It has been brought to my attention that an old problem with corrupted download files from the WP site has cropped up again. If you are seeing a message saying that the “Theme is broken” or if you get a “white screen of death” upon activating the theme, follow the instructions here.
Version 3.6.5 of Suffusion went live today. Actually first 3.6.4 went live, then some users pointed out a rather serious flaw, then I immediately patched it. The theme approvers, who have really improved their approval process a few notches up approved it rather quickly too. The following are a part of this release:
- New Features:
One of the key focus areas of this release was server load reduction. The overall list of additions is as follows:- There is an option to not include the generated CSS code in your page header. Instead the CSS gets written to a file and that file is linked in the page. This is good news for SEO. The bad news is that it needs some tweaks and some trial and error to get to work properly, like changing of the .htaccess file, or making use of Suffusion’s internal compression techniques etc. You can try enabling the option from Blog Features → Site Optimization → Auto-generate CSS file for customization options.
- In addition now all the options can be cached in the database. Earlier I was storing only the saved options in the database and leaving aside the default options. The downside of the older approach was that as my options page got massive, the memory footprint of the front-end pages started increasing. This will reduce memory footprint by at least 2MB – a significant reduction. You can control the settings here: Blog Features → Site Optimization → Cache dynamic options.
- Judging by the massive outrage on the support forum due to a change in the featured content behavior, I have added an option to let you include duplicate content from the featured content section on your main page as well. Control the settings from Blog Features → Featured Content.
- I have added options to include posts by post id or by tag in the featured content. Control the settings from Blog Features → Featured Content.
- I have also enhanced the Search results page to show the search term at the top. Additionally now there is a search form included on the search results page, along with an ability to highlight the matches.
- A user on the WP forum pointed out that if your posts were in multiple pages (in an archive view), subsequent pages didn’t show the page number in the title. I have addressed this. The page number is now appended to the title if you are on the second page or higher. Additionally the blog sub-title is a part of the page title on the home page or on the front page.
- I have added “nonce” checks to the admin pages to ensure better security.
- There is a new Turkish translation, thanks to Metin Selçuk.
- Bug Fixes:
- If you were using Suffusion’s inbuilt compression techniques, the page would fail XHTML validation. I thought that I had fixed it last time, however that was not the case. It is now truly fixed, I hope!
- In case of archive views with no posts (e.g. nothing found in the search results page) there was no content displayed. This has been fixed.
- While working at a furious pace to support some of the review criteria at WP I had broken backwards compatibility for menus. If you were on a WP version older than 2.9 you would have seen a fatal error. I have rectified this. Of all the bugs I have had to fix, I am sorry about this one most, because I am normally very good with backwards compatibility.
- There was another backwards-compatibility issue, but this time with PHP. There was a call to
memory_get_usage, which is not available in really old versions of PHP (< 4.3.2) and is available with partial support in other versions of PHP. I have fixed this too. - I have fixed a bug that was preventing child theme CSS from loading correctly. Note that if you have Suffusion’s GZIP compression disabled, child themes need to have all stylesheets explicitly invoked. In other words, not only the base style.css, but all the skin-specific CSS files have to be added.
- There was a bug introduced in the comments section, where a CSS element was being declared twice. I have fixed this issue.
- Changes:
- Again, there are minor stylesheet tweaks to the Minima skin
- As a part of some code housekeeping I have enqueued the stylesheets for the admin pages.
- I have also replaced the call to
get_bloginfo('name')in the header withget_bloginfo('name', 'display')so that plugins that apply filters to the blog title work in tandem with the theme. - I have restyled the
blockquoteelement so that it looks a bit better. - There are updates to the German (Du and Sie), Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Polish and French translations. Thanks, translators!
On a side note, I have closed the “Feature Requests” section of the support forum. As the theme grows in complexity and popularity, the support forum has been swirling out of control and I had to draw the line somewhere. Since the Feature Requests section saw a lot of traffic and a lot of requests for features that I simply am not in a position to provide, I have closed off that section of the forum.
