It’s a year since AMP was first introduced: and VIP clients are among the many leading publishers who have embraced the new format. Some have built their own bespoke output templates; but most are using the template which ships with the plugin, either as-is or with modest enhancements.
To mark the anniversary, and reflect the growing visibility of AMP online, we’ve extended the WordPress.com platform’s support for the format. Users now have control over the colors of their AMP output from the AMP Customizer, which can also be extended to support other options. We’ve also added compatibility with some of the newer features added to the AMP spec.
These enhancements required us to make some potentially breaking markup changes.
To protect our clients from unintended consequences, VIP sites hosted on WordPress.com have been set to continue publishing AMP using the original output template.
We will switch all VIPs over to the new template at 1000 Eastern (1400 UTC) on October 25, giving you two weeks to test your customizations, and update if necessary. If you can’t meet this deadline, you can continue to use the old template using this helper function:
if ( function_exists( 'amp_backcompat_use_v03_templates' ) ) { amp_backcompat_use_v03_templates(); }
The old template will remain available within the plugin until the end of the year. If you still prefer to continue using it, you should copy it into your theme and load it using a variant of the backcompat function mentioned earlier.
The open source AMP plugin is also being updated with the new features, including the same changes to the markup of the default template. Clients on VIP Go should test any customizations locally before updating live sites. The same helper function can be used to call the original template if required.
Thanks to our partners at 10up and Alley Interactive for their contributions to the development of the plugin since its launch.
Update (2016-10-26): All VIPs using the default template or without the back-compat function have now been switched over to the new template. If you encounter any issues or need anyone help upgrading, please get in touch.
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