As you might have noticed, we use Thesis for this site. We also use Thesis for a lot of client work. And while we dig Thesis, one of the things that becomes a pain in the ass when using it, (or any theme that provides admin control of layout and design) is having to manually add common layout and design settings that we use regularly. With the release of Thesis 1.6, this has become even a bigger issue due to all the new font and color control features.
As things move forward, more and more skin designs will start incorporating admin panel settings rather than relying on the traditional style sheet approach. And that means skins will become less and less “plug & play” because you will have to spend time inputing dozens of settings to get your skin to look like the original demo. And skin designers will need to spend a bunch of time creating additional instructions that list all the items that need to be changed. (For a great example, check out all the work that went into Ben’s post on his latest skin).
That seems like a bunch of needless work to me, so I asked Dax to break out the import/export tools we use that deal with Thesis into a stand alone plugin. The concept is pretty simple. After you upload and activate it, you can download individual data files for Thesis Options, Design Options, and all OpenHook content. (located at Appearance > Thesis Import/Export)
So once you have completed a skin design, or custom layout for a client, you can just export the data files and then bundle them with the plugin. Once the skin is installed, the user simply uploads the bundled data files and all the original settings, hooks, etc. will be imported.
The only words of caution you will need with this plugin has to do with the restore functions. If you click on those links before you have saved a backup, all your settings will be lost!
Download Thesis Settings Export v 1.2 Plugin Here
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Wow, Awesome.
Thanks for this, this can really save me some time while updating my sites.
Although I have not customized my theme much, it is high on my list to work on it.
Cheers
DG
Great idea, was planning on doing this myself but just haven’t gotten around to it.
2 issues I noticed while testing:
1.) Upon trying to restore a file or trying to restore the default I get:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_cache_clean_cache() in (Path Removed) thesis-export.php on line 76Fixed by throwing a if function_exists around it.
2.) The URL used in the check out your site messages point to instead of the site URL. Should use bloginfo(‘url’); here.
I see there’s also no license in the plugin. What licenses are you releasing this under? Any plans to submit it to wp.org?
Cheers.
Thanks for catching that Danny. I’ll have a version up with those fixes in just a bit.
Thanks for this, we will definitely be integrating this with our Thesis skins, should make things a lot easier for everyone!
Greg kudos for this. Makes popping wp-thesis sites off even easier.
Brilliant. This has always been a problem for those of us with a lot of web properties based on WP/Thesis.
Dude, this is AWESOME!
Will be putting it to use on my two free skins immediately. Will make things MUCH easier.
I owe you yet another beer at PubCon
Dude this is just what the thesis community needed. Rockin good job!
Great Plugin. Thank you very much.
Excellent work! Thanks a lot for putting this out, it’ll save me a ton of time.
Awesome contribution to the community—this’ll be great for anyone doing work for someone else.
It’s a real hassle porting over the option panel changes from a local server to a live server!
Also, our “default” starting position with Thesis is a little different for what arrives out of the box—so we might just setup our own blank canvas template.
This is Awesome!
Just by few clicks, we have all design and layout setting in our client site!
This is exactly what I needed for my Thesis sites. Thanks!
Interesting support for Thesis. She and I just had a wild passionate weekend together in the sandbox and am ready to take her home to the production site any day now.
Can I use your new plugin to transfer all the settings I have made in prototype to the production site. Not sure from your description or the screen shots what the workflow is exactly but will take my time and look thru it more closely.
Thanks in advance for any clue.
Yes you can. Just follow these steps:
1.Install the plugin on your production site and then open up the plugin admin panel. (located under the appearance tab). On that panel, you will see links that say “Download Current Layout” for Thesis Options and Design Options. And if you are using OpenHook, you will also see “Download OpenHook”.
2. Click on the links and save the three data files to youre local machine.
3. Install the plugin on the live site and open the plugin admin panel.
4. Click the browse button for each setting and navigate to the data files you saved on your machine.
5. After you have selected the appropriate file, click the upload button. Once you’ve done that, your live site should look exactly like the production site.
>>>your live site should look exactly like the production site.
Assuming I have removed or upgrade or added any plugin functionality as well.
Kewel. Thanks. Waiting for WP 29. Sort of.
Yes. If you don’t use OpenHook you can ignore that part.
One last bit of worrying.
Since I have not installed or activated OpenHook yet on production site, can I ignore that bit of instruction, Yes?
Does the Thesis theme need to be active on the live site or can it just be installed and ready to go and still be able to import without being the active theme? Same question for plugin. thanks.
This is brilliant thanks. Only wish I found it last week before I built 28 sites! -or at least my VA built 28 sites.
Thank you sooooo much for this. One question though if you don’t mind:
Do you advise deselecting the pages we’ve selected to show in the nav menu before exporting, since most likely the site imported to won’t yet have any pages built yet? I’ve noticed the plugin is keeping the pages in nav settings even tho those pages don’t exist. And then it’s a mess when I do actually create those pages.
Thanks.
If you are going to re-create the pages on the live site, you would probably be better off doing a content export/import first and then move the Thesis settings. That way the pages already exist before the nav settings are imported.
I’m not sure the use of
$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']is working quite right, or quite as expected in certain situations. I just tried to use this with Thesis 1.6 and WPMU 2.8.6 where WPMU is in a directory and the blogs are in subdirectories (because subdomains with MAMP is a pain). So, an admin URL is something like http://mytestsite.tld/main-wpmu-directory/blog-directory/wp-admin. I tried to download an export file and get redirected to http://mytestsite.tld/main-wpmu-directory/blog-directory/wp-admin/?c=1 without downloading anything. However, if I hover over the download link it says that the URL is http://mytestsite.tld/main-wpmu-directory/wp-admin/themes.php?page=thesis-export.php&dld=downloadoptions So, it’s missing the blog directory of the blog I’m currently editing. If I add that in the to URL manually in the address bar I get the download file okay.Perhaps a better variable would be
<?php bloginfo('wpurl'); ?>/wp-admin/?page=etc. To get the URL of the current WordPress install.Thanks for this wonderful plugin. This is something, I ‘ve been looking for!
Thanks!
Bravo guys, this plugin is an exceptional solution to such a hardworking community of designers who are tired of writing instructions and providing additional training which is nulled with the use of this fantastic plugin. Grand work, maybe you guys should be the first to go around and make this plugin for all the other up and coming themes such as headway etc
We’re actually in the process of moving a large chunk of our sites to Headway, so there’s a very good chance we’ll have a similar plugin for it in the very near future.
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