INN’s WordPress Framework For News Sites Now Fully Supports HTTPS

Posted on by Ryan Nagle

We're pleased to announce the release of version 0.5.2 of our popular Largo WordPress framework for news sites.

With this update, Largo is now fully-compatible with https out of the box. Also included are some enhancements to managing featured media for your stories, some new footer layout options and a number of minor enhancements and bugfixes.

Full HTTPS Support

For many news sites, user privacy and security are significant concerns. With this release we wanted to ensure that sites using Largo would be able to use https out of the box. We're proud to say that this is now the case. Starting from a base installation of Largo you should not have any issues enabling https for your entire site.

WordPress has a guide explaining how to do that, but the details will vary depending on the hosting company you use.

A couple of caveats:

  • If you are migrating to Largo from a different WordPress theme or even updating Largo from a previous version and enable https, you may find that you have http links hard-coded into the body of your stories or elsewhere in your site settings. To get rid of potential mixed content warnings you would need to perform a search and replace to change these URLs to https. We use and recommend this tool, but please be sure to backup your site before doing anything potentially destructive.
  • If you have done any custom work in a child theme using Largo as your parent theme, you may also need to review the code in your child theme to make sure it also fully supports https.
  • If you install third-party plugins or insert/embed content from other sites or services (ad networks, embedded media, etc.) you will need to ensure that those plugins/sites/services support delivery via https or you may also run into mixed content warnings, missing ads or other issues. This is sometimes a major tripping point for sites switching to https, so just be aware that a significant amount or work and testing may be required depending on the number and type of third-party services you're using on your site.

If you are an INN member using our hosted version of Largo and would like to enable https for your site, let us know and we'll explain how the process works, the cost involved, etc. and help you get switched over.

Enhancements to the "Featured Media" editor

In Largo 0.5 we introduced the ability to use a video, slideshow or other embedded media in the place of a featured image for each story. With Largo 0.5.2, we have added a number of enhancements to this functionality to make it work better in a number of additional contexts, including:

  • The ability to set a thumbnail for embed and video featured media types to be used on the homepage, category pages, widgets or anywhere else a thumbnail/featured image might appear
  • The video featured media editor will attempt to automatically pull a thumbnail from any available oEmbed provider (YouTube, Vimeo, etc.) but still give authors the ability to upload their own thumbnail images if they would prefer
  • For theme developers, we have also added "featured-media" and "featured-media-{type}" classes to story containers for use in customizing the appearance of different types of featured media via CSS (adding overlays, icons, etc. to call out posts containing video, slideshows or other rich media)

New footer layout options

In working on a few recent client projects (Nonprofit Quarterly, Midwest Energy News and the redesign of our own site) we've developed a couple of new layout options for the footer of Largo sites, specifically:

  • A 4-column asymmetrical layout, with three narrow columns and one wide column, well suited for three menu areas and a donation, subscription or newsletter signup banner or widget.
  • A minimal 1-column centered layout, well-suited for sites who want a simpler, more minimal footer limited to simple navigation instead of having more widget areas to populate and manage.
  • For theme developers, an easier way to register and use a custom footer layout.

And of course a number of other bugfixes and enhancements.

We encourage you to download the new version and update your sites at your earliest convenience. If you host your site with us, we're making this update for you today. If you host your site elsewhere, you can download the new version from GitHub.

If you have questions or need assistance please check out the release notes and documentation first and if you're still stuck, open a ticket through the Largo help desk.

What's next?

Over the next couple of months we'll be working fast and furious on polishing a number of existing features gearing up for our next full point release, version 0.6 (currently slated for late October). Look for a new release almost every week in between now and then and if you're interested in following along or contributing to the project, you can check out the upcoming milestones on GitHub.