An update on version 4.0.0 – I have finished most of the work on Mega Menus: just some stylesheet changes are pending. I have also finished making a lot of other changes. One key thing to note: the page templates “Single Left Sidebar”, “Single Right Sidebar” etc. are being deprecated in the next version in favour of layouts. This doesn’t impact you in any way, however it provides a new dimension of flexibility. E.g. Currently if you have a page where you want to use a custom template, you cannot assign your custom template plus a different sidebar configuration because a page can only get one template. With the change I am providing, you can assign the custom template and a page layout with a different sidebar configuration. There are lots of other nice changes coming by in 4.0.0.

1. If you tried to save your settings having selected rotating images for your header, you would receive a “Fatal error”. You should be good to go now for this.
2. In the Static Tabbed Sidebar, if you used a custom tab name, that name wouldn’t show. I have taken care of this as well.
3. Another issue I fixed was one with tall site footers getting cropped.
4. There is a cosmetic change in the back-end, where nested pages were not showing up in a nested manner.

Please note that I am busy with release 4.0.0 (the first release in a long time when I will be jumping versions). This release should be ready for the new year. If there are other minor issues discovered in the interim I will release patches leading to their resolution.

You can get the patch from the Google Code page. I have deliberately left the version number at 3.9.4, so that you can update it directly from WP when they approve it there. For instructions on how to install the patch, see the “Having Installation Trouble” section.

1. New Features
   1. I added a new capability to turn off automatic thumbnail generation for a variety of sizes. This was based on requests from some users.
   2. I added support for Google+ and YouTube in the “Follow Me” widget, again, bowing to popular demand. In addition I added an option in that widget to enable the links to open in a new tab/window.
   3. I added support for a good number of WP 3.3 features. So Suffusion is now compatible and optimized with WP 3.3.
2. Changes
1. The docking boxes code has been abstracted to a file called dbx.php in the custom folder. Translation: this is something you can customize in a child theme.
2. Optimization:
1. Continuing my trend with optimization, I have optimized the fetching of post meta information at various places. This reduces the number of queries being run.
2. I have optimized how options are saved and the CSS is generated.
3. I have also fine-tuned how files are included and functions are invoked in the options pages to reduce the load further. Note that I am going all-out on this in the next release and I intend to take this a few steps further.
3. If the drop-down menu was very long, it automatically introduced a vertical scrollbar and displayed empty space at the bottom of a page. This led users to wonder why this was happening. I have made some modifications so that the scrollbar is displayed only if you hover on the menu and the menu is long. Otherwise the page looks nice and compact. Curiously though, this doesn’t work in Chrome and works in IE. Of course, the ever-reliable Firefox does have it working.
4. Removals:
1. As announced about a month back, Custom PHP inclusion is not a part of the theme anymore. You can move your custom PHP to a child theme and have it work seamlessly.
2. I removed a handful of image files from the theme because they are not used. More will be cleaned up in subsequent versions.
3. I also removed the ability to turn off caching dynamic options – it seemed as counterintuitive as this sentence reads right now.
3. Bug Fixes
1. There was a styling issue with font colors in some buttons. Now it should be fine.
2. There was an issue with padding in the “bubble” type of comment displays. I have taken care of it. On a related note there was an issue in Chrome when you selected “Author above comment” type of a comment display, which too has been fixed.
3. In the last version I introduced the capability to “Disable comments on attachments”. There was a bug there, which showed the link to “Add Comments” even if the commenting was disabled. I have fixed this.
4. I also fixed an annoying bug in the Minima skin that was causing the comment reply button to lose its text color.

Hope you like this release. The next release will have some nice premium features (not that Suffusion lacks in premium features at this point) in addition to some more stuff on the optimization front, and will be available in the new year. Hopefully I will be able to push out the next iteration of Photonic by then too.

1. Fixed an issue with floating the wide sidebar – if not floated, this was causing weird sorts of issues such as un-clickable widgets and the like.
2. Fixed a drop-caps behaviour, where not selecting anything for drop caps was causing a JQuery error. I have also switched the drop caps off by default.
3. I have added an option to disable the audio shortcode. This will prevent conflicts with plugins that define the shortcode themselves, and it also serves as the means to prevent the JavaScript file for the Audio Player from loading. You can disable the shortcode from Other Graphical Elements → Post Formats.
4. I have added even more Google fonts to the list available. Additionally I have put in a check to ensure that the CSS is linked only if there is at least one font required from the list. This cuts down one HTTP call.
5. I have added options to display the advanced gallery template and to not randomize the thumbnails on the gallery post format. See Other Graphical Elements → Post Formats.

