Suffusion Version 4.2.0

Okay, so now I can finally check the HTML5 box off Suffusion’s checklist. Version 4.2.0 was approved earlier today and it has the following changes:

  1. New Features:
    1. HTML5 and Semantic markup

      I have converted Suffusion from being an XHTML transitional theme to an HTML5 theme. Often when theme developers say their theme is HTML5 compatible, they mean that their theme uses <!DOCTYPE html>. Suffusion does that of course, and also gives you nice semantic markup out of the box. If you are wondering what semantic markup means, I explained the term and the attendant changes in a post in March. If you go through that post, you can see the list of markup element changes as well.

      If you have Custom Styles, make sure you are using the new selectors for them, as per the linked post above.

    2. Extensive Support for Custom Post Types
      I have done two things on this front:
      1. Provided a new page template called “Custom Post Type Archive”: When you create a page, you can assign this template to the page and save this page as a draft. Upon saving you will see a new tab in the Additional Options for Suffusion titled Custom Post Type Archive. In this tab you can pick things such as which post type you want to show, what kind of layout you want for it (Full posts, Excerpts, Tiles, Mosaic or List), what taxonomies you want to show for it, where you want the bylines displayed, etc.
      2. Provided a new set of options under Suffusion Options → Custom Types → Layouts: This is for the single post displays for Custom Post Types.
    3. New Action Hooks
      The following new action hooks have been added:
      1. suffusion_before_post – Executed before every post. This takes 3 parameters: the post id, the layout (blog, tile or mosaic) and the current post index.
      2. suffusion_after_post – Executed after every post. This takes 3 parameters: the post id, the layout (blog, tile or mosaic) and the current post index.
  2. Changed Features
    1. I changed the tile layout / magazine layout / custom layout from a JavaScript-based layout to a CSS3-based layout. This should make sure that the tile spacing is more accurate. Of course, there is IE, which doesn’t support the requisite CSS attributes. For them the JS-based former approach should be used.
    2. I have upgraded the embedded JQuery Masonry script to the latest version.
    3. I have also optimized some of the JS and CSS within the theme appropriately.
  3. Bug Fixes
    Since I released a bunch of patches over the past few weeks, there is only one fix, which is for the bug with respect to duplicate content from the Featured Content section showing up in the posts below.

There are a couple of minor niggles, neither of which is a bug. These come down mostly to my extreme level of exhaustion last week:

  1. I forgot to update the version number that shows up in the back-end. It still shows up as “4.1.5.b4”, while it should be “4.2.0”. This doesn’t affect any behaviour, mind you. It is just something that I missed changing.
  2. I also forgot to update the PO file for translation. Again, the main impact is in the back-end translations and it will not affect your site’s visitors.

A big thank you to the beta testers for this version, Mark et al!

29 Responses to “Suffusion Version 4.2.0”

  1. Ow Yoo! This is finally arrived! I was waiting for it. 🙂 Many Many thanks to you,

  2. Hi Sayontan,

    Suffusion’s brilliance continues. And another $50 from me should be landing in your account as thanks from me, and with hope it starts to offset some of your exhaustion!

    I’m challenging others out there too: if Suffusion (and its stellar support and constant upgrading) makes your life easier, give it its due value: make a donation using the coffee cup in the sidebar!

    Cheers,
    Minty

    • Thanks a lot, Minty!

      PS: The general consensus amongst fans (not fanatics) is that Tendulkar will suck as a parliamentarian.

  3. What Minty said – wish I could give more, but at least have a nice lunch on me!

    • Nice one, TonyT!

      I’ve upgraded a couple of sites to 4.2, and let me say: it pays to read the March post mentioned above! I found this bit especially helpful in restoring some custom css tweaks that stopped working:

      From what I have observed on the forums, div.suf-widget, div.suf-horizontal-widget, div.suf-flat-widget, div.post and div.page seem to be common usages. These will need to be modified to either aside.suf-widget, aside.suf-horizontal-widget, aside.suf-flat-widget, article.post and article.page respectively or to .suf-widget, .suf-horizontal-widget, .suf-flat-widget and .post (you will still need to qualify .page with article, because otherwise .page might refer to the body element as well).”

      Otherwise, all smooth sailing, and looking forward to ongoing browser HTML5 adoption!

    • Thanks, Tony!

  4. Couldn’t participate in beta testing, as I had hoped, but great stuff. Thanks Sayontan.

  5. […] Blog auf Version 3.3.2 geupdated, und das Suffusion-Theme (das unseren Blog gerade bunt macht) auf Version 4.2.0. Hat alles geklappt, betrifft den geneigten Blogleser jedoch weniger; aber wenn ihr Dienstag […]

  6. Thank you for tremendous work, you guys make my life easier.. Two thumbs up!

  7. I’m new to WP and just discovered Suffusion. I was testing out atahualpa but found it too rigid. I do love the options you give but it does take a bit of trial and error to figure out how it all works. Juts got 4.2.0 also as I downloaded on 7th May.

    I’ve got my header working how I want it now. Took a bit of effort as I wanted to have my Google Custom Search right aligned with the bottom of my logo in the header and there wasn’t an option for that. It was always stuck at the top. But I got there eventually without any coding!!

    I have two questions.
    Firstly, do the changes applied to 4.2 with regard tot eh Custom Post Types replace the requirement for your Custom Post Types Plugin? I’m guessing so but not sure.

