the holiday season coming up so fingers crossed!
I am one of the earlier user of the Vantage theme. And I bought it because of the promise of good things to come .. and like many buyers, we waited. And waited. And it never comes.
Vantage got stuck, and you guys don’t deliver.
If you were to do justice to all the buyers of Vantage, this theme should be released free to all your earlier customers of Vantage.
But I don’t think that it is going to happen.
The upgrade will be free for all active Vantage and Club subscribers….and for customers who were grandfathered in before the subscription model was rolled out.
Very good news! I’d be delighted if the search feature would be extended to search not just listings, but posts and pages as well. I’ve never had a good search feature and no one plug-in works the way we want it to!
By default, the WordPress search isn’t very good compared to what we’re used to with Google search results.
With that being said, there will be two search modules in Vantage 4.0. One for listings and the other for posts and pages. How accurate the results are for the posts & pages is up to WordPress, however.
I agree I also got the theme, had big plans and waited for the changes that never came and never got to use it. Sucks
Sorry to hear. Well, the changes have finally arrived so you can get ready! 😉
Looks great and makes me wonder when you can do a makeover for ClassiPress. It has some great features but the frontend design layout lets it down.
We realize all our themes are overdue for a redesign. ClassiPress is next in line.
Good to see an upgrade at long last.
WIll have a look at how it works. I have nearly given up on my Vantage site – hard to make it look attractive (lipstick on a pig?) and don’t like asking for help as it just goes to Dmitris who is (presume he’s still there) doing his best as a team of one.
Software suppliers all say they provide support, and some even brag about their level of service.
As consumers we see who walks and who just talks.
Thank you for the news.
I have a question: 4 Vantage will you it compatible with older lists? The import will you it automatic?
We’re doing our best to make it compatible with older versions of Vantage but it’s almost a complete rebuild so things likely won’t port over one-to-one. We’ll have a better idea once we begin migration testing.
Thank you for the work you and your team have put in on this, David.
I look forward to seeing how I might be able to integrate the updated design with my current site, as it seems to be a significant change, and I’m not sure if I want to drastically change the front end of the site.
I second the notion that Bookings would be huge (and kindly request this as a future feature). I’ve been working for months now to put together a booking system that I can use with Vantage, which is more difficult than it sounds because most of them are designed for only one business, not a full inventory of businesses, each with different offerings, etc.
That said, I certainly understand wanting the less-is-more approach. It’s just that in my particular case, less is not enough, haha.
I think I can work with what I’ve got, but it sure would be nice to have something actually built in instead of having to put (and keep) together a bunch of moving pieces.
Is there any more integration with PayPal in this new release? It’d be nice if customers had built-in functionality to cancel memberships, as well up upgrade and downgrade them.
Also, as a more general request, would it be in any way possible to still leave time for actual support of the theme? I’ve had many requests go unanswered. I mean, I’ll get a response, but no actual resolution, as if requests end up in some mysterious no-mans-land. And we’re not even talking horribly complicated requests either.
For example, to this day, Vantage is sending out two notifications to business owners with each new review that comes in for their website. One says the listing has a new review, and the other says it has a new comment.
There are several other issues that luckily aren’t major, but in this case and several others, it’s looking like I’ll have to hire a developer to support your guys’ theme for you. And given that a new version will naturally have bugs of its own to work out, I’m definitely going to be trigger shy in testing the hell out of this thing before releasing it into the wild (and hopefully, you’ll do the same).
Nothing with PayPal has changed in this version but those are good feature requests.
The dual Vantage emails are fixed in 4.0. I think we even have a fix for the existing version…it just needs to be released.
Forum-based support is hard to manage. New threads are easy to spot but once a conversation gets started, things get lost.
It worked well in the beginning but we’ve basically outgrown the support model. Changing to a ticket-based email system is something we’ll likely do in the future.
Pulling out modules like events and reviews will reduce bloat and chance of bugs. We’ll certainly do a lot of testing but such large rebuilds like this will inevitably be buggy. The trick will be to squash them quickly once they’ve been reported.
Paste in your open forum threads and I’ll have our support team follow up with you.
Thanks for your reply, David 🙂
I’ve learned that I need to pester in order for any issue not to fall through the cracks, but usually, the response is that the issue has been escalated to the dev team which is where it apparently sits indefinitely.
