What’s on the Plate for Soliloquy?

The response to Soliloquy has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, I’ve not heard a negative remark about the plugin as of yet and I hope to keep it that way.

The future is bright for Soliloquy, and now that the initial launch is out of the picture, I wanted to give a heads up on what you can expect in the coming weeks and months regarding Soliloquy and its addons.

As of a couple days ago, everything in the Member’s Area is automated. What does that mean for you? It means that the minute an update is pushed out, you will have access to the update, an archived download link to the new version and changelog notes for the newest version. Pretty nice, huh?

I’ve begun the process of creating documentation for Soliloquy. Because Soliloquy has a modular mindset, the documentation for it could literally be endless. There are nearly 100 hooks/filters that you can access from within the plugin, and it simply takes a long time to document and provide coding samples for each one. The documentation will have code sample in the form of “snippets”, and the snippets will be searchable by tag or category. This will allow for ultimate control and flexibility when trying to find something you need in regards to the documentation.

As far as addons are concerned, this is where I am most excited. The lightbox addon has been incredibly well received, and I believe that the addons I have in store will be received just the same. Travis Smith has created a wonderful blog post outlining some of the addons that will be released in the future (click here to view the post and see some working samples).

Of the addons that are currently cooking in the kitchen, the two that I am most excited about are the Thumbnails and Preview addons.

The Thumbnails addon will give you the ability to add thumbnail navigation to your slider. You’ll be able to choose the size of your thumbnail from an image size registered with WordPress, determine where you want your thumbnails positioned (top, right, bottom or left), determine the layout of your thumbnails (whether you want them all visible or use arrows to scroll through them) and more. The best part is that the slider will still maintain its responsiveness throughout the entire process. 

The Preview addon will give you the ability to preview your slider either using WordPress’ own Preview button or right from the slider edit screen. You will be able to preview your edits before saving and committing them to your live slider. And yes, the slider will still be responsive, even inside the admin area. This is an invaluable feature, especially for clients and users that test or make changes to their slider often.

Another exciting feature that will be integrated into Soliloquy in the future is an Addons page that will let you download, install, activate and manage Addons straight from the Soliloquy admin area. The benefits for this (especially in light of pre-packaging the plugin within a theme) are enormous since you will have access to the Addons right at your fingertips. Of course, Addons are only available to those who have a Developer license, so this functionality will be limited to Developer license holders.

There are lots of exciting things on the horizon for Soliloquy, and I’m excited that you will get to share in them as well. Do you have any ideas for improvements or future addons? I’d love to know!

Published by Thomas Griffin