Author Archives: Adam Franco

Weekly Web Updates – October 15, 2018

All of our Drupal servers were upgraded to run on PHP 7.1. This is part of ongoing, and nearly complete, work to ensure that our servers are on the newer version of PHP before PHP 5.6 reaches its end of life date at the end of the year.

Updates

  • Drupal ckeditor_abbreviation 8.x-1.4
  • Drupal libraries 7.x-2.5
  • WordPress foobox-image-lightbox plugin 2.6.0
  • WordPress foogallery plugin 1.5.9
  • WordPress hueman theme 3.4.4
  • WordPress jetpack plugin 6.6.1
  • WordPress nextgen-gallery plugin 3.0.13
  • WordPress social-icons-widget-by-wpzoom plugin 3.0.11
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.6.24.1

Fixes and Tweaks

  • All traffic to the Middlebury and MIIS Course Hub sites now goes over the secure HTTPS protocol. This includes background connections to third-party platforms like Canvas.
  • Added an SEO tool to the Institute site which allows editors to enter a keyword and see how well the page they are creating utilizes that keyword.
  • Fixed an issue with the Chat plugin for WordPress where the GMT offset was being applied time to the timestamp of chat posts.
  • The Easy FAQ with Expanding Text plugin now works when the post is viewed in an aggregated list of posts or pages.
  • Enabled the metatag module for the Davis UWC website so that information about the pages can be added to ensure they look right when posted on Facebook.

Ongoing Work

  • Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/
  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • 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.
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.

Weekly Web Updates – October 8, 2018

Staff Changes

  •  The Web team is now down to 2; Unfortunately Corey Selover decided to pursue another career and her last day with us was Sept. 28.  We will miss her!
  • Please be patient with us as we now have fewer human resources than before.  We are finding ways to be more efficient in getting work/tasks done.

Updates

  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.6.24
  • WordPress osm plugin 4.1.2
  • WordPress nextgen-gallery plugin 3.0.9
  • WordPress yoko theme 1.2.3
  • Drupal multiblock 7.x-1.6

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Added UserPrincipalName attribute to CAS in order to allow integration with O365 from the Course Hub.

Ongoing Work

  • Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/
  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • 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.
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.

Weekly Web Updates – October 1, 2018

Twice during September the nightly process to update the Course Catalog from Banner failed to complete due to a separate, conflicting database process. This prevented the keyword index from being generated, so searches on the catalog failed until the process ran again. We have moved the catalog’s database to our high availability database cluster and removed the conflicting process, which we believe will prevent this in the future.

We identified and resolved the issue affecting our new PHP 7 cluster for Drupal and will be completing that upgrade this coming Thursday, October 4.

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • The nightly process to update the Online Donor Roll from Banner is now disabled. The donor roll will move into Raiser’s Edge when that service launches.
  • Events on the Institute website will now use a JSON+LD format that just includes the location name if they don’t have a street address associated with the location, to pass Google’s parsing check. Additionally, there is a report available for admins listing the event locations which do not have address information so those can be filled in.
  • Added support for awesome-table.com embeds using the Middlebury iFrame WordPress plugin.
  • Set up the redirects to move the Office of Risk and Compliance website to its new home as Enterprise Risk Management.
  • Minor type proofing edits to the BLSE homepage.

Ongoing Work

  • Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/
  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • 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.
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.

Weekly Web Updates – September 24, 2018

 

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

Ongoing Work

  • Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/
  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • 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.
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.

Weekly Web Updates – September 17, 2018

 

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

Ongoing Work

  • Fixes and tweaks for the new Institute site https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/
  • Creating a new “Offices” site for institution-wide anchor functions.
  • 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.
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.

Weekly Web Updates – September 10, 2018

We’ve identified the cause of the issue we encountered in the Drupal 8 PHP upgrade last week and are working on a method of mitigating it.

Meanwhile, we have finished implementing a new group system in Drupal 8 that will be used to manage permissions for office sites and are preparing to add content components to that site in development so that we can begin migrating office content into our new web architecture.

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • Fixed an issue in the Directory where certain profiles would not expand to show the full entry in cases where an unprintable value exists in the personal homepage field that the URL parser couldn’t interpret.
  • Profile lists on the Institute website can now use the Image with Text component.
  • Fixed an issue with the Emma for WordPress widget that was preventing the subscription form from displaying.

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.
  • Creating an online Services Catalog
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.

Weekly Web Updates – September 4, 2018

We attempted to upgrade the Drupal cluster to PHP 7.1 this week but an unforeseen system error forced us to revert to the old web servers. Will will attempt this upgrade again in the future after mitigating the issue.

Updates

Fixes and Tweaks

  • WordPress sites synced to Active Directory groups  will no longer have users removed when the group disappears, only if the group still exists and the users are removed. This particularly affected old class groups and caused instructors to lose access after several years when class-groups were automatically removed from the Active Directory.

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.
  • Creating an online Services Catalog
  • Providing O365 Groups to classes via the Course Hub.