Steven Zahm@ Elin
re: When we got the offer of renewing our license, we were not aware that the Slim template was/was about to be retired.
Even though Slim is retired it will be supported as long as there are active support licenses. This includes licenses that have been renewed, like yours. No new additional licenses are going to be sold. As for support, if any bugs are found, I’ll release updates to address them.
re: Now it does not work as it used to, for example there is no “customize” button for the template
Slim does not support the Template Customizer feature and will not be updated to support it. It will only receive bug fix updates. So, that said, since it never supported this feature there now way that is could have worked prior. Infact, Slim Plus has yet received its update to support the Template Customizer.
re: we can’t change labels (the ones we added before are still there
All the options that Slim supported are still available to you, nothing has been removed. You can refer to the Slim Plus documentation as much of it still applies to Slim. The options that it does not support are primarily those for categories, search and pagination.
To change the labels, here’s the FAQ to help you out.
re: have I missed something or do we need to buy the Slim Plus template to be able to do the customization that we want to?
Other than the label, what customization? Both Slim and Slim Plus were exactly the same with the exception that Slim Plus support category filtering, search and pagination. If you want those features, then yes, you’ll need to upgrade. If you do want to upgrade from Slim to Slim Plus you can do so from your purchase history. Click the Licenses tab and click the View Upgrades link. From there you can upgrade to Slim Plus paying only the difference.
Hope that helps, let me know.