ZOO 4.0 – YOOtheme Pro Page Builder and 6 New Apps

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  • ZOO

Today's the day ZOO users have been waiting for 🎉 ZOO 4 has finally arrived! It's the first major update since 2014 and perfectly integrates ZOO into the YOOtheme Pro ecosystem. You can now load all your ZOO content dynamically into your YOOtheme Pro website. To show the full potential of ZOO 4, we added 6 new apps with dedicated demo websites. We also modernized and complemented ZOO with new features. There is a new group element to repeat fields, cross-app support for the related items element, an option to show items from subcategories and more. Excited? Let's dive right in.

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YOOtheme Pro Integration

You can now load ZOO content with all its elements into your YOOtheme Pro layouts and create site-wide templates for the Frontpage, Category, Tag and Item pages for all your ZOO apps. This means you no longer need to assign elements to a layout position in the ZOO app templates. Instead, you can use the power of the YOOtheme Pro page builder and render your ZOO content with the latest UIkit framework. This is fantastic! It gives you the best of both – manage your content in ZOO and design it with YOOtheme Pro.

6 New ZOO Apps

Have you noticed that all the latest theme packages for YOOtheme Pro are modern versions of the original ZOO apps 🤨? Well yes, you're right. Here are our new ZOO applications Design Bites, a download archive, Tech Space, a product catalog, Framerate, a movie database, Creative Hub, a business directory, Kitchen Daily, a cookbook, and Blog Pro, a blog, as you might have guessed. Each app comes with its own demo website, which is completely loaded from ZOO. It looks exactly the same as its corresponding Joomla demo website. It was our goal that you have all the advantages of managing content in ZOO and are able to build the same complex websites like we do with our YOOtheme Pro theme packages.

  • ZOO Kitchen Daily App

    Kitchen Daily

  • ZOO Creative Hub App

    Creative Hub

  • ZOO Tech Space App

    Tech Space

  • ZOO Framerate App

    Framerate

  • ZOO Design Bites App

    Design Bites

  • ZOO Blog Pro App

    Blog Pro

Click on one of the following images to show the new demo websites. Blog Pro doesn't have a dedicated demo because it is already used in all the other demo websites for their blog.

ZOO Kitchen Daily App

Kitchen Daily

ZOO Creative Hub App

Creative Hub

ZOO Framerate App

Framerate

ZOO Tech Space App

Tech Space

ZOO Design Bites App

Design Bites

Group Element

We added a Group element that allows you to create repeatable groups of text, textarea and image fields. Even though most ZOO elements are repeatable, it was not possible to create such a combination of different field types. The element is very similar to the Joomla repeatable field. It provides the needed flexibility to create the item types and their field combinations.

Group element

In ZOO, it was only possible to relate item types from the same app instance, but in YOOtheme Pro, some theme packages reference related articles from a different content type, for example in Kitchen Daily blog posts show related recipes. That's why we made the Related Items element compatible across different apps, so you can now show related items from other apps as well. In addition, we added ordering options to the related items element configuration.

Related items element cross app support

Show Items From Subcategories

If you wanted to achieve a deeper category hierarchy in ZOO and show items in the parent category, each item had to be assigned to all parent categories as well. This could be very time-consuming. This is why we added an option to include items from subcategories to the app configuration. Now you can easily create index pages with all items from the app, no matter the category.

Show items from subcategories

Better Joomla Importer

We needed to improve the Joomla importer to convert all our theme packages to ZOO. Now it also imports default category fields as well as custom fields for both articles and categories. You can also import tags and featured articles which are automatically shown on the frontpage.

Joomla importer

Improvements and Fixes

In addition, ZOO 4 comes with some other smaller improvements, cleanup and fixes. For example, the Google Maps element now uses Algolia Places instead of the Google API for geocoding. Outdated web services like AddThis, IntenseDebate, Google+, Mollom and others were removed. We also fixed the permission access, so if you have no permission for an item or element, you cannot see it in the ZOO administration and more. For the full list of features and fixes, check out the changelog.

Demo Packages

The demo websites for the new ZOO apps are built with YOOtheme Pro. To start with a demo website, simply download the corresponding YOOtheme Pro theme package, for example Framerate, and select ZOO Sample Data as the last installation step. Finally, install the ZOO extension, and you're good to go.

Seamless Update

If you are running a site built with ZOO, now is the time to bring it to a whole new level. ZOO 4 deeply integrates YOOtheme Pro and unlocks tons of possibilities for your layouts. You can not only render the ZOO content with the latest UIkit slideshows, sliders and galleries, but also benefit from the full potential of the YOOtheme Pro eco-system. The update works seamlessly with just a click. ZOO 4 is only available with a ZOO subscription. It comes with all its apps, and there is no free version.

Now go ahead and try ZOO 4 yourself! And if you have a spare minute, let us know what you think in the comments below.

Update (19 November)

We have created a dedicated support thread where you can post all your issues and bugs with ZOO 4 (hopefully there aren't any 🤞). And there is also a ZOO wish list so make sure to let us know all your wishes ✨

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