Suffusion Version 3.8.3

Almost 2 months after the last version, Suffusion 3.8.3 is here. This is another big release with a hopefully small impact. As mentioned earlier, the focus of this release was on making the theme more framework-like. Here is the change log for this release:

  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.

69 Responses to “Suffusion Version 3.8.3”

  1. I can’t believe how much work you put into this, do you ever sleep? 😉

    • I am generally an insomniac, but yes, sometimes I sleep 🙂

  2. Hi Sayontan,

    I found a rendering bug in 3.8.3 — I can send you more info by email, but 3.8.3 causes a problem rendering the Links tab, in the static tabbed sidebar.

    Love the breadcrumbs– great work, thanks!

  3. Looks great. Thanks. How do you get your comments to automatically appear at the end of the post?

    • Comments appear automatically at the end of “Single Post” or “Single Page” views if they are enabled and present. Otherwise they don’t. You don’t have to make any special changes for them.

  4. I must say the DON’T PANIC is an understatement …..
    And I must say: WHAT A GREAT THEME.
    It’s really the best I have found!
    (sorry fot the bad English)

  5. if we update this directly, will we lose all of our settings? or it will just update without any changes in our side bars, or our edited php codes?

    What i mean is basically, will our settings get broken or everything will remain same? Let us know please.

    Thanks

    • PHP files/image files edited/created in the theme folder will get overwritten. PHP files/image files in a child theme will stay as they are. Options settings will remain as they are.

      • thanks for fast response. so, is there any way to make my current edited/created php files and images to be transferred into child theme and make my site use child theme and then i update the theme?

        i made few changes in php codes and i do not remember everything that i had done, so i am afraid to update to new version because of i may lose what i had done before.

        • I have exactly the same concern as Selin (particularly the last sentence above), but don’t see a response in this thread. Is there a way to do a compare of my current php files vs a vanilla version? Or like Selin implies, can I save all my current php files so in the worst case I can roll back to my pre-upgrade condition? Please forgive my ignorance, but I’m not clear on whether the changes I’ve made are in the theme folder or in a child theme. Basically, I hope you could offer some step-by-step guidance to those of us who have monkeyed with some php without realizing the implications it could have for upgrades. (I checked the forum for “upgrade” but there are nearly 1200 entries, so I checked for “revert” and found that I should backup my site before upgrading–but then researched “backup wordpress” on google and discovered that doing so can be quite complicated and even treacherous.)

          • A sure safe way to ensure you can roll back is to use an FTP program like Filezilla and copy your entire existing Suffusion directory to your local drive. It almost certainly is as safe to copy it to a new name in your existing WP themes directory but a local copy completely isolates it from everything.

            Note you should copy for this to work perfectly, not rename or move.

            Then, do the update through the WordPress Updates facility. This will completely update the Suffusion directory.

            If you have downloaded your copy, rename it, for example, Suffusion.382.

            Then upload the newly named directory to your WP Themese folder.

            Go into your WP admin, Appearance – Themes and you will see both versions of suffusion available to you. If you get confused about which is which, just watch the note that shows what directory all the files are in.

            I have done this without any problems at all and on one dev site I had 4 different versions of Suffusion all installed at the same time and was able to activate them and compare things whenever I wanted.

            Things have changed enough that using really old versions is not a good idea because the database structures have changed and things will get confused and likely cause mystifying errors.

            But for moving from 382 to 383 you should have no problem in protecting you current install this way.

          • Also, just for the record, backing up a complete wordpress install is not particularly “treacherous.”

            If you are at the level of writing your own php code, you should not find the task daunting. For the first part it’s simply downloading the complete WP file structure (for many people this will be the /public_html root and all subdirectories). The second part you do from within your Hosts’s CPanel or other interface and backup the MySQL database the name of which you know, because you had to enter into wp-config when you first installed wp.

            If you do those two things you can fully restore a wp install to its backuped state.

