Suffusion Version 4.2.1

For the first time in several months I had a release of Suffusion submitted and approved on the same day. Version 4.2.1 of Suffusion is a moderately big release with the following updates, with a lot of focus on the upcoming version 3.4 of WordPress:

  1. New Features
    1. Scribbles
      The biggest feature of this release is the new skin, “Scribbles”. It features more than moderate use of CSS3, a wooden background, “Post It” and notebook styling and the “Coming Soon” font.
    2. New Iconset
      In keeping with “Scribbles”, I have added a new iconset. This iconset is largely based on the offbeat Web Design Creatives icons.
    3. New Byline Styles
      Again, another change courtesy “Scribbles” – there is now a new byline type that lets you position the bylines outside the post, by the side. Think of it like a pullout, except that in the incumbent pullout bylines, the byline was below the post title, but here the title is beside the byline. Try it out at Other Graphical Elements → Post and Page Bylines.
    4. Custom classes for Custom Post Types
      As a part of my ongoing efforts to support Custom Post Types better, I have added the capability to specify a CSS class for both, the Custom Post Type Archive template (seen under Additional Options for Suffusion → Custom Post Type Archive) and individual custom post types (seen under Custom Types → Layouts)
    5. Native Custom Headers
      This is to gear up for WP 3.4. I was earlier unable to add support for WP’s native custom headers, because WP didn’t support flexible widths. But with 3.4 this is not going to be an issue, so Suffusion 4.2.1 has support for custom headers, assuming you are on WP 3.4.
    6. WP 3.4 Theme Customizer Support
      WP 3.4 has introduced a new concept called Theme Customizer. I have added an option to just try out the skins of the theme from the Customizer without having to activate the theme. This is more of an “FYI” for you and shouldn’t have any bearing on how you use the theme.
  2. Changed Features
    1. “Follow Me” Icon Changes
      This was necessitated because there was some ambiguity around the licensing for some of the previous icons. I have replaced them with reasonable facsimiles that I have built myself. Hopefully the effect will not be too jarring.
    2. Markup Changes
      There are several markup changes due to the introduction of the new byline styles.

      Child theme users, please check your child theme template files for any differences with respect to the theme files.

    3. Translations
      In the last file I had forgotten to update the PO file for the theme. I have updated the same now.
    4. Code Housekeeping
      1. Some API calls that get deprecated with WP 3.4 have now been removed.
      2. Some “custom post meta fields” have been renamed and prefixed with “suf_”. The named fields are meta_keywords, meta_description, thumbnail and featured_image. This should be transparent from your perspective.
      3. Most of the post_class arguments have now been added through a filter. This is to facilitate better integration with plugins, but for most users it should have no effect. This is in accordance with the new guidelines from the WP Theme Review Team.
      4. The calls to wp_title have all been replaced with the appropriate filter. This is in accordance with the new guidelines from the WP Theme Review Team.
      5. Uses of get_stylesheet_directory_uri have been appropriately replaced with get_stylesheet_uri in accordance with the new guidelines from the WP Theme Review Team.
      6. The template files now have no inline styles. This means that you can use custom CSS without having to force the !important directive for many cases.
  3. Bug Fixes
    1. The Authors template had a minor (undetected) bug, that would cause issues due to a potential conflict of global variables. This should be fine now.
    2. The Custom Layout Template was not respecting the option to “Keep original heights” for the widgets. I have fixed this.
    3. The rotating headers capability was not working if the generated CSS was being linked as a file. This should be fine now, too.
    4. Under some very rare cases the breadcrumbs code was crashing. I have taken care to ensure that the appropriate checks are in place so that the code no longer crashes.

What I couldn’t fix

There were some reports of issues with incorrect tags showing up on posts. This wasn’t something I could replicate, hence I couldn’t fix this.

Additionally, I was not able to add the features of “Scribbles” to Suffusion BP Pack or Suffusion Commerce Pack.

I am going to switch to a “minor release” mode till I am done with my vacation that ends in mid-July. This means I am not going to push any big items out during this time. Photonic is due an update, as are the two Suffusion packs, so you can expect new versions of those in the near future.

