I submitted version 3.4.5 a few minutes back. Normally I post the release announcement after the theme gets approved, but given the fact that I will be extremely busy during the day, I might not be able to post this update in a timely manner if I don’t do it now.
Version 3.4.5 is a BIG release. Okay, so it might not appear big to you, but trust me, it is really big. I was hoping to get to 100,000 downloads of Suffusion in style.
But first things first. If you upgrade to 3.4.5 you may see the default settings activated on your blog and your actual settings might not be showing up. But, as the rule goes, “DON’T PANIC!!”
If you are upgrading, the first things you should do after the upgrade are:
- Go to Suffusion Theme Options –> Introduction –> Upgrades
- If your last installed version was older than 3.0.2 (in which case you probably did your last upgrade before November 2009), then first do the “Migrate settings from version 3.0.2 or lower” step, then do the “Migrate settings from version 3.4.3 or lower” step.
- If your last installed version was 3.0.5 or higher (in which case your last upgrade was sometime around Christmas last year), then simply do the “Migrate settings from version 3.4.3 or lower” step.
- If your installation is brand new and you are not upgrading from anything, you are good to go.
If you do not do this migration step after your upgrade, you might have a panic attack :-).
Now for the details of this release:
- Code Housekeeping
I did some major cleanup of the code. The fundamental shift I made was to move to a single options array in the back-end, instead of the multitudinous options each stored individually in the database. While PHP and MySQL are both pretty good in terms of database query handling, I didn’t want to burden the system given Suffusion’s large number of options. This is the main reason you should do the migration activity, because otherwise your old options will not be useful at all. - Rotating Headers
I had quite a few queries come up regarding how to integrate rotating header image plugins with Suffusion. Rather tired with the queries I decided to provide this feature myself. If you go to “Header Customization” you will be able to set a rotating header image background. - Page of Posts
I added a new “Page of Posts” template. Now you are free to create as many pages displaying all your posts as you want. This also helps you move away from WP’s approach of defining a front page and a page of posts, among other things. - New Action Hook
I added an action hook “suffusion_query_posts” at the top of each page displaying multiple posts. How does this help you? Using the Custom PHP inclusion capability you can modify the posts you want to display for each screen, the way a good theme framework allows you. Mind you, you should be brave enough to tackle PHP for this kind of an activity. - Theme Skinning
I have been repeatedly asked, in spite of nice tutorials, how to change different aspects of the look and feel. To this end I took a baby step of providing options to set up your content wrapper more flexibly. Of course, behind the baby step there were the proverbial nine months of labour. Writing a neat and flexible module to help you set the wrapper background color, image, transparence etc. was a lot of effort. It was so much effort to set this up that I provided this just for the wrapper in this release. Subsequent releases should see this extended rather easily to other GUI elements. As an aside here, “Body Background Styles” is now called “Theme Skinning”. - Bug Fixes
A couple of bugs have been fixed. The first deals with the translation text for “x responses to”, where “to” was not getting translated. The second tended to show “Tagged with” for the Now Reading plugin, even if there were no tags available. - Translations
Suffusion’s impressive multi-lingual support continues to thrive thanks to its volunteers. I now have a new Belarusian translation, thanks to Marcis G. The Greek, Norwegian and Russian translations have been updated too.
That’s it for now. Counting down to 100,000 downloads!
Hey GREAT work!!!! And wow I love the 3rd feature (Page of Posts). Waiting eagerly for Worpress to show the update. Keep up the great work and THANKS a lot.
Rotating headers! Weh hey! I’ll be downloading it and updating as soon as I have a chance!
Will it be easier to add Buddypress to Suffussion? “Cause I still can’t figure out how to make the changes to get the alignment right.
Just to say many thanks for the update! The rotating headers are great. This just keeps getting better and better! Looking forward to all the future features 🙂
Thank you for all your hard work on this theme.
I have it being used on 4 of the 5 websites/blogs I admin because of all the rich features and options!
Just a question? If we run into a “bug” where do we “officially” post it? The http://ww2.coastal.edu/crnc site upgraded to this release and the migration went fine. However, I can not get rid of the navigation for categories (drop down). I have unselected the items on the (Blog Features -> Main Navigation Bar -> Categories in Navigation Bar) option multiple times, but they keep coming back all selected and the drop down will not go away.