Hope this fixes all reported issues with the previous release. Apart from adding the new fonts I haven’t tweaked much in this version.

1. Changes
   1. A couple of minor changes to begin with: the Theme Skinning section in the Options page is now called Skinning, Sidebar Configuration is called Sidebars and Back-end Settings is called Back-end.
   2. I also renamed the navigation bars to something more appropriate. The Top Navigation Bar is called Navigation Bar Above Header and the Main Navigation Bar is called Navigation Bar Below Header.
2. New Features
   1. The Photonique Skin
      This is the biggest feature of this release. Photonique is a new skin, well suited for photo-blogging. You have seen the demo in my previous post. Based on some feedback I have also included a “charcoal” skin that you could use. Note that for this skin you have to use a child theme – I haven’t provided an option to pick it from the skinning section.
   2. Typography
      This release features some typographic enhancements:
      1. The section called Body Fonts under Skinning is now called Typography.
      2. The list of web-safe fonts has been augmented with an impressive list of 35+ fonts from Google Web Fonts.
      3. You can now change the fonts for the site header, individual post/page headers etc.
      4. There is also support for drop-caps enabled for the first letter of a paragraph.
   3. Better Post Formats
      I have improved support for the following post formats:
      1. Status
         This will display the author’s Avatar adjacent to the status message.
      2. Audio:
         1. I have bundled support for the WordPress Audio Player plugin. Under certain circumstances this will display a nice audio player consistently across all browsers (instead of relying on a browser plugin).
         2. I have added a new short-code called “audio” that can be passed a URL and will show the audio player. This short-code gets activated only if you don’t have an existing JetPack plugin installation and the WP Audio Player is not explicitly installed.
         3. If you have a post with the Audio post format, Suffusion will scan the post for the “audio” short-code or for audio attachments. The short-code will be shown in its place, but the attachment will be shown in an audio player at the top of the post.
         4. There is no HTML5 support because the theme doesn’t do HTML5 at the moment.
      3. Gallery
         A post with the Gallery post format will be displayed a lot more nicely in archive views such as the front page. The gallery will be displayed with either the featured image for the post or the first photo in the gallery as the leading image. Then there will be a small panel of thumbnails next to it. You can control the thumbnails (sizes and number) from Other Graphical Elements → Post Formats.
   4. New Comment Features 
      Three major changes have come about in the comments:
      1. You can change how the comment forms look. You earlier had form labels adjacent to the input fields. Now you can also have the form labels inside the input fields. See Back-end → Comment Settings → Comment Form Label Styles.
      2. You can also change how your comments are displayed. Earlier you had the comment author’s Avatar and information displayed in the same box as the comment. Now you can give more of a “speech bubble” effect. See Back-end → Comment Settings → Comment Styles.
      3. You can also disable commenting on attachments such as images. Go to Templates → Attachments, then disable comments where you don’t want them. Comments will still be enabled on the back-end and this option simply serves to disable the comment form (WP itself doesn’t offer any other way to disable comments for attachments).
   5. New Icon Sets
      The following are new:
      1. I have bundled the icons generously offered by StudioPress into a few new icon sets. You can pick the one you want from Skinning → Icon Sets.
      2. I have also provided two variants of another icon set with post format icons. However this is not integrated into the theme UI yet.
   6. Navigation Bar Positioning
      1. The Navigation Bar Below Header can now be positioned at the left, center or the right. See Other Graphical Elements → Navigation Bar Below Header.
      2. The Navigation Bar Above Header can now be positioned at the center (you were able to position it to the left or right earlier). See Other Graphical Elements → Navigation Bar Above Header.
   7. New Byline Style
      You can now display the byline as a single line above your post or below your post. A byline displayed thus is centered.
   8. Framework Features
      1. Posts with no title will get a no-title class assigned to them.
      2. A new skin-specific setup hook has been added, suffusion_skin_setup_{$skin_name}.
   9. Other Cosmetic Additions
      1. The Mosaic Layout has been made much better looking. In addition I have bundled Fancybox and/or Colorbox support for the Mosaic layout to get a preview before opening the posts.
      2. For image attachments I have made the EXIF display a lot more appealing. There is now a small button that you click to toggle EXIF.
      3. I have introduced the capability to center featured image in the slider or to bump up its size in case of small images to fit the slider display.
3. Bug Fixes
   The following bugs have been fixed:
   1. In a very rare combination of settings the Navigation Bar Below Header was floating to the left.
   2. Navigation bar borders were not getting overridden by the skinning options.
   3. Date box skinning was not working.
   4. There was a small bug with the post_class filter – it was not assigning the “full-content” and “excerpt” classes correctly.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that you will enjoy this release. I definitely had fun coding it! I have never made a secret of the fact that UI designing is my weak point. Hopefully Photonique will be a skin that acts as a turning point.

