Suffusion Version 3.9.4

After a fairly long hiatus the latest version of Suffusion (3.9.4) is now live. In my defence I must add that I had submitted this version 2 weeks back, and it took a long time to get approved. Here are the main changes:

  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.

18 Responses to “Suffusion Version 3.9.4”

  1. I just uploaded the 3.9.4 version and all the images in the featured posts disappeared. Even the thumbnail images in the Query Post are missing… Any changes that made…?

  2. Please ignore my previous comment. Both the Feature Posts and the Query Post Images are working but though out of proportion. Just a FYI….I have also noticed that if there is an extremely large image added to either/both the featured and thumbnail section on the post…the image does not show.

  3. The same for me… all attached pictures for Featured posts and headlines in the magazine template are missing now.

    • I am seeing your site fine now – have you fixed it?

      • Nope not complete only for the first part. the second one “jüngstes Geheul” is even now broken. the pictures he shows are randomly ones from the article not the right ones I had worked out as thumbnails.

        • Can you try saving the options in Templates → Magazine? You don’t have to change anything – just save the options.

          • I’ve saved the options, but nothing have changed.

          • I tried to replicate this, but it seems to be working correctly on my test site.

            Try to reorder the “Image preference order” for “Headlines”, then save. Then reorder back to the original and save again. See if it makes a difference.

  4. I noticed an immediate improvement in the performance grade when running Pingdom tools.

    Thank you for this excellent theme and the time you take to keep it updated.

    David

  5. We just updated 3.9.4 on our test site and the optimization changes are apparent in our performance. Thanks so much for this!

  6. Backend > Custom Includes > Custom PHP Section is missing in Suffusion version 3.9.4

  7. it works fine and the performance is good. thanks

  8. Just switched to this theme on my site, still tweaking it, and I have to say Suffusion is a fantastic theme – extremely flexible and easy to customize without me having touch the Editor. So impressed and surprised that it’s free. Thank you!

  9. How do you disable Thumb-cache it is literally ruining my clients hosting account…It has generated over 1 million cache thumbnails….Your theme is the only one that produces this nasty little folder….

    How to stop this?

    • It has generated over 1 million cache thumbnails

      To generate over 1 million cache thumbnails, your host would need to have more than 100,000 uploaded images. Is that the case? If not, which version of the theme are they using? There was a bug that was fixed more than a year back to address this.

      Your theme is the only one that produces this nasty little folder….

      Because mine is probably the only theme that does dynamic resizing.