Any thoughts or hints would be great. This is not a show stopper for this site, but the other sites will not be the upgrade because of the categories showing up on the nav bar.
Sincerely,
Daniel
Found the forum. /facepalm.
Seems this is a known issue.
So what is the case if you have version 3.3.9 , but still no migrated, so the only option available is
Is – ” Click on the button below if you upgraded from Version 3.0.2 or lower”
And my version is not 🙂
How to upgrade then?
I thought the instructions are pretty self-explanatory. You run the theme’s migrate utility after you do the upgrade of the theme itself. I haven’t provided instructions for upgrading – those are standard for every theme. I have only given instructions on how to migrate your options from an older version of the theme.
Ok, but it is said – do NOT press the button if your version is newer than 3.0.2.
So in case i`m with 3.3.9 is there a chance something crashes ?
Umm… I believe you might be missing something. These are the steps:
1. Upgrade the theme using the “Auto Upgrade” feature that WP provides. You can do this from the WP admin menu, under Appearance -> Themes. Don’t click anything in the Upgrades section of the theme options!!
2. After you upgrade, when you go to Suffusion Theme Options -> Introduction -> Upgrades, you will see a new section that says “Migrate settings from version 3.4.3 or lower”. You have to click on the upgrade button here, not in the one you are currently seeing.
Just to be safe, you might want to go to Suffusion Theme Options -> Introduction -> Export / Import and export your current settings to a file before you do any upgrade (because I get the feeling that you are not really sure what you have to do).
Hi Sayontan,
Sorry if I’m missing something, but I’m trying to upgrade from current version 3.3.8 to your latest version. I went to Appearance->Themes, per your instructions above, and it says ‘There is a new version of Suffusion available. View version 3.4.7 Details automatic upgrade unavailable for this theme”. So I can’t do the autoupgrade. Any advice?
Thanks!
See this: https://aquoid.com/news/2010/04/wordpress-theme-auto-upgrade-issues/
You’re the best! I’m learning so much, thanks.
Thank you Sayontan. Everything is Ok now 🙂
I read your replies regarding what to do if the upgrade to 3.4.6 wipes all blog settings out (which is what happened to our blog). But the “Migrate settings from version 3.4.3 or LOWER” doesn’t apply to me since I have done each of your upgrades as you’ve released them so the last one was 3.4.5.
What do I do in this situation?
Also, not that I have any idea what to do with it, prior to the upgrade, I exported the xml file.
Thank you,
Buck
I have responded to your question on the support forum.
yes, i was here and posted this first but realized i had no idea where this was so i went back to tthe forums where I knew what i was doing. sorry
DON’T PANIC!!
Thanks for the reminder! Upgrade successful. More on new features later.
Your passion for craft and service is much appreciated.
Thanks, Byron!
Great theme, thank you.
Everything is wonderful.
Only one feature does not work:
The twitter widget placed below the header does not show my latest tweets, also the checkbox is checked. Is there a solution?
Thank you,
miguel
just updated, there was no warning of needing to take any action prior to upgrade, anyway it changed theme i thought it was my fault and tried to refind the theme, uploading another as a temp measure, is there anyway of recovering my site and the suffusion theme or is it all lost (honestly there was no indication of having to take any action just press here for upgrade!!!)
I honestly have no idea about what you are asking, in the sense that there is no indication in your comment as to what went wrong. In any case, please use the support forum (link at the top in this page) or at least post corresponding to the correct version, not for a version that is a few months old.
Namaste and thanks for such a wonderful theme!
Rotating headers was a bit of a challenge for me. After numerous trial-and-error attempts, I finally figured out that I had the wrong URL string. I went to the “Folder for Rotating Header Background” under Visual Effects>Header Customization and entered in “themes/suffusion/images/header/”. This is what made it work for me! I had previously tried to enter the full path URL and also the full path that Suffusion suggests (for me this was YOUR DOMAIN/public_html/wp-content) and the remaining path address mentioned above.
I’m not sure if others have had a similar predicament, but one suggestion might be to clarify this a bit in the text description within the WP control panel. Best part is it doesn’t require any addt’l coding!
My apologies if I should be posting this to the forum. I searched but didn’t readily find it. Again, thanks for such a great theme! I will be hooking you up with some coffee soon.
One suggest