Note that there are some corner cases with menu displays that don’t show up correctly at this point. I am working on a fix for those at the moment.

1. Bug Fixes
   1. There was a bug in the “highlighting” feature of the navigation menus. That should be gone now.
   2. There was a bug in the breadcrumb functionality for pages, where if the user asked to remove the breadcrumb, it still stayed. This should work now.
2. New Features
   1. The “post” class now will tell you if you are looking at an excerpt or a full content post.
   2. As promised earlier, I have started expanding support for post formats:
      1. I have added specific support for the “Chat” post format. This takes an IRC-style chat log and formats it nicely.
      2. Post format files can be added via a child theme to a directory called post-formats. You can create a file called content-image.php, for example, to support the Image post format … or you can wait for me to add support for all the types.
      3. I have also added icon placeholders for post formats. Very soon I will release a new skin that has the icons integrated.
   3. I have also added the skin name as a part of the body class.
   4. Most of the sidebars have their own files now. E.g. A file called sidebar-above-footer.php stands for the Widget Area Above Footer.
3. Changes
   1. All BuddyPress CSS has been culled from the theme. If you are a BP user, the last release of the Suffusion BP Pack should be adequately geared for this release.
   2. I have made some more improvements to the speed. The improvements are smaller compared to the previous release, though:
      1. I have split out the CSS generator class into two smaller files. I have also ensured that the files are loaded only when necessary.
      2. Suffusion had the funky capability to dynamically retrieve the theme version. This was a somewhat heavy action, so I got rid of that. I will figure out a way to bring this back in.
      3. I have streamlined some of the admin code even further by separating the JavaScript from the PHP.
      4. I have done some more code rearrangement and deletion of redundant functions to streamline things.

Most of the errors that came up in the intermittent versions (3.8.4 to 3.8.8) were thanks to my zealous optimization overdrive. So I have decided that for now I will keep optimization efforts slightly low until I change my mind, and instead focus on look-and-feel for the next couple of versions. In 3.8.3 and in this release I have taken off several computation intensive items from the theme, so memory issues shouldn’t bother you much.

This version was approved early last week, however it only went live this morning, 6 days after approval. In the meanwhile I have been working away at version 3.9.0. That is going to be a nice release with, finally, a new skin and some pretty cool look and feel improvements.