  6. Great ! Every change made in this version are superb. Especially the script optimization and load optimization are appreciated. Some times I worried about the speed

    Now everything seems to be Ok 🙂

  7. Thank you Sayontan! The best Theme gets even better …..

  8. Hi Sayontan. First I wanna tell you congrats for your super-theme. I have yet a question (maybe is not ok to ask here but i will do it). I am using on my blog the version 3.7.8 (Suffusion) and I wanna introduce in-post Adsense. Can you please tell me which php file I have to “manipulate” and where exactly to place the script-code?
    P/S: for example in Twenty-ten theme there is “single.php” which allows adding Adsense inside posts,,, but in Suffusion it seems that I have some troubles in finding the right .php file.
    Regards.

    • Suffusion has a single.php file, but please use the Support forum for questions such as these.

  9. First, I love this theme. I have been using it for nearly a year now.

    I just did the upgrade to 3.8.3, and I have a small problem. Tables that I added to my posts are rendering differently now. TR height is now taller than I would prefer, and there dotted lines between the rows. Some word wrapping is occurring where there was none before. There may be other issues.

    Any suggestions?

    • This is as documented above:

      Tables now occupy 100% of the width by default, in both, main content as well as comments.

      Without knowing what you want it to be I cannot provide more specific information.

      • Thanks for the quick reply.

        I regularly include an unstyled table in my post. With no styles, the table cells fit the text with no word wrapping, and no borders around the table cells. This is the behavior I prefer.

        Like I said before, what I get after the upgrade is the same tables with a cell height taller than I would prefer, word wrapping in some table cells, and a dotted line border at the bottom of each table row.

        The new feature where tables occupy 100% width should work with the way I’m using tables. Its the addition of the dotted lines, etc that I don’t understand.

        • You can add this to Back-end Settings → Custom Includes → Custom Styles to restore the old behaviour:

          .entry th, .entry td { padding: 0; border-bottom: none; }
  10. Hi-
    thanks for a great theme! I just updated to the new version. Unfortunately, the setting for “Navigation Menu Items: Active” is now missing.
    So when using the Minima skin, the Menu Items color in active state of the Main Navigation Menu shows as the default grey color. And the possibility to change it is now gone. Will you fix that??

    I keep the background color of the Main Nav. Menu white as the background – so the “bar” is not showing, only the text. Now, there is this grey box in the active state, which does not look nice.

    • I have never had anything for “Navigation Menu Items: Active”. I have always had “Navigation Menu Items: Highlighted”. Maybe that is what you are looking for.

      • Thanks for your quick reply.

        Sorry, if my memory is bad… But after the update, there is a grey square in the Main Menu when a page is active – see example: http://www.garnish.dk/portfolio/resume/

        Before the update, the Resumé text in the Main Menu was just red on white background. I can’t seem loose the grey square in the settings – that’s why I’m thinking there must be a setting that is missing?

        • That part seems a bit buggy now (not trying to sound ungrateful). Navigation menus item color adjustment just fell apart. Before, I could adjust ‘navigation menu item’ completely, now it looks it has lost control of ‘navigation menu item highlighted.’ Actually it changes randomly (on / of) I tested in 3 browsers. Tends to keep the menu item highlighted color as per color scheme (selected) regardless of color adjustments, or even when set ‘transparent’. Not the end of the world though. Well, to be honest, I had to shut the site down, it just did not look right. (Smiles).

        • There is no setting missing, but there does seem to be a bug in the Minima skin. I will fix it in the next release.

          • I have fixed it temporarily via Custom Includes. Seems to be working fine – tested in 3 browsers. Haven’t experienced the random changes as George has… but there sure is a bug —
            (In the settings, the color picker isn’t showing colors on several occasions.)

            I am truly a fan of your work, Sayontan. Looking forward to the next upgrade. Virtual hug to you!

          • (In the settings, the color picker isn’t showing colors on several occasions.)

            Not aware of any such bug. Can you please elucidate? I haven’t changed anything in the colour-picker since many months.

        • Christine, how? It does not listen at my end, smiles. So still problem with the menus, also can’t bring the body text back to justify.

