We are planning our approach to upgrading to WordPress 5. If you have concerns about this upgrade, please let us know by the end of this week so we can incorporate them into our planning.

This release includes a significant change to the editing experience and we want to get feedback from the community before making this change. We have set up a copy of the live site on one of our development machines which you can use while on-campus or using a VPN client. As this is a development copy, it’s not as fast as the live site and you may encounter some glitches or things which didn’t copy over from the live site.

On a separate topic, we launched a new version of the Offices and Services site. Our office and Communications will be working with offices across campus to move them one-by-one from their current Drupal 7 sites into this new Drupal 8 framework and design. A couple of offices are already complete and just waiting on some finishing touches. ITS will be in the next batch of offices to move into this site.

Updates

• • Omeka 2.6.1
  • Omeka Geolocation plugin 3.0.1
  • WordPress jetpack plugin 6.9
  • WordPress nextgen-gallery plugin 3.1.5
  • WordPress regenerate-thumbnails plugin 3.1.0
  • WordPress hemingway theme 1.74
  • WordPress twentyeleven theme 3.1
  • WordPress twentyfifteen theme 2.3
  • WordPress twentyfourteen theme 2.5
  • WordPress twentysixteen theme 1.8
  • WordPress twentythirteen theme 2.7
  • WordPress twentytwelve theme 2.8

Fixes and Tweaks

• • • The MyEmma API now returns a longer form of integer to identify imports and our weekly sync process has been updated to take this into account.
    • Fixed an issue which prevented updates to the library search widget.
    • Fixed an error that would appear on some forms.middlebury.edu confirmation pages.
    • Added spam prevention measures to the LS inquiry form.
    • Fixed an issue with embedded videos on www.middlebury.edu
    • Fixed a several errors in old WordPress plugins and themes that were breaking some pages.

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.

As previously announced, after 15 months in “archive mode” the server hosting Moodle at moodle.middlebury.edu & ilearn.middlebury.edu is now powered down.

We’ve added support for embedding ArcGIS.com maps and presentations in WordPress.

Updates

• Drupal 8.6.5
• Drupal field_permissions 8.x-1.0-rc2
• WordPress wp-postratings plugin 1.86.2
• WordPress foogallery plugin 1.6.11
• WordPress hemingway theme 1.73
• WordPress parabola theme 2.3.1
• WordPress portfolio-press theme 2.8.0

Fixes and Tweaks

• Fixed a performance issue with the Course Catalog database that was causing searches to take more than 60 seconds and time out. Searches now complete in < 2 seconds.
• Added support for embedding ArcGIS.com maps and presentations in WordPress.

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.

Instructors can now add Office 365 groups to their courses through the Course Hub, which gives them a space in that service with access to Microsoft OneDrive, Sharepoint, Email groups, calendaring, all of the other Office 365 apps and permissions automatically set to include all course participants synced from Banner.

Updates

• Drupal field_permissions 8.x-1.0-rc2
• WordPress enhanced-tooltipglossary plugin 3.6.7
• WordPress hemingway theme 1.71
• WordPress hueman theme 3.4.11
• WordPress inline-footnotes plugin 2.3.0
• WordPress nextgen-gallery plugin 3.1.4
• WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.7.3
• WordPress twentyeleven theme 3.0
• WordPress twentyfifteen theme 2.2
• WordPress twentyfourteen theme 2.4
• WordPress twentyseventeen theme 1.9
• WordPress twentysixteen theme 1.7
• WordPress twentyten theme 2.7
• WordPress twentythirteen theme 2.6
• WordPress twentytwelve theme 2.7
• WordPress wp-postratings plugin 1.86.1
• WordPress wp-postviews plugin 1.76.1

Fixes and Tweaks

• Fixed an issue where duplicate entries of a meta data field were added to posts on the MiddSTART site every time a project was viewed, causing the options list for that post to exceed the maximum number of entries and preventing comments from appearing.
• Added a login link to the global footer of the new Drupal 8 site designs.
• Course descriptions in the Course Catalog will now begin in bold for items even if the first character in the description is not a word.

