Suffusion Version 3.5.4

I submitted version 3.5.4 on Sunday, before flying out to the UK. I see that WordPress has still not approved it, so I await the release patiently. This was a big release in terms of the number of fixes and enhancements, so without much ado here is the list:

1. Optimization
   I did some optimization on multiple fronts:
   1. I introduced a new section under Blog Features called Site Optimization. Most optimization activities have been moved or added there.
   2. I have merged the contents of bgiframe.js with suffusion.js. This is to reduce the overall number of HTTP requests
   3. I have merged the contents of dbx.css with style.css, again, to reduce the overall number of HTTP requests.
   4. You now have options to choose GZip and minification at various levels. Mind you, different plugins can achieve this at various levels for you. In general the capability built into the theme is competent, but not all-encompassing. If you are using a plugin and are happy with it, by all means stick with it. But if you are not using a plugin or don’t want to use one or you don’t have , feel free to give this a shot. From what I have found out this does improve performance on Google Page Speed and on Yahoo YSlow. Feel free to disable the optimization if it doesn’t work well for you:
      1. You can GZip and / or minify the theme’s CSS files from the Blog Features → Site Optimization menu
      2. You can GZip the internal WordPress JavaScript files (like JQuery). Note that these files are already minified, so you don’t have to do anything on that front. Also note that the GZip process doesn’t apply to Suffusion’s JS files (like the JQuery Cycle script for featured content). This is due to a shortcoming in tying together WP’s inbuilt function wp_enqueue_script with the GZip capability. Plugins can still do this for you.
      3. You can also GZip your main content, all from the same Site Optimization section.
2. WP 3.0 Retro-fixes
   WordPress changed a few things between its last RC version and the final release version. I took care of those in this release:
   1. WP renamed the support type for navigation menus from nav-menus to menus. Because of this the navigation menus seemed to not be working in version 3.5.3 with WP 3.0, while they worked for WP 3.0 RC and Beta versions.
   2. WP also renamed the function is_post_type to post_type_exists. This was causing custom taxonomies to not be associated with custom types in version 3.5.3 (again, this was working for the RC and Beta versions). I have addressed this too.
3. More WP 3.0 Support
   I have added an option to “flatten” the navigation menus of WP 3.0 in the Navigation menus. Using this setting you will no longer see the menu names in the navigation bar. I have also included WP’s standard code to include feed URLs (this is internal and shouldn’t make a difference to you as a user).
4. New Widget Areas
   I added two new widget areas: Sidebar 1 (Bottom) and Sidebar 2 (Bottom). These are respectively positioned below Sidebar 1 and Sidebar 2 and will be on the same side as the main sidebars. You can style these sidebars individually, so effectively you can have two sets of tabbed sidebars in the same column.
   As an aside the total number of widget areas in Suffusion is currently 10.
5. New Action Hooks and Filter Hooks
   A lot of new hooks were added, both as action hooks and filter hooks. You can use these hooks to put in some fancy stuff either through the custom PHP method or through the child theme method. Here are the hooks:
   1. Action Hooks
      These have been added with respect to the sidebars. You can use these to put in some custom markup above your sidebars or between the sidebars or below them.
      1. suffusion_before_first_sidebar
      2. suffusion_between_first_sidebars
      3. suffusion_after_first_sidebar
      4. suffusion_before_second_sidebar
      5. suffusion_between_second_sidebars
      6. suffusion_after_second_sidebar
   2. Filter Hooks
      One filter hook has been added:
      1. suffusion_get_post_title_and_link – You can use this hook to append or prefix the post title with some other text. E.g. You can, as one user requested on the forum, have your own image before the post title, or as another user requested, put in a date in the list layout view. Currently the tile layout doesn’t have this hook, but it will have it in version 3.5.5.
6. Miscellaneous Changes
   I fixed a small bug brought about by my use of the post_class function. This was causing attachment views to show up unstyled. Now they will get the post class. Another bug I fixed was related to the “Page of Posts” template. For some users this seemed to be ignoring the “Display All Posts” I also made minor modifications to the different layout files by adding global variables that indicate what kind of layout you are using – blog, tile or list. Again, this kind of a change doesn’t impact you, but it is useful if you are going to write your own templates. The last change I made was the addition of an option to disable the use of the body_class internal WP function, because apparently PHP 5.2 has some issues with it. Frankly, this wasn’t my problem to solve, but then again, such things have never prevented users from asking me to resolve their issues.

Now for the next release. I can say for sure about two new features in 3.5.5. One is a couple more widget areas (a lot of people have been asking for widget areas in the header). Another is the use of TimThumb with WP-MS, something that has been in my To-do bucket ever since I released BP support for the theme. As for more features, I need to see what I can fit in my timeline.

While it has been humorously suggested that I am a machine, and while a lot of users on the support forums make demands from me seriously assuming I am a machine I have to remind you what I mentioned at the start of the post: I am in London this week, hence my response times and development speed will be off. Also note that I am not in charge of approvals at WP, so please don’t keep posting questions asking when version 3.5.4 will be available – I have no visibility into that.