Customize Posts v0.5 Released

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We’re pleased to announce the v0.5 release of the Customize Posts plugin! Check out my rough release demo video:

Key features in this release:

Postmeta support

A framework for registering postmeta types, adding controls, and previewing changes.

Page template

Changes to the page template can now be previewed, both in the Customizer and from the edit page admin screen. The Customizer now opens when clicking “Preview Changes” to preview the page. Further edits can be made from the page template control in this Customizer page preview, and the changes get synced back to the page template dropdown in the page attributes metabox on the edit page screen.

Featured image

Similarly to the page template, changes to the featured image can now be previewed where normally this is not possible in WordPress. The featured image selection on edit post screen has been improved to not update featured image in place, instead waiting until the post is saved before updating the featured image postmeta. The featured image can be set from the post edit screen and then previewed in the Customizer via the post Preview Changes button: the featured image can be further changed in the Customizer post preview, with changes synced back to the post edit screen when the Customizer post preview is exited.

Post author

Also similarly to the page template and featured image, you can now preview changes to the post author, both from the edit post screen and from within the Customizer. Normally in Core when you change the post author and hit Preview Changes, the newly-selected author does not appear in the preview. With Customize Posts, you can preview the post author change to see what avatars they have, the display name they have set, or to see how their bio appears on the page.

Comment & ping status

Changes to the comment/ping status can also now be previewed, as above, where they cannot be previewed in Core.

Post excerpt

Unlike the preceding items, Core does support previewing changes to the post excerpt from the edit post/page screen. Customize Posts, as with featured image and post author, also supports previewing changes to the post excerpt via selective refresh. This allows you to preview changes to your excerpt quickly. (Previewing changes to the post content was already supported.)

Take a look at the changelog for a list of all the features and bugfixes included in this release, and look at the issue backlog for what is coming next!

7 thoughts on “Customize Posts v0.5 Released”

  1. Really nice work guys. I can tell you were thorough in thinking through the various ways people go about editing content. This will go a long way with all the beginners out there who are tasked with editing their sites.

  2. Hey Weston this is great news! I’m amazed at how much value you guys keep adding to the Customizer. Is there a good tutorial on how to use the new postmeta framework?

    Thanks again for your great work!

    1. @Alexis: Thanks! The best tutorial right now is to look at the code for adding the featured image support. Here are the relevant files:

      Something I want to demonstrate soon as well is how to add a more traditional multi-field control for manipulating a postmeta that stores an array value. Work is being done on this in the context of the JS Widgets plugin, including examples of mapping a Customizer setting to inputs managed by Backbone and React. But outside of widgets, we need to create a simple example of a postmeta control for manipulating an array value. Any suggestions?

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