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.

Updates

• • Drupal 8.6.4
  • WordPress 4.9.9
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.7.2
  • WordPress editorial-calendar plugin 3.7.2
  • WordPress foogallery plugin 1.6.7
  • WordPress co-authors-plus plugin 3.3.1

Fixes and Tweaks

• Events automatically syncing from 25Live in the Institute site now can only have their non-syncing fields changed by editors, preventing edits from getting overwritten on the next sync.
• Added old Flash audio/video players back to MiddMedia as these are still embedded in some sites.

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.

WordPress 5.0 was released this week, but we have not yet applied this update to the sites.middlebury.edu and sites.miis.edu network. This release includes a significant change to the editing experience and we want to get feedback from the community before making this change. We have set up a copy of the live site on one of our development machines which you can use while on-campus or using a VPN client. As this is a development copy, it’s not as fast as the live site and you may encounter some glitches or things which didn’t copy over from the live site.

Please try the new editor on the copy of some of your sites and let us know how it works. We’re especially interested in whether there are technical issues we need to remediate before applying this to the live site, but are also interested in hearing from you about its ease of use and accessibility concerns.

Updates

• WordPress appointments plugin 2.4.1
• WordPress jetpack plugin 6.8.1
• WordPress liveblog plugin 1.9.4
• WordPress ml-slider plugin 3.10.3
• WordPress social-icons-widget-by-wpzoom plugin 3.0.13
• WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.7.1
• WordPress accelerate theme 1.3.8
• WordPress garfunkel theme 1.17
• WordPress hemingway theme 1.70
• WordPress sydney theme 1.53
• WordPress twentyeleven theme 2.9
• WordPress twentyfifteen theme 2.1
• WordPress twentyfourteen theme 2.3
• WordPress twentyseventeen theme 1.8
• WordPress twentysixteen theme 1.6
• WordPress twentyten theme 2.6
• WordPress twentythirteen theme 2.5
• WordPress twentytwelve theme 2.6

Fixes and Tweaks

• We’re investigating an issue which may have caused the All Faculty and All Staff groups to be dropped from the permissions list on some Drupal pages and forms, preventing people in those groups from being able to log in and access the content. We have restored permissions to several pages and expanded the documentation on how to add these permissions for those who need to going forward.
• Added new inquiry call to action menu items for the Middlebury Institute academic programs.
• As we previously announced, MiddMedia will no longer allow new video and audio uploads. Panopto is available and can be used for most of the needs MiddMedia was meeting. Existing videos in MiddMedia will remain available until January 1, 2020 and you can log into the service and delete media you no longer need.

Ongoing Work

• Sunsetting MiddMedia.
• 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.

Updates

• • Drupal admin_toolbar 8.x-1.25
  • WordPress disqus-comment-system plugin 3.0.16
  • WordPress instagram-feed plugin 1.10.2
  • WordPress jetpack plugin 6.8
  • WordPress nextgen-gallery plugin 3.1.1
  • WordPress seriously-simple-podcasting plugin 1.19.15
  • WordPress the-events-calendar plugin 4.7.0.1
  • WordPress wptouch plugin 4.3.34
  • WordPress accelerate theme 1.3.7
  • WordPress garfunkel theme 1.16
  • WordPress hemingway theme 1.69
  • WordPress hueman theme 3.4.9

Fixes and Tweaks

• WordPress: Users can now add Timeline JS shortcodes to their sites.
• Course groups in Panopto that are populated by the Course Hub can now be found and granted permissions. They had originally been unsearchable.

Ongoing Work

• Sunsetting MiddMedia.
• 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.

Updates

• Drupal context 7.x-3.8
• WordPress ml-slider plugin 3.10.2

Fixes and Tweaks

• Corrected the Snow Bowl website’s call to action widget to link to the order form for season passes.
• Updated the Google Analytics tracking code on the David Fellows for Peace site so that it accurately records site traffic.

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.