  11. Another awesome job. I do like the Minima theme, I use it quite a lot (often with a lot of edits to the CSS). Thank you, Sayontan 🙂

    • Thanks. It does look like a bug slipped in, but that is the price I pay for development.

  12. Sayontan, thank you so much for all your hard work. You’ve really created a masterpiece. I’ll be using the “buy me a coffee” option soon. Thanks!

  13. hi, great theme but i got a problem when saving settings, i also create a forum post:
    https://aquoid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=6335

  14. I just want to say thank you and good job for this stupendous theme. It’s the most well-coded theme I’ve seen on any blogging platform. 🙂

  15. Thank you Sir! It worked very well for me on the new version. I wish you the best there is, before you go to sleep again 🙂 May God Bless and Keep You Always!

  16. I’d say Suffusion is in a class of it’s own when it come’s to free themes, mind boggling.
    It plays nicer with server resources than some premium themes out there.

    Great work!

  17. I do a little web work now and then, sometimes with months of doing nothing. Suffusion has made it possible for me to really increase my skills, without being forced to do so.

    I think that last point is important.

    Regular users of Sayontan’s work are so deeply involved in its magical customization, design and functionality opportunities that we overlook the fact that it is also extremely well suited to complete novices.

    People who are downloading the plug-and-play impoverished themes in the WP Repository may be shied off Suffusion by the wealth of discussion of its features. But people new to WordPress should realize that they can install Suffusion, pick a template and forget about it. They will have a great visual theme right out of the box with the wonderful advantage that as they have time and interest they can tinker with their own customizations.

    So I just want to encourage people to remember Suffusion to their friends and contacts who are looking for a basic theme.

    I also want to again thank you Sayontan for your generous gift to the community.

    • Thanks, Glenn! A lot of people, though, are daunted by the large number of options in the theme and give up before getting anywhere. Also, while I believe I could do much better in the design area, Suffusion still looks better than a lot of other themes out of the box.

  18. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … you are a genius! And wonderful!

    Thank you!!!!!

    • P.S. I love that you created something so basic and easily customizable. Please keep it that way because it’s perfect!

      I like to customize everything to the max to make everything look different and unique without spending lots of tedious hours messing with PHP code.

      Novices can adjust the colors and do basic customization whereas people with knowledge of CSS and JS and other web design magic can do even more.

  19. Good work! I really love Suffusion 🙂
    But I like text justified-aligned, not left-aligned. How can I do it?

    • This was actually discussed on the forum yesterday for another user. Search for a post by IIRC Beauty.

  20. You’ve done an excellent job on this theme. I’m currently waiting to release a site, using your suffusion theme, and I thought you might like taking a look at the current build.

    Thank you for all your hard work.

    • Blair, the Undercarriage logo setting & the only 2 tones color were awesome! Hardly seen from forum members here.

      • Thank you! I am pretty happy with the way it’s turned out. I’m particularly happy with the “feature” I found and exploited for the logo. I really hope that never gets fixed because it really works for some of my current layouts and the clients dig it.

        • Care to share? What “feature” did you find and how did you use it?

          • I used an image call out in a text widget and set it’s margins to negative numbers: img class=”size-full wp-image-8 aligncenter” style=”margin: -140px -5px;”. Then added additional space underneath to separate the navigation with a re-sized transparent pixel in another text widget. The most important thing (otherwise it won’t work) is to change the sidebar area (sidebar 1 in this case) to flatten.

            Here is a less impressive version of the same configuration: http://paesanoofnorthpark.com/

          • Ah, I understand the reason for putting feature in quotes. Well, the truth is this would have worked even with a boxed layout, but for the fact that I tied myself to using docking boxes (that let you reposition widgets from the front-end) from the very first release of the theme. Some users were up in arms when I suggested that I will remove docking boxes, hence it has remained. Honestly it has caused me more pain than happiness.

          • Sayontan, sorry for your pain but your hard work is paying off so there is a bright side. I think you’ve done a bang up job on this theme.

