Author Archives: Adam Franco and Ian McBride

About Adam Franco and Ian McBride

I'm a web developer at Middlebury.

Weekly Web Updates – November 18, 2019

This week we’ve updated WordPress to the new 5.3 version. This brings in a number of accessibility improvements to the block editor, including several which were identified by the audit commissioned by the WPCampus Higher Education WordPress users group.

This update also includes an admin email verification feature. Every six months, when you log into a WordPress site where you have Administrator privileges, you’ll be asked to verify the central contact email for your site. This is a helpful and important feature that will help us understand which sites are being actively maintained and who to contact should we need to change one of the features that site uses. More information about admin email verification is available here.

Updates

  • Drupal 8.7.10
  • Drupal allowed_formats 8.x-1.2
  • Drupal link 7.x-1.7
  • WordPress 5.3
  • WordPress badgeos plugin 3.3
  • WordPress bbpress plugin 2.6.1
  • WordPress enable-media-replace plugin 3.3.7
  • WordPress ml-slider plugin 3.15.2
  • WordPress regenerate-thumbnails plugin 3.1.2
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.9.11
  • WordPress hueman theme 3.4.31
  • WordPress responsive theme 3.26.1

Fixes and Tweaks

  • The Big Number chart component in Drupal 8 now supports decimal places and the percent bar chart type will show the numeric percents next to the category labels.
  • The 25th Reunion site for the class of 1990 was using a third-party theme which is no longer supported due to an undisclosed security issue. We have remove the site.
  • A feature of the administration interface for the Non-College Housing site is no longer supported due to an undisclosed security issue. We have remove the code that provided this feature and notified the site admin of a workaround.
  • There is a new “blogger” role on the Library website for people who just need access to post news and blog items.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – November 11, 2019

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Clicking the Log out link in the site footer in Drupal 8 now properly and fully logs the user our of Drupal.
  • When adding profiles to a profile list component on the new Offices and Services site, you will now see the name of the office where that profile lives in parentheses to help distinguish in the case where a person has profiles in multiple offices.
  • MiddSTART and MiddGOAL are now manually updated, so we have removed the back-end connection to Banner, which may have been causing errors in other applications running on the same server, including the Online Directory.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – November 4, 2019

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Set up new sites for MiddCore and the Provost’s Office in the Drupal 8 Offices and Services system.
  • Old versions of the Presidential Search site and information about transportation options to get to Middlebury were removed from search results.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – October 28, 2019

This week we launched a new website for the Language Schools as well as the new OTLM program at the Institute.

Updates

  • Drupal auto_entitylabel 8.x-3.0-beta2
  • Drupal biblio 7.x-1.2
  • Drupal captcha 7.x-1.6
  • Drupal ckeditor_abbreviation 8.x-1.6
  • Drupal entity_reference_revisions 8.x-1.7
  • Drupal pathauto 8.x-1.5
  • Drupal simple_sitemap 8.x-3.4
  • Drupal title 7.x-1.0-beta2 and 7.x-1.0-beta3
  • WordPress auto-post-thumbnail plugin 3.6.0
  • WordPress editorial-calendar plugin 3.7.5
  • WordPress foogallery plugin 1.8.18
  • WordPress ml-slider plugin 3.15.1
  • WordPress seriously-simple-podcasting plugin 1.20.10
  • WordPress instagram-feed plugin 2.1
  • WordPress social-icons-widget-by-wpzoom plugin 3.4.0
  • WordPress subscribe2 plugin 10.31
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.9.10
  • WordPress wp-postratings plugin 1.87
  • WordPress hueman theme 3.4.30
  • WordPress responsive theme 3.23
  • WordPress yoko theme 1.2.5

Fixes and Tweaks

  • When displaying lists of content in the Offices and Services administration interface, we now include the name of the office to which the content belongs to more easily identify it.
  • The nightly sync process from KeyServer to Web Helpdesk now includes the combined storage size of all volumes in the machine.
  • Fixed a few issues with the menus on the In Studio page of the WRMC site.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – October 7, 2019

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Profiles in the Offices and Services site are now scoped to single groups, simplifying the editing interface, allowing staff who work in multiple offices to have multiple profiles, and ensuring that staff profiles can only be edited by people in that office.
  • The menu in the Middlebury School of the Environment site will now display its full context.
  • Resolved an issue with the CSS and JS assets on the Drupal training site being gzipped twice.
  • Added redirects for some URLs in the old Admissions site which had gone out in print mailings.
  • Fixed several issues with the process that syncs newsletter membership from Banner related to the third party API’s rate limits.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – September 30, 2019

Updates

  • Drupal views_data_export 8.x-1.0-beta3
  • WordPress jetpack plugin 7.7.2
  • WordPress redirection plugin 4.4
  • WordPress subscribe2 plugin 10.30.1
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.9.9
  • WordPress responsive theme 3.18

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Added the proper search results page for use with the search form on the new Admissions site.
  • Fixed a bug which sometimes showed GO shortcut descriptions from the MIIS version of GO on codes from the Middlebury version of GO.
  • Added an SSL certification for the NER website.
  • Updated the Drupal 8 training website to have all current site features.
  • Ensured that the setting which defined the Institute site homepage is not overwritten when configuration changes are imported.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – September 9, 2019

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Fixed an issue with the MyEmma API that was preventing people who have dropped off of our lists in Banner from being removed from the email lists.
  • We’ve updated the global navigation on the MIIS website to streamline it and the text component can now be used on the homepage.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented the icons on the GO website from loading.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.

Weekly Web Updates – September 9, 2019

We have moved the Study Abroad Course Information Database to Drupal 8, put it in our new design, and improved the search form, allowing you to search for terms in each of the lists.

Updates

  • Drupal viewfield 7.x-2.2
  • WordPress jetpack plugin 7.7.1
  • WordPress nextgen-gallery plugin 3.2.15
  • WordPress hueman theme 3.4.29

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Information in profiles on the Drupal 7 version of the Middlebury site is no longer cached by Drupal so it will be fetched fresh from the Directory once every five minutes.
  • Instagram links will now be shown in profile lists on the Drupal 8 site if the person has an Instagram account.

Ongoing Work

  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • Creating new Drupal 8 sites for our schools and programs.
  • Upgrading the Course Hub to Drupal 8.