Two years ago, Breadcrumb NavXT 3.0.0 was released. With it came the same underlying codebase used today. It came with the knowledge gained when writing version 2 of Breadcrumb NavXT, and has been, for the most part, easy to extend to support new features added into WordPress.

Looking forward, there will be a 3.7.0 release in early November. It has incorporated many suggestions from users, in particular extra options have been added for custom post types that enable more flexible hierarchy structures. While support for multi site features have not been worked on yet, I still intend to include them in this release.

Now for the part that will concern some of you. I will be limiting my support and development time allocated to Breadcrumb NavXT during the month of October. During this time I will be working on a side project with J.D. and preparing for WordCamp MSP 2010. After October things will go back to “normal” as we approach the run up to 3.7.0.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

Holy custom post types batman! With Breadcrumb NavXT 3.6.0 you can now have breadcrumb trails for all of those custom post hierarchies and custom post-custom taxonomy combinations. Additionally, if you use the built in widget for Breadcrumb NavXT, you can restrict the display of the breadcrumb trail on the front page. On the settings page side, Breadcrumb NavXT settings page no longer warns, it allows you to undo. You can undo save, reset, import, and undo actions. Finally, a Japanese translation is now shipped thanks to Kazuhiro.

There are a few minor bug fixes in this release. These mainly cover issues that have been around for a while but were never reported.

Please note that this release requires at least WordPress 3.0. It was developed in a WordPress 3.0 environment, and was not tested in WordPress 2.9. If it works for you in WordPress 2.9 (why are you still on anything older than WordPress 3.0?), let me know in the comments to this post.

You can grab the latest version of Breadcrumb NavXT from the Breadcrumb NavXT page.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

As of tonight, the Breadcrumb NavXT SVN Trunk is in a feature freeze. All of the features I wanted to include in 3.6.0 have been implemented and it is now time to debug and perform regression testing. By Friday, Breadcrumb NavXT 3.6.0 will be released to the translators. This places the release around the 23rd of August. Features that need extensive testing are:

• Custom post type support (hierarchical post types in particular)
• Custom taxonomy type support in conjunction with custom post types
• The new “Undo” function

The first two have been implemented for a while now, the last one is new as of the last two nights. Rather than prompt to confirm the user really wants to reset the options or import options from a file, Breadcrumb NavXT now allows the user to undo their last settings changes. This uses another entry in the wp_options table, which is not set to autoload (the version entry is now set to not autoload as well) so it does not impact site performance in any significant way. Since much of the undo functionality is in the mtekk_admin class, these changes will make their way into the next WP Lynx as well.

Things that did make 3.6.0 are:

• Full support of multi-blog WordPress setups
• Auto integration with popular theme frameworks
• Slight tweaks to the options export/import format

These are planned for 3.7.0, which will be the first Breadcrumb NavXT version to require WordPress 3.0. Look for 3.7.0 in the mid to late November time frame. This is pushed back a little from the previous road map, but it allows me to pursue other cool projects (more on these later).

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]