1. New Features
   1. Enhanced Breadcrumbs:
      After a slew of questions from lots of users regarding breadcrumb display, I went ahead and built some powerful breadcrumb functionality. If you have “Yoast Breadcrumbs” or “Breadcrumb Trail” your breadcrumbs will not be affected, but otherwise you can use Suffusion’s breadcrumbs. The breadcrumbs can be displayed on single posts, custom posts, archives (categories, date archives tags etc) and is fairly intuitive. They are not activated by default and can be switched on from Other Graphical Settings → Breadcrumbs and Page Navigation.
   2. Support for Native Custom Backgrounds:
      At the time of releasing 3.8.2 the feedback given to me was that I should use WP’s native Custom Background functionality. So I have gone ahead and provided that. If you define something in under Appearance → Background, it will override the settings within Suffusion.
   3. New Options:
      1. You can disable Featured Content on second/third etc pages from an archive view. In other words, only the first page of your category/tag etc will show the featured content. Toggle the option at Other Graphical Settings → Featured Content → Where to Show → First page / all pages.
      2. Along similar lines you can disable full content posts on second/third etc pages of a tiled/list/mosaic layout. Toggle this at Other Graphical Settings → Layout: Excerpt / List / Tile / Mosaic / Full → Full content posts on first page / all pages (for selections above).
      3. Quite surprisingly a feature that has existed since a long time was requested to be taken off recently, twice. Suffusion automatically adjusts images in their original aspect ratio. But some users didn’t want that. You can now disable the aspect ratio fix from Other Graphical Settings → Miscellaneous → Image Aspect Ratio.
      4. Another pilloried feature was the “Allowed HTML Tags” message that shows up at the bottom of the comment form. Several users don’t like it. So you can now remove it from Back-end Settings → Comment Settings.
      5. Suffusion’s Export/Import functionality used to operate only on non-id fields. With this release you can now have two kinds of exports: one that doesn’t export id-based options (useful if you have multiple active sites and just want the same look on them) and another that exports all options (useful if you are moving from DEV to PROD).
      6. You can now control whether the previous / next post should be restricted to the current category. You can also control whether you want the links above the content, below the content, in both places or not at all. See Other Graphical Settings → Breadcrumbs and Page Navigation → Previous / Next Posts.
2. Bug Fixes
   The following bugs have been taken care of:
   1. There was a problem with Minima, where the display of Asides and some other Post Formats was getting hammered with multiple pullouts.
   2. If the last item in a post was a floated image, things after it were not being cleared properly.
   3. Nested list items in comments were not getting styled properly.
   4. In the “Featured Posts” widget the “Previous” and “Next” buttons were only showing if the slider index was activated.
   5. In the “Query Posts” widget the posts were not displaying in a random order if requested.
   6. If you assigned a “No Sidebars” layout to a single post it was not getting picked up.
   7. The Magazine template and the tile layout were getting incorrect widths for their excerpts if the number of sidebars they had was not the default.
   8. Due to an improper use of CSS in the comment form, labels from other plugins were getting formatted incorrectly.
   9. The image thumbnail functionality wasn’t behaving well in case the image title had special characters.
   10. In the “Static Tabbed Sidebar” if you attempted to put in a “Links” tab, it wasn’t possible to change its title.
   11. The Twitter widget was failing XHTML validation due to its JavaScript.
   12. Post thumbnails in IE were getting “squashed”.
3. Code Housekeeping
   There was a major level of code housekeeping in this release:
   1. Framework Files
      For ease of use and modification I have broken out various oft changed pieces of code in Suffusion to their own files. All these files are in a folder called “custom”. If you want to modify any of them, simply create a folder called “custom” in your child theme, then copy the file from Suffusion that you want to change and proceed with making the changes. Easy. I will post an article in a few days showing how you can use these files. The following files have been created in Suffusion’s “custom” folder:
      1. byline-tile.php: Handles the byline display for the magazine layout and the tile layout.
      2. pagination-mosaic.php, pagination-comments.php and pagination-posts.php: Handle the display for pagination of the Mosaic layout, comments and posts.
      3. seo.php: Obviously, handles SEO aspects.
      4. pullout.php and pullout-page.php: Manage the display of “pullout” style bylines for posts and pages respectively.
      5. navigation.php: Contains the Navigation Menu code.
      6. post-header.php and post-footer.php: Respectively contain the elements to be displayed before and after the post content.
      7. breadcrumb-page.php and breadcrumb.php: Respectively contain the breadcrumb logic for pages and everything else.
      8. prev-next.php: Handles the previous and next page display.
      9. site-footer.php: Displays the credit at the bottom of your site.
   2. Load Optimization
      1. Core Load Optimization
         1. I optimized several aspects of the application load. The back-end, you will notice, has become sprightly. On the front-end by separating things into several files I only load files when absolutely necessary, making things a lot faster. I will fine-tune things further in subsequent releases.
         2. In addition to the framework-type files, I have also separated the functions that deal with BP compatibility into a separate file. This will not affect BP users, but will speed things up for non-BP users.
         3. I have for now disabled the “Version Checker”. I noticed that for some people this was causing memory issues, hence this action.
         4. I have removed a lot of redundant functions from the code, combined functions where possible etc.
         5. I have also removed the “FAQ” section of the Admin panel – the section had really old information and though Colin provided suggestions on how to make it better, maintaining that was simply too much of an overhead.
      2. Query Optimization
         In several cases I have fine-tuned the queries being executed in the database. The biggest example is the navigation bar, where I have drastically reduced the number. The net result is that the number of database queries being executed is very similar to several themes that are loaded with a lot less functionality.
      3. Script Optimization
         1. I performed major CSS optimization. Firstly I separated the BP-specific CSS to its own file. This will speed up things for non-BP users and will not affect BP users with a caching plugin.
         2. I also heavily optimized the CSS code for the navigation menus, taking out several lines of code.
         3. I combined some JS files to save server round-trips.
         4. Lastly I introduced sprites where possible. Note that things like body backgrounds, list bullets etc cannot be handled using sprites without errors, so you will still see non-sprite images.
4. Changed Features
   1. Tables now occupy 100% of the width by default, in both, main content as well as comments.
   2. The login template bundled with the theme now redirects to the home page instead of the WP installation page upon successful login.
   3. Earlier there used to be an incompatibility between Suffusion and SEO plugins in terms of the use of wp_title. This has been addressed – whether or not you use Suffusion’s SEO, wp_title is the call that will always be used.
   4. Text is now left-aligned by default, instead of being justified.