    Secondly, even with the new custom posts. I still can’t get a simple Archive Page with all the posts arranged in date order and grouped by month. Actually, the atahualpa theme has a nice way to create an archive page with two sections, Archives by Month and Archives by Category. By Month is really what I’m after. Is there a way to do this?

    Many thanks

    • Firstly, do the changes applied to 4.2 with regard tot eh Custom Post Types replace the requirement for your Custom Post Types Plugin? I’m guessing so but not sure.

      They are unrelated. The CPT support applies irrespective of which CPT plugin you are using. Suffusion will not help you define a CPT, but it will let you display a CPT archive any way that you please – tiles, titles only, mosaic, mix of full posts and any other layout etc.

      Secondly, even with the new custom posts. I still can’t get a simple Archive Page with all the posts arranged in date order and grouped by month. Actually, the atahualpa theme has a nice way to create an archive page with two sections, Archives by Month and Archives by Category. By Month is really what I’m after. Is there a way to do this?

      Not exactly sure what you are looking for, or how you are trying to relate CPTs to categories. Suffusion offers a Sitemap template, wherein you can pick what you want to display (settings under Suffusion Options → Templates → Sitemap). It displays only regular posts though.

  8. Hello Sayontan first of all thank you so much for such a great theme. Your work is incredible and I really appreciate it. I tried to log into the forum to report this but for some reason my account keeps kicking me out and not allowing me to log in to report. So I am going to post the comment. I am not sure if it is me or not but this version of suffusion says that it is Suffusion – 4.1.5.b4. This is just a cosmetic insignificant issue or is it meant to say this. Sorry for reporting this here.

    Once again thank you kindly for such a great theme.

    Kind regards

  9. Sorry please disregard my last comment. I did not read what you typed here and see that you were aware of displaying the wrong version.

    sorry

  10. Updated, tested. Brilliant. Period.
    Thanks for all the work you’re putting in.

    //Jan

  11. thanks for this great update. I wonder if I can remove the rounded edge border of post, mosaic, sidebar,etc. but not the edge of the blog itself without codding?
    thanks

    • I modded the dark_style.css by replaced the:
      border: 1px solid #555
      to:
      border: 1px solid #000

      but it could be really cool to add this in future release…
      thanks

  12. I am a fairly new blogger, and I initially installed a different theme. MISTAKE! I installed this one 2 days ago and have almost deleted all my plugins and revamped what took me 30 days to do with another theme in just 48 hours (well, I did sleep some). I am still learning my way around, and with all these options, it could take me a while to realize its full potential. Things I was manually “messing with” the css code and such on the old theme come as just a push of a button! I can’t thank you enough for such an easy and utterly amazing theme!

  13. I activated your theme v4.2 yesterday on wordpress and have been unable to get aspects of my forum to function properly.

    1st the “create new topic” tab is not appearing and as such can not be accessed
    2nd when I try to upload images anywhere ie: for background or in portfolio all that shows is the place marker the image itself is not uploaded.

    I really like the extensive customization of the theme and respect all the work you have done. This will be my theme of choice when I go live if I can work out these issues.

    thank you

  14. How thrilling, exciting, and yet terrifying. I’ve made so many alterations, primarily CSS, afraid it will break the site.
    Any suggestions?
    Embarrassing mess of code, but here’s the site — http://92zew.net

    thanks again for all your wonderful work and teaching a newbie a thing or two.

    PS, That little slide-open content thing you have on attached picture info is something I’ve been seeking for a while to use for sidebar widgets and other things. Will there be a way to incorporate that in soon?

  15. […] sitio web utiliza la versión 4.2.0 del tema Suffusion, traducido al español. La traducción es la misma que he elaborado para la […]

  16. Hi,
    I am still working on getting the hang of working with the 7 million options right now, I think 🙂 I am getting ready on getting my hands o working with the CSS now. Best theme ever for WordPress!

  17. Hi, I modded the function.php file to support native jquery thickbox in suffsion, let me know if there is a better way to do it?

    here my mod:

    function suffusion_setup_standard_actions_and_filters() {
    	add_action('init', 'suffusion_register_jquery');
    	add_action('init', 'suffusion_register_custom_types');
    	add_action('init', 'suffusion_register_menus');
    
    	add_action('init','add_thickbox_native');
    ...
    

    and after, my init function:

    function add_thickbox_native(){
        if(!is_admin()){
        wp_enqueue_script('thickbox',null,array('jquery'));
        wp_enqueue_style('thickbox.css', '/'.WPINC.'/js/thickbox/thickbox.css', null, '1.0');
        }
    }
    

    Usage:
    add class="thickbox" in image link

    • ok finally I done a WP Plugin, here the source:

      so let me know how do a better integration in suffusion? and why I need to activate it with this code. is there a preference in the hundred suffusion settings 🙂 ?
      thanks

      • code not showed, here it is again:

        • None of your code is showing, but you can use the Custom JavaScript fields under Back-end → Custom Includes. If you want to preserve enqueueing dependency with plugins etc (that depend on thickbox) then this will not work. Regardless, your approach is not recommended. You can add the code to enqueue via a child theme.

          • ok thank you. Finally, my plugin is the best solution and it doesn’t alter your code.
            Regards

  18. I’m having trouble using this theme with a plugin called user manager access plug in, which I think should be import a word press anyway. Is it because of the new HTML5. One of the biggest changes in that new HTML so I could possibly edit the plugin. Or ask the career to update it