Great news everyone. If you have been wondering what in the world has been going on with the theme, it has been all good things. The product backend / management plugin is coming along quite nicely, and there is another new surprise on the way to coincide with the plugin release - Market 3.

Interested in seeing what Market 3 is looking like? Head over here and use the Theme Switcher to select MK3. Note that the theme is not yet complete yet, but it’s getting there. Let me take a moment to point out a few highlights of this release.

• Blog compatibility out of the box - For those of you that have the Market license, you have probably seen the “Market Plus” version of theme currently available in the Download Center. This version allows you to have your blog running on top of your shop items. By my own omission, it was very poorly done the first time around. I rushed it just to get it out there as a feature. With Market 3, by default the theme will act like a regular blog, with products on the side. Simply follow the instructions to create a products page. And if you still want to have the grid based product layout when viewing the homepage, just create a page and use the included alternative homepage template to restore the homepage into just a storefront.
• Code swapped around - I’ve reworked how some of the coding was done on the single.php page. Now, if you sell out of an item but still want to list it, simply delete the price custom field and the buy now button will no longer show up, and “Sold Out” will display next to the item name where the price previously was.
• Comments on standard blog posts - The comment form, which was removed from all versions of Market, is back and is used only on regular blog posts, not product posts.
• Larger product images - The main product image (known to current theme owners as the “pli” ) has been increased from 250×250 pixels to 350×350 pixels.

These are just a few of the things being done so far. Stay tuned.