Drupal 8.5.1 & 7.58

The Institute site has been upgraded to Drupal 8.5.1, addressing a security vulnerability.  For full documentation of changes, please see Drupal’s development log.  All systems utilizing Drupal 7 have been updated to 7.58, which addresses the same security concern.  More information is available here.

New WordPress Plugin

We have added the WordPress plugin WP Accessibility which adds a number of helpful accessibility features with a minimum amount of setup or expert knowledge. Some features include:

• Add a toolbar toggling between high contrast, large print, and desaturated (grayscale) views of your theme.
• Enable skip links with WebKit support by adding JavaScript support to move keyboard focus.
• Add a long description to images. Use the image’s “Description” field to add long descriptions.

Removed WordPress Plugins

In continuing our upgrade of systems to PHP 7.1, we discovered several more WordPress plugins that are no longer in use or no longer working and removed them. These include:

• WordPress Twitter Widget Pro
• WordPress Status Updater
• WordPress Middlebury Photo of the Week
• WordPress Dipity Embedder
• WordPress Delicious For WordPress
• WordPress Custom Image Sizes
• WordPress Audio Player

Removed Drupal Modules

As part of the upgrade to Drupal 8.5.1, the following plugins were deemed unneeded and removed.

• Drupal Module Upgrader

Updates

• Drupal Entity 8.x-1.0-beta3
• Drupal Metatag 8.x-1.5
• Drupal Workbench Access 8.x-1.0-beta1
• Drupal External Authentication 8.x-1.1
• Drupal Masquerade 8.x-2.0-beta2
• Drupal Twig Tweak 8.x-2.0-rc4
• WordPress Disqus – downgraded to version 2.86
  • Newer versions of this plugin have issues connecting to the Disqus website and managing settings.  As such, we have downgraded to the last version that consistently works.
• WordPress Regenerate Thumbnails – downgraded to version 2.2.4
  • Newer versions of this plugin rely upon the WordPress REST API, which is not yet part of core functionality.  As such, we have downgraded the plugin pending further investigation.
• WordPress FooGallery 1.4.25
• WordPress Seriously Simple Podcasting 1.19.8
• WordPress The Events Calendar 4.6.13
• WordPress WP Accessibility 1.6.2
• WordPress Hemingway 1.63

Fixes and Tweaks

• Searching the online directory by phone extension now produces more accurate results.

Ongoing Work

• Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/
• Upgrading applications to run on PHP 7.1.
• Upgrading the Drupal sites for the Davis programs, Dining Menus, and Museum of Art to Drupal 8.
• Upgrading CAS to 5.2.3