Here are some links:
Open since April 23, 2016:
http://forums.appthemes.com/report-vantage-bugs/renewed-membership-expired-listing-93037/
Open since June 15, 2016:
http://forums.appthemes.com/help-using-vantage/auto-activate-order-93740/
Open since July 13, 2016:
http://forums.appthemes.com/help-using-vantage/moderate-listing-edits-94088/
Open since June 21, 2016:
http://forums.appthemes.com/report-vantage-bugs/your-review-awaiting-moderation-93824/
Open since September 7, 2016:
http://forums.appthemes.com/report-vantage-bugs/double-comment-review-notifications-94722/
Regarding the last two, I’ve been told that resolutions are in the next release, so would you please clarify if that means 4.0 or is that is that perhaps an upcoming minor update?
Either way, it’s a bit of a tease to say “Yeah, we have a resolution, but you just can’t have it yet.”
Anyway, there are some free and easy-to-use support ticket options out there, and the first one that comes to mind is SpiceWorks, which I’ve set up personally before with very minimal effort. If you get something up and running, you may also want to consider some level of accountability to avoid tickets being permanently back-shelved.
Thanks. I’ve passed your forum threads onto our support team to follow up.
The support process goes like this:
– Customer opens a forum thread
– Support team attempts to resolve
– If unable, they log the dev team a ticket
– Dev team reviews, responds, and fixes as needed
– Dev team pushes fix into dev-build (which customer can download)
– Support team reports back in forum thread on status
– Official fix gets added to the next release
We then wait to do the official release once we’ve got a good handful of bugs/issues fixed because release cycles takes a lot of effort so we don’t do them that frequently (unless it’s something critical).
So I imagine your fixes are staged for the next Vantage release (not 4.0). They might already be in the dev-build. I’d ask in each forum thread.
Re: support ticket systems – thanks for the suggestion. We already started using HelpScout for our general inquiries which works very well so we’ll eventually replace the forums with that workflow.
Thank you 🙂
I have to tell you though, the process you described rarely happens, if ever.
It seems as though either the front-line support can fix the issue or the issue just goes unanswered. You can pester the front-line support person, and they’ll say they’ve escalated it, and then more silence. No updates, and no resolution.
Might I suggest that, when issues are reported, a temporary solution be provided to the person reporting the issue so that they don’t have to wait until a sufficient amount of other issues have been bundled together for a release? I’m not sure why it would be necessary to make people wait.
Especially when we’re talking a matter of months.
Right. The problem is, forum support models just can’t scale which is why we’re looking to move to a ticketing system.
It’s easy for the support team to monitor for zero response threads but keeping track of ongoing discussions is very difficult. Unlike ticketing systems, there is no “inbox” style view to keep track of open issues so they get buried and lost in the forum abyss.
There’s also the disconnect between dev tickets (logged in Github by the support team) and the original forum thread. Wouldn’t it be great if you could view all open tickets and see the status without constantly prodding our support team?
Unfortunately, our private repos on Github don’t allow read-only access to non-team members. However, they do have an API which we could build something to solve this.
Anyhow, I’m getting a bit technical and going on and on here. It’s obviously been on my mind. 😉
So overall, this is no excuse…just an explanation of how our current support system is broken and ideas on how to fix it.
P.S. I appreciate the feedback!
Thank you very much for your thoughtful and detailed reply. It’s nice to know that it’s actually a concern that’s on your radar.
Hey David,
I hope all is going well with the new arrival and that you’re making solid progress with squashing bugs with Vantage 4.0. Even I am getting annoyed by the is-it-done-yet notifications, haha.
Regarding the support cases we discussed above, it’s been nearly 3 months now, and I’ve yet to receive a single solution to any of them.
Any advice?
-Tim G.
@carpediemtim, I’m so sorry nobody has resolved your issues yet. I notified my support team but they must have missed it.
I will have a look and respond myself.
Thank you kindly, David! I wish the rest of your support team shared your level of enthusiasm, friendliness, and knowledge, haha.
I’m sorry, I guess you did say that, at least with the double emails, that it would be a fix to the current version. So then may I ask when this is expected to be released?
Will this stop the issue with customers being able to create as many listings as they want after they have signed up?