Hope you enjoy this release.

9 Responses to “Suffusion Version 4.2.1”

  1. Thanks for the update.

    Any chance you could fix the issue that prevents the Blog title and description from being displayed on the right side?

  2. I’m seeing a new error in 4.2.1 that I believe is stopping me from saving Suffusion options in the Dashboard.

    Webpage error details

    User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; InfoPath.3; MS-RTC LM 8)
    Timestamp: Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:01:44 UTC

    Message: Object doesn’t support this property or method
    Line: 14
    Char: 15506
    Code: 0
    URI: http://blindscribblings.com/wp-content/plugins/wangguard/js/jquery.wijmo.wijchartcore.min.js?ver=3.4-RC2-21026

    Message: ‘wijmo.wijchartcore’ is null or not an object
    Line: 14
    Char: 27
    Code: 0
    URI: http://blindscribblings.com/wp-content/plugins/wangguard/js/jquery.wijmo.wijbarchart.min.js?ver=3.4-RC2-21026

    Message: Object doesn’t support this property or method
    Line: 1
    Char: 29
    Code: 0
    URI: http://blindscribblings.com/wp-includes/js/wp-pointer.js?ver=20111129a

    Message: Object doesn’t support this property or method
    Line: 618
    Char: 2
    Code: 0
    URI: http://blindscribblings.com/wp-content/themes/suffusion/admin/js/admin.js?ver=4.2.1

    • Actually if you go through the error trace above, you will see that it has little to do with Suffusion. One of your plugins (wijmo?) seems to be interfering with Suffusion’s dashboard. Basically every theme or plugin is meant to play in its own space in the admin dashboard, but some plugins and themes are not coded to spec: they tend to include their scripts in different pages in the admin screens, often causing interruption. If you disable this plugin you should be able to save your options. You can then re-enable it.

  3. Hello how are you all? I have a problem with suffusion latest version. I keep getting this malware problem report with my security plugin wordfence…..

    array(“name” => “The \”Now Reading\” plugin templates”,
    “desc” => “If you have a site for book reviews the Now Reading plugin is a gerat one to use.
    Suffusion has templates that support this plugin, which you can control here”,
    “parent” => “nr-template”,
    “type” => “blurb”
    ),

    This site http://robm.me.uk/projects/plugins/wordpress/now-reading has been reported by Google to infected with malware. Is this part of suffusion core file?

    I look forward to your report.

    Kind regards

    • Interesting. “Now Reading” is a pretty old and popular plugin, which has now been superseded by “Now Reading Reloaded“. Now, the code that you have copied above is from the back-end screen, Suffusion Options → Templates → Now Reading. That is just offering you a plugin suggestion, nothing more. It is telling you that if you want to have a book review site, you can consider using the plugin. Nothing on your site front-end is pointing to a compromised URL as such, and even if you use the plugin, it wouldn’t affect your site.

      That being said, this code has been a part of Suffusion for more than 2 years – Rob’s site probably got hacked recently. In version 4.2.3 I will replace the link with the newer plugin, which can be downloaded directly from WP.

      • Thank you kindly for your prompt reply Sayontan. I agree with you in your comment. I thought of letting you know so that you would alter the code and direct the path to a none hacked URL.

        I really love your theme and I do my best to promote it as much as I can and write tutorials, since it is one of the best Free themes I have ever come across and has a developer “you” who constantly is updating the theme and plugins.

        When my finances are better I will start to send you money for coffee’s or tea 🙂

        thank you

  4. Thank you so much for your hard work! Any new features with custom post types and taxonomies is welcome and well, any new features and fixes in general as well!

    I look forward to being able to add custom taxonomy headers in the bylines in future updates!

  5. Hi,

    I really like Sufffusion – a top class WordPress theme. I’m just wondering if there is, or is any planned, support for custom featured images which could be used as fallbacks in the event that a user doesn’t define a featured image (and consequently in headlines, excerpts etc) there would always be an image shown?

    Thanks and keep up the good work.