Mate, I updated and it broke…
I tried to re install it, didnt work because the folder already exist.
I removed it, tried to download it again and it worked.
Once i activate, I go to Themes and it shows “The active theme is broken. Reverting to the default theme.”.
Please assist.
See here: http://code.google.com/p/suffusion/
I am at work and couldn’t use FTP here.
So I waited for a while and then deleted the folder again (through Plesk)
Just now tried to install it again and now it works.
Luckily the settings are still there!
Because I deleted the folder, I am curious… where are these settings stored?
All settings are stored in the database, which is why I strongly advise people against editing theme files – putting things in the database keeps you safe even when you upgrade.
Perfect! I don’t really edit my files since I use this theme. Which is so much better.
Thanks.
Great theme Sayontan.
A suggestion: A new section in the Forum where theme users can ‘show off their stuff’. Where users can provide links to their sites so others can see what is possible to do with the theme and get ideas. A sort of exchange of ideas for those that are pleased to offer them. I would like to see what others have done with this versatile theme.
Thanks!
There is a Showcase on this site itself.
Hey! I upgraded today, and it broke and all that jazz, However, once I got it working again, the Navigation Bar disappeared! What do I do? Totally screwing me up. My site is still in BETA so its nothing major, but I need to figure it out soon. Thanks.
Love the Suffusion, just with there were more color schemes, or an easier way of modifying them.
Check your navigation bar settings and save them again. If you are using WP 3.0 menus re-save the menu. Please use the support forum for other queries – I will not respond to them here.
good job, thanks
Thanks, Abe. Can you take a look at the Chinese translation? With 3.6.5 there are some new strings that have to be translated.
Awesome work as always Sayontan – thanks for one of the best WordPress themes ever!
Thanks, Ted.
Sayontan: amazing work you have made, but one problem i have, with the excerpt mode on the Front-Page, the default 55 words break works fine, after 55 comes the “read more” text, but when i use to make a break, then the break works, too, but without the “read more” link, any way for me to fix that?
Looks great as always, but you made a comment that you “d.I have restyled the blockquote element so that it looks a bit better.”
Is this why the large quote mark is showing up now? Honestly I don’t like it. I use blockquotes to set items apart, could be quoted items, could be sidebars, could be ad text, etc and I am looking for away to either remove that quote mark as it was before or am open to other options you might suggest.
Thanks again for the best looking theme out there.
As they say, “Tough luck!” You can get back the old style of blockquotes following the instructions here: https://aquoid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2617#p11772. For subsequent queries please post them on the forum.
Awww, I liked the old blockquote style better. I notice it’s similar in style to the photo captions (which are awesome, by the way). I’m new to WP and .css tinkering but I’m learning how to do child themes and maybe I can reinstate the old blockquotes that way…?
Please see this: https://aquoid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2617#p11772. Please post subsequent queries on the forum.
Thank you so much for your work with Suffusion — it’s awesome (if I can only use one word, that’d be it :-))!
One suggestion.. since your theme has so many options that control a big portion of a site, or can be made to alter the function of so many parts of a site, I’d like to see some sort of tool/option/filter to allow for flexible sidebar content. In other words, I’d like to enable/disable a given sidebar or widget when a given post, page, category, or is displayed.
One more .. the fact that we get quite a few default skins to choose from, including your new “lightweight”, is very nice. I would, however, like to see some more “lightweight” (i.e. “non-boxed”) skins.
Whenever you feel up to it! 🙂
Thanks, Joaquim.
You can use the Widget Logic pluton for your first request. That does a pretty good job of filtering sidebar content. I do have other skins planned, but skin design takes up a lot of time. Moreover the true way that Minima differs from the other skins is that it uses close to zero images. You can build your own skins etc by using the customization options and get rid of borders.