WP RSS Aggregator
The Templates add-on is now available! Click here to learn more.
As we had mentioned earlier in the year, the Excerpts & Thumbnails add-on has reached the end of its life.
Today marks the final day that this add-on will be on sale. To know why and how this affects current users of this add-on, please read through our previous blog post. Should you still have questions, our support team is there to help clear things up so you can reach out at any time.
Introducing its replacement: Templates
The brand new Templates add-on has been in the works for around a couple of months now, but it’s the brain child of many years of feedback. It’s our first attempt at a template system that provides you with a combination of flexibility and style.
So… when is Templates going to be available?
Soon! The Templates add-on is currently in the Beta stage and being tested by a number of individuals to iron out any final bugs and issues. We expect to release the add-on to the public in the week of Monday 15th July.
At that point, it will be available for sale on our website. Soon after it will also become available to anyone who owns a valid license for one of the following:
- Pro Plan
- Basic Plan
- Advanced Feeds Bundle (superseded by the Pro plan)
- Simple Feeds Bundle (superseded by the Basic plan)
- Excerpts & Thumbnails
We will be providing instructions on how to get access to the Templates add-on once it is released.
What about the settings from Excerpts & Thumbnails? Will those be lost?
No, those settings won’t be lost. This is something we’ve taken great care to make super simple for any existing Excerpts & Thumbnails users.
Once you have Excerpts & Thumbnails to version 1.11 and installed the brand new Templates add-on, you will see a new tab in the WP RSS Aggregator settings called “Templates Conversion Tool”. All it takes is two clicks and everything will be converted over to the new templates.
We’ve set up an “Excerpts & Thumbnails” template type which reproduces the design from the old add-on (plus it adds a few new features). This will help ensure that any existing shortcode displays on your site continue to look the same, but they’ll work a lot sleeker.
We’re excited for this one…
It’s a change that we’ve wanted to make for a long time, and it opens the door for plenty more to come in the future. This is our current mood as we see the latest Beta working smoothly…
Roger Reeves
Please advise when the new Excerpts and Thumbnails Add-on is out?
Mark Zahra
Hi Roger, we will be announcing its release some time next week. If you’re interested in trying out the Beta version until then, please contact me on our support form linked below and I’ll sign you up to our Templates Beta Program.
Contact form: https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
Gary Howes
Today the RSS feed on my blog broke. The page would not load and even the admin toolbar and theme sidebar went away. I had to uncheck the “enable thumbnails” checkbox to get the page back. Surely you did not intend for this to happen?
Mark Zahra
Hi Gary, definitely now, and we haven’t reproduced that behaviour in our testing either. Please contact us on the link below with as much information as you can provide and we’ll take a closer look.
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
Gary Howes
I have created a topic for this in the aggregator support forum.
Mark Zahra
Hi Gary, questions related to premium add-ons cannot be posted on the support forum on wordpress.org as per their guidelines. That’s why we offer the premium support channel via our contact form. Please contact us directly there and we’ll take a closer look.
John
Why is this suddenly uploading images for the RSS feed into my WordPress media?
Mark Zahra
HI John, we have an update to be released soon that fixes this issue. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Bruno Cerqueira
Hi, the templates add on is already on sale, but I still have the Excerpts and Thumbnails and no way to transition to Templates.
Also, I have a 1.11 plugin update but when trying to update it always fails with the message: An error occurred while updating WP RSS Aggregator – Excerpts and Thumbnails: Download failed. Too many redirects
Max
I have the same problem. Too many redirects. Please help.
Mark Zahra
Hi Bruno and Max, have you contacted our support team about this? If not, please do so on the link below and provide as much detail as you can, including your system info and error logs.
https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
Bruno Cerqueira
Hey Mark,
I deactivated and deleted the previous version and manually installed 1.11 this fixed it.
I already moved from T&E to Templates and I must say GREAT JOB guys, it’s SO much better.
I have something to ask if you guys could develop that I think most people using this addon will want, a share link, you could put it on templates grid / list next to Date/Source/Author. The share could open a popup for the user to choose on witch platform it wants to share to (email, facebook, whatsapp, etc) and the most important, in the share there would be a line of text like “Shared with xxxxx.com” so that we can show our own domain with alink back to us, and not only the final destination page from the article we are sharing. This is self advertising.
Another think to think about is to place adds in the Grid, like from X to X items user chooses.
Those are my 2 cents.
Mark Zahra
That’s great, Bruno!
Your 2 cents are worth a lot to us, thank you for sharing your ideas. Both of them have already been discussed by the team and are planned for future updates. For the time being we’re not rushing new features in order to ensure that the add-on is stable before making any changes. So far it’s looking good, so they may be available sooner than expected 🙂
If you have any other ideas, please do share them here or through our contact form.
Would you mind sharing where you’ve put Templates to good use so that others reading this article can see its benefits too?
Bruno Cerqueira
Sure Mark,
Our first Templates implementation can be checked here: https://cryptogoat.net/
We played a little with custom CSS in order to achieve that look.
Mark Zahra
Thanks for sharing, Bruno. It’s looking good!
If I may mention one thing… when you click on the pagination numbers at the bottom and it scrolls back up, your header is set to stick above the content, so it hides the very top of the first articles. Just something small you may want to fix.
Adam Frederick
I am currently have 1.11 installed but I don’t see Templates in my download area. How do I get this plugin?
Thanks!
Mark Zahra
Hi Adam, please follow the instructions on our other post here: https://www.wprssaggregator.com/new-templates-addon-released/#migration
Robert Clifford
Where do I get E & T v 1.11? Never had it and now can’t do anything with Templates.
Mark Zahra
Hi Robert, if you have a valid and active license key on your site, the E&T update will show up on the Plugins page. The latest version is also always available in your account on our site, so long as your license is still valid.
If you need any further help to sort anything out, please contact us using the support form here: https://www.wprssaggregator.com/contact/
Stephanie Cion
Is it possible to create your own template in elementor and not use the templates from wp rss aggregator if one were to prefer to do it that way?
Mark Zahra
Hi Stephanie, Elementor might work depending on what you’re looking to achieve. If you’re importing the feed items as Posts using the Feed to Post add-on, then yes. You can use the Elementor post widgets to display them as you wish and where you wish.
If you’re importing feed items as Feed Items though, the custom post type in the plugin is set to Private, and I do not believe that Elementor shows Private Custom Post Types in its selection. You may ask their support team for more information about that, perhaps there’s a way around it.
If you find anything interesting, please do share it with us and our readers here.