        • It isn’t something that will be “fixed”, because it isn’t anything that I consider buggy. Basically you made use of negative margins for the text widget in the sidebar, and that is a pretty cool way of obtaining your desired look. And I must say, the desired look is pretty nice.

  21. It’s a great theme I love it. Just wondering is it possible to adjust the width for the whole page and for the sidebar? I’d like to get a wider sidebar. Thank you.

  22. Finally got the old version almost how I want it. I am struggling because I set the pages for 1000px and they are fine, but the home page remained at 1200. How can I fix that?

  23. Hi Sayontan,

    Awesome theme you have there.. Great job done on this and please continue doing just that 🙂
    I do have some feature requests and I hope you feel they’re worth adding to the theme.
    Ok here goes.

    – A image/icon configuration page:
    This page will basically shows you all (or the most relevent) icon in the theme and give you the ability to replace them. Like the balloon icons, default avatar icon, bullet point icons, page icon, post icon, etc etc.. I’ve been replacing some of them by hand every time but of course as soon as I update the Theme all the icons are replaced.. I suppose I could re-route these using Custom CSS. It just feels easier relacing a file then writing CSS :)..

    – The ability to create a footer that looks like this (sorry for a link to another theme builder.. yours is still better 🙂 http://zenverse.net/black-tribe-wordpress-theme/
    If you scroll down to the footer you’ll notice that the footer has it’s own background color/image and 4 columns… The 4 column part Suffusion can do with “Widget Area Above Footer” which is great.. There is no option for backgrounds though.. If there is please lemme know 🙂 Anyway.. I would LOVE to see some more Footer/Above Footer options.. Have a look at this http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/25-stylish-website-footer-designs/

    Keep up the good work!!

    • – A image/icon configuration page:
      This page will basically shows you all (or the most relevent) icon in the theme and give you the ability to replace them. Like the balloon icons, default avatar icon, bullet point icons, page icon, post icon, etc etc..

      Some of this I have finished building in my current development build. Things like bullet icons etc will not be covered. For that you have to use custom CSS.

      The footer configuration options are in scope for a release very soon.

  24. Hi Sayonta. Working with WordPress is new to me. I am having a hard time figuring out how to remove the Comments on my Home page. I am using Suffusion for a Website not a blog. I have removed it from all my other pages. Can you help please. Thanks in advance.

  25. Debbie, you should be able to remove it like you do on all pages and posts. In the dashboard click on all posts/pages. click the quick edit link on the post or page in question. Un-check “allow comment”, and save.

    If you have similar questions about core code please check the help tab in the upper right hand of your screen or go directly to the wordpress.org site and query the database for your answer. The help section on wordpress.org is very easy to use and well documented.

    take care,
    B+

  26. Hi Sayontan,

    first of all i would like to thank you for the great job you have done working on this amazing theme which is really the best out there. I have got a question and i wish you can help me. Could you please advice me on how to remove or delete the cpanel of your theme although i want to keep my website up and running at the same time and keep every thing as it is but i do not wanna have a cpanel. Looking forward to hearing from you thanks in advance

    • CPanel? CPanel has nothing to do with the theme and comes from your hosting provider. You might be referring to the theme options. If so, if you are a user without the rights to edit options, the options panel will automatically not show up.

      • I happen to like the settings panel in 3.8.3 — oh wait a minute. That’s half year’s worth of your work ago! And just so, the settings “panels” in 4.2 are that much better.

        Adam: logically either you wish to 1. hide the settings from users or from someone for whom you’ve built a site or, or 2. you personally do not wish to look at the settings.

        In the case of user blocking, users will see configuration screens, as Sayontan wrote, according to the roles you assign. In the case of client blocking you’ll need to find a suitable plugin — I recall one called White Label or similar — a search of the WP plugin repository will turn up several. But who gets access to what settings components is not in the realm of themes.

        In the second case, whaaa? I’m possibly a little thick here but if you never want to look at a settings screen, just don’t go there. What if you actually did need to change something — you want a method to prevent yourself from ever being able to make a change? So it obviously has to be case 1. Think plugin solution, not theme.

        regards,

        Glenn