Providing a storefront to download themes, plugins and other items has been part of our development plan for Koken since the beginning, for we believe a great publishing platform isn't defined by the core application alone but the variety of ways the application can be extended and enhanced to meet the needs of all types of users.

We will soon be taking our first steps toward realizing that goal by launching the Koken Store, a marketplace that will serve as an important backbone for all our future expansion efforts. The store will launch with new and existing items developed by us, but will expand later this year to include items created by third parties as well.

Store features

We could have developed your average e-commerce site and called it a day, but you deserve better. Koken Store will include these key features:

Built into Koken - The store will be accessible through all installations of Koken. Click "Store" in the main navigation and an entirely new section will appear for you to browse all the themes, plugins and add-ons the store offers.

Themes and plugins install automatically - Put down that FTP client! Store themes and plugins will automatically download and install to your Koken installation. No mess, no fuss.

Convenient updates - You're busy enough. Last thing you need is to keep track of when an update for a theme or plugin is available. Koken Store will provide a dedicated Updates screen displaying convenient upgrade links for anything your installation is using.

Themes

For new installations of Koken, Elementary (one of our current themes) will now be the default theme. All other themes will be available separately through the Koken Store. Existing installations of Koken will retain all themes currently installed.

At launch, Koken Store will include completely rebuilt, 2.0 versions of two of our most popular themes: Regale and Madison. Both of these themes will be separate paid themes, so you may continue using their current free versions or upgrade if interested. The current versions of all other themes — Axis, Boulevard, Chastain, Observatory and Repertoire — will remain free.

Madison 2

Madison has been completely redesigned from top-to-bottom. It will still have its classic fixed side column and scrollable main area, but will now incorporate a fluid layout for larger photos, optional mosaic grid content layout, side column right alignment, albums index page, splash page, lightbox overlays, plus far more customization options than before.

Regale 2

Regale will also be updated along similar lines to include more customization controls, a completely revamped, hand-built mosaic grid layout engine (codenamed "Pillar"), lightbox overlays (instead of individual photo pages, if you want that), customizable image loading animations and more.

Plugins

Koken Store will incorporate all of the free plugins currently available for download at our Help Center plus a handful of new premium plugins:

Vimeo Import

Vimeo Import will make it possible for videos published at Vimeo to be imported to the Koken Library. You'll be able to browse, select and import videos from your Vimeo account, group them into collections, and manage them like any other Library asset. The videos are then published to your Koken site using Vimeo's HTML5 video player. Speaking of Vimeo's player, you'll also be able to modify the player's color, text, and other standard embed options.

Instagram Import

Operating in similar fashion to the Vimeo plugin will be a new Instagram Import plugin. This plugin will...you guessed it...import your images from Instagram. You simply copy/paste the page url of the image you'd like to import and Koken will retrieve the image, copy its title and (optionally) create tags from the #hashtags in its title.

Image Protector

Image Protector will provide obfuscation and blocking to help prevent image copying. This will prevent browser drag-and-drop and replace the browser's right-click menu with a configurable copyright message. You'll also have the option of preventing images at or above a particular dimension from being indexed by Google Images, Bing, and Yahoo. Pinterest pinning will be configurable as well.

Image Watermarks

Another security related plugin will be Image Watermarks. This plugin will apply watermarks to all site images or only images above a particular dimension (so thumbnails aren't affected). Watermarks will scale in proportion to their target images so they'll always be the same relative size. Placement, opacity, scale, offset, and tiling will also be editable.

Launching soon!

We're super excited about Koken Store and expect to be launching it and all the items above very soon.

Also, we should mention that it was exactly one year ago today we made the first Koken public beta available for download. We think Koken has grown and improved a great deal since, but there's always more to do. Expect to see plenty of Koken improvements and new features all year long.