Introducing Advanced Columns Pro

If you’ve been following us in recent months, downloading and trying out the free version of Advanced Columns, or simply observing our experiments on Twitter, you may have wondered when the time would come for us to release the Pro version of the plugin.

Truth be told, we are a bit behind schedule compared to the timeline we set a few months ago. But there’s a good reason for it.

Today we want to reveal the release date of Advanced Columns Pro, but before we get to the actual announcement, we want to explain why there’s been a delay.

The reason is actually quite simple, and it stems from a belief we’ve adopted: when purchasing something digital, whether it’s a service or a product, it should never solely be based on the seller’s promise to add this or that feature in the future, but rather on the real value that the service or product can already bring us today.

Following this reasoning, and perhaps somewhat contrary to the philosophy of releasing early and often, we preferred to wait until we were fully convinced of the package of additional features in the Pro version, and the consequent value they could bring to the work of an ideal buyer.

This has involved some tough choices, but sacrificing some functionality for the sake of greater stability of the plugin seemed to us the most conscientious choice to make.

After all, think about it, when you buy something online, wouldn’t you also want the author of the product to be, at the very least, convinced and, why not, proud of what they’re selling you at that moment?

With all that said, these are the features that the Pro version of Advanced Columns will have on day one:

1. Unlimited Media Queries: you’ll be able to create multiple Media Queries, while the Free version will continue to be limited to a maximum of two. This means you can adapt your website layout to any device, ensuring an optimal user experience in all contexts.
2. Boxed Mode: you’ll be able to adjust the width of the content independently of the block width itself, such as having a full-width block with columns constrained to the maximum width of the page content.
3. CSS Grid Fluid Mode: we’ve introduced a new column management mode called “fluid”, which will allow you to create flexible and responsive layouts with ease.
4. WordPress Fluid Spacing Support: in the Pro version, we have chosen to fully support WordPress’s fluid spacing, allowing themes to define their own set of spacing values. This will make it easy to synchronize spacing between your blocks, ensuring a consistent and harmonious design.
5. Responsive Visibility Controls: with this new feature, you can easily hide or show sections or individual columns based on a specific Media Query.
6. Global Presets: we’ve introduced a system of global presets, editable from the plugin’s Settings panel, which will allow you to set some parameters for each Media Query, and automatically see these parameters applied when creating a new Advanced Columns block.
7. User Role-based Visibility Management: have you ever wanted a client with a non-administrator role not to see the full set of complex layout controls, thus inadvertently avoiding compromising the layout itself? With this option, you can restrict access to layout controls to administrators only.

Upon release of the plugin’s Pro version, we plan to publish a roadmap for the project. This page won’t claim to be 100% accurate regarding deadlines, releases, and update content, but rather aims to provide a clear indication of where the project is heading, both in terms of new features and integration of Advanced Columns Pro tools with other plugins.

Okay, we owe you an announcement, right? Well, Advanced Columns Pro will be released on April 22nd: mark your calendars!

If you’d like to stay updated on the plugin in the meantime, we recommend:

• Following us on X/Twitter: @advancedcolumns
• Subscribing to the plugin’s mailing list

Talk soon!