Hello Weasels!
It’s certainly been a while since I’ve posted anything up on here, and I’ve had a few emails enquiring if I have any plans regarding Broadcast updates and the likes so I thought I would share them here.
This year, Broadcast, Broadcast PRO and a new theme, Broadcast Lite will all be receiving major upgrades. In fact, I’ve rewritten their entire codebase, to bring them up to a greater standard using the latest and greatest in web technologies.
So what’s the plan for 2018?
Broadcast Lite
Broadcast lite will be our latest and greatest FREE WordPress theme for twitch.tv streamers. This theme will be available to publically download through the WordPress.org theme library, meaning you can one-click install Broadcast Lite directly through your Wordpress admin interface (yay!).
Broadcast Lite is very similar to our current Broadcast theme, with the following notable points:
- New, fresh, sleek design based off of the original Broadcast design that you all love so much.
- WordPress Customizer support (no more custom admin screens).
- Twitch API v5.0 support.
- Better mobile & tablet support for the ever-increasing mobile market.
- Child theme ready.
- Translation ready.
- Automatic updates through the WordPress.org theme library!
With the above improvements, there comes a couple of limitations, most notably:
- Broadcast Lite users will not be able to change the colour scheme without making manual CSS changes yourself.
We understand this is quite a large drawback for our free users, however, the plan here is to spend much more time improving the colour scheme system which should theoretically allow the system to handle infinite colour schemes, meaning you can style Broadcast exactly how you want it, to match your stream theme, branding and identity. This new colour scheme feature will be rolled into Broadcast PRO.
Broadcast PRO
Broadcast PRO users need not worry, with the complete overhaul of Broadcast and Broadcast Lite will also come the overhaul of Broadcast PRO. Broadcast PRO will continue to only be available through StreamWeasels and the price will remain at $29.99. The theme will also have the following upgrades:
- New, fresh, sleak design based off of the original Broadcast design that you all love so much.
- WordPress Customizer support (no more custom admin screens).
- Twitch API v5.0 support.
- Better mobile & tablet support for the ever-increasing mobile market.
- Child theme ready.
- Translation ready.
With support for the following new features:
- Twitch chat integration.
- Potentially infinite colour schemes.
- Modular layout.
- Past Broadcast and Vods support.
- More stuff currently in the works!
The initial plan was to release Broadcast PRO 2.0 early in the year, as most of the work on the above features has already been completed, but since then plans have changed, and I started to rebuild the entire thing from scratch to bring it more up-to-date. Because of this, I’m aiming for a summer release on Broadcast PRO 2.0.
Current Broadcast users will get an automatic update in their WordPress admin interface, and as the new admin screen will be making use of the core WordPress Customizer, you will have to reload all of your imagery and data into the new Customizer screen, which should only take a couple of minutes!
So keep an eye out in your admin interface, and please reach out if you have any questions on the future of the theme or if you have any suggestions!
Broadcast
Our current free theme, Broadcast, will be discontinued very soon and completely replaced with Broadcast Lite. This will likely happen within the next couple of weeks once Broadcast Lite has been approved for use on the WordPress.org theme library. Current users of the Broadcast theme will be unaffected and can continue to use the theme, however, they won’t receive any more updates or support and I would fully encourage everyone to upgrade to Broadcast Lite once it’s available!
Thanks, more updates coming soon.