Just had one new user create 10 new listings for themselves. They weren’t happy when I said that it was only one free listing per user.
We aren’t aware of any issue like that. Make sure to check the settings on your payment plans. If you still think it’s a bug, please report it in our support forum so they can log the development team a ticket.
I started a thread post for this years ago.
http://forums.appthemes.com/vantage-general-discussion/one-free-listings-per-user-71018/
If you set up a listing plan in vantage, once users have set up their first listing, they can then just create as many listings as they want.
I have users signing up for a basic listing limited to one category, but they try to get around the category restriction by just creating another listing!
Hard to make money on offering more categories for a price when they can just do multiple listings.
Yes, listings have to be approved, so I can stop people creating multiple listings. But customers get annoyed when they put in all the effort to create multiple listing only to be told that only one will be approved.
Just stop them from creating multiple listings in the first place!
You can’t really prevent people from creating multiple new listings. The same goes on sites like Craigslist, eBay, etc.
That’s what the moderation feature is there to prevent.
Even if there was something that restricted new listings, all they’d have to do is create another account.
Hi David,
I see your point. But being able to give away a free single category listing would be a good way to attract new listings and generate new content for the site.
It’s not a problem if you are charging for every listing. But the current set up means it’s not possible to create a free listing category with restricted listing settings.
Really looking forward to purchasing, any ideas on price for upgrades? Is there more back office support included, I really like the idea of creating reports based on the Directory data.
Thanks for keeping me informed
Existing subscribers and grandfathered in lifetime customers will get the upgrade for free. 😉 If your subscription expired, just renew it once 4.0 comes out and you’re set.
Wow! This is great news. Congrats on the job well done. Will do a post about this and hopefully get more of our traffic convert.
Hi David,
A lot of the screenshots don’t show…
Really looking forward to this.. I didnt renew because of the lack of design features & child themes but this seems like its going to be a game changer. I’ll be renewing my subscription once this is released!
The screenshots do not load for me using Safari on a Mac, clicking does take me to a screenshot. Redesign looks good !
Screenshots should be working now. That’s what happens when you copy and paste from your computer and forget to change the urls! 🙁
Good to hear this David, I was kind of getting worried as there has been little activity over few years. Hope our child themes developers will also update their themes. Just a suggestion will be nice to a mobile version too either in Vantage or via plugin / Child theme. Looking forward to see it.
Thanks, anuraagv. Unfortunately, any pre-4.0 Vantage child themes will no longer work. 4.0 is basically a complete rewrite so child theme authors will need to make major changes as well. They are aware of this and should ideally let their customer-base know prior to this release.
Screenshots now working for me.
Good improvements. Congrats !
I don’t see the Create events feature. We’d like to still have it.
Also we’d like to have more place to put ads in the single and main pages.
Are you actually working on revamping the clipper and taskerr template? Will it be next year?
The events and review modules have been removed. Events wasn’t super popular yet required a lot of support and developer resources so we pulled it.
Reviews will be replaced with our Critic plugin. Events will possibly be rolled into it’s own plugin down the road. Low priority though.
So, if events are critical to your business, don’t upgrade to 4.0.
The single and main pages are all modules (aka widgets) so you can put ad blocks wherever you like. 😉
The other themes will be revamped one at a time. ClassiPress is next on the list.
Thanks to reply.
Yes , you can still plan to develop the Event creation plugin. It will be useful. But if it will be separate you can add some additional features like
seat map reservation
calendar pop up
ticket selling management (single and groups)
Company details
Hope you will plan these features and and much more.
oh okay, events have been trashed. Shame, i think resistance / difficulty could be because they were quite hard to manage recurring events. WIth proper schema mark up they have definitely pulled the traffic and looked good in organic search.
This is great news. Like some of the other users, I was beginning to wonder when/if we were going to see major refreshes. Thanks guys:-)
Hi, your theme looks great. I used your theme before, but after all, it wasn’t what I was looking for. I want to make a directory, but without any categories. So I’m just promoting one product/service, so I don’t need to search fields with Taco’s and Sushi in your examples. I only need a location search. Would that be possible in this update?
Yes, technically you could but it would require a developer to customize the search bar.
David, I agree with what your doing and why your doing it. Can’t wait for the release of V4. 🙂
Discussion is closed.