Hope you like this release.

Now, back to Photonic, some other plugins and some theme skins.

1. New Features
   1. New Widgets
      There are two new widgets and one revamped widget:
      1. Child Pages
         This might make some people happy. The Child Pages widget, if activated, can show you the child pages for the current page. Think of a use case where you are writing a book via WP. You could make a section of the book a parent page, then all the chapters in there child pages. If you have this widget activated, you will see the links to the chapters in the widget. Obviously, if you go to a different parent page you will see the child pages of that. What’s more – if your page has no child pages, or if you are viewing a post archive or a single post, the widget is automatically turned off. Of course, there is an option to turn it back on, but I don’t see a reason to use it. The title of this widget supports short-codes, so you can use one to dynamically control what is displayed.
      2. Query Users
         WordPress site owners with multiple users, rejoice! The Query Users widget can display all users of your blog by authentication level (Contributor, Editor etc). You can also choose to display the description for the user or simply display the Avatar. With certain tweaks you can make it behave like an “About Me” widget, wherein your Avatar is displayed along with your description and the number of posts you have written. The users displayed can be linked to either their regular WP Author pages or to the BP Profile pages (if you have BuddyPress installed).
      3. Query Posts
         This is really the old Category Posts widget. I have added capabilities such as filtering by tags, ordering by title, comments etc. With appropriate configurations you can make this behave like a “Recent Posts” widget or a “Popular Posts” widget. The advantage this offers is that it is capable of displaying thumbnails for your posts. I would have ideally liked to include a few more choices like displaying specific archives, or displaying the child posts for the current view, but those are for a later release.
   2. I have added support for manual excerpts in pages. This was just a simple one line addition – I should have thought of it long back.
   3. Another feature added is more framework-like. In case you are building a child theme of Suffusion, you can add an “Announcements Feed” to your style.css file and that can show up on installations of your child theme with a “New Version available” message, like the one you see in Suffusion’s option panel currently.
2. Bug Fixes
   1. There was a small bug in the Featured Posts excerpt, which was not honouring the word limit defined in the options. Thanks to Justin Klein for the report and the fix.
   2. There has been a long-standing bug for IE8 that prevented native WP thumbnails from displaying. Hopefully this release fixes it.
   3. In a fix for IE7 while using the “No Sidebars” template I broke some functionality, wherein a page without comments would collapse in width. This has now been fixed.
3. Code Housekeeping
   1. Again thanks to Justin Klein there has been an optimization in terms of database entry storing. Earlier, if posts were using the default template, an entry used to be saved in the database. I have modified the code so that “default” is not stored any longer.
   2. A ghost file called “mosaic.php” had been left in the theme in the last two releases. I have removed it.
   3. I have also switched to using WordPress’ native “contextual help” for the admin panels. What does this mean? When you view any options page in Suffusion, you will see a small link saying “Help” in the top right, near “Screen Options”. I have moved the help texts to that section instead of having the “?” icon near the options page headings. This has entailed removal of “jquery-dialog” from the back-end, hence one fewer JS file to load.
   4. I have cleaned up some miscellaneous comments and redundant code in the admin files.
4. I have updated the translation file. Translators, please fire away.

The next few weeks I will focus on a plugin called Photonic. It is the photo-blogging plugin that I had promised.

Cheers.