Please note that if WDS has customized your site (e.g. custom content types, theme, or other functionality), the improvements and fixes listed below may not be applicable.
Release Schedule
- Scholar sites: Wednesday, January 18, 4:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
- All other sites: Thursday, January 19, 4:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
- Backup day*: Friday, January 20, 4:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
*The backup day is reserved in the event of a scheduling conflict or other issue with one of the prior release days.
Highlights
New Accordion A collection of features or functionality that can be enabled on sites. WDS has made several optional modules available to site administrators to enable on their site. For example, the "News" module enables the News content type and provide a News List Block for displaying news on a page. Available
Site builders have used the existing "Accordion" module for years for displaying a grouping of title/content pairings in a collapsible accordion style. This module provides a block type that supports entering multiple title/content pairs which are then collapsed in an accordion style when the block is displayed. Accordions are typically used to display content in a question & answer format.
This block is best suited when there are just a few items to display. Beyond that, it can be challenging to enter and order more items. It's also not possible to share items across multiple accordions.
This release introduces a new optional module called "Accordion (Advanced)". This module provides the Accordion Item A collection of fields that describe a specific type of content, like a news article, a person, or an event. Site admins can add additional content types by enabling optional modules. WDS can also create custom content types for a site. and Accordion Item List Block for displaying the items in an accordion. Accordion Items can be imported from a CSV file, categorized, and displayed with many options in the list block. Check the documentation for more information on this addition. Here's a demonstration of its output style, which is also distinct from the simple accordion block:
The existing accordion module and block have been renamed to "Accordion (Simple)" to clearly differentiate it from the new solution.
New "Compact List" Style for Content List Blocks
A new "Compact list" row style option has been added to most content list blocks, complimenting the existing "Standard list" and "Grid" options. This output option is more visually compact compared to the other options, and allows fewer fields to be output to maintain the compact style. It also supports optionally grouping the list into two columns. Here's a demonstration using the Resource Links List Block:
The output:
Event Contacts & Design Updates
The Events content type has a new field for entering one or more contacts (name and emails). The contacts are displayed on the event detail page to inform site visitors who to reach out to with comments or questions.
There's also some layout and styling updates to the event detail page:
- Event speakers are now displayed higher up, as most events that have speakers likely want them featured more prominently.
- If an event has been canceled, it's much more clearly indicated now.
- The lede field is now displayed directly under the subtitle, giving event authors a more logical area to display a summary of important information if desired.
Note that these changes are applicable to sites configured to use the legacy event detail page layout. WDS has plans to transition these sites to the new layout.
All Changes
Access Control
- #2296: For sites using the Access Control module, the administrative labels for the public versions of documents and images have been renamed to Public Document and Public Image, respectively. This is to help prevent site admins from unintentionally uploading a private document or image as public. The "Public" label now makes it clear that it's different from Private Document and Private Image.
Accessibility
- #678 and #1333: Accessibility improvements for Image Galleries, Content Sliders, and Billboard Sliders.
- #2338: Multiple minor bug fixes in the automated accessibility checker.
Administration
- #1247: The "Custom block library" has been renamed to "Reusable block library" to better indicate its purpose. Site builders are only meant to create these types of blocks if they want to use them on multiple different pages.
- #2196: The Users Dashboard now shows all user accounts on your site, even those that have no roles. This reverses a previous change that was made in version 2.15 to hide such users by default. It was found to confuse too many users to hide these users. A checkbox on this form is used to hide them again if desired. Refer to the Users & Roles documentation to understand why users without a role might exist on your site.
Design & Styling
- #2300: The detail page for Resource Links has been redesigned. The page width has been narrowed (marching Events, News, and Posts), the page title is now linked directly to the resource, and visual styling has been improved.
Events
- #2290: The event detail page has received some design and styling improvements. Event speakers are now displayed higher up. The cancellation indicator and reason has been emphasized. The lede field is now displayed directly under the subtitle, giving event authors a more logical area to display a summary of important information. A new multi-value Contacts field has also been added.
Media
- #2264: Removed bulk publish & unpublish actions from the Media library. Media could sometimes be accidentally unpublished causing confusion. There's no reason to unpublish media.
- #2334: Fixed an issue where private images included in Image Galleries resulted in an error page being displayed when viewing the gallery.
Miscellaneous
- #2284: A new "Accordion (Advanced)" module is available. This module provides an Accordion Item content type and an Accordion Item List Block for displaying the items in a collapsible accordion-style list. This module supplements the existing "Accordion (Simple)" module, and is only recommended when there are many accordion items or there's a need to share items across multiple accordions. Refer to the content type documentation for further information.
- #2288: Most content list blocks (e.g. People List, News List, etc.) now support a third display style option: Compact list. This option is more visually compact compared to the Standard list format and supports fewer fields for output.
- #2297: The Social Links Block now supports outputting a social media link for Mastadon.
- #2307: Various bug fixes and usability improvements to the horizontal jump link menu.
- #2313: Site admins can now set both types of Google Analytics tracking codes: the older UA- style and newer G- style. This helps to ease the transition to the newer G- style trackers.
News
- #2337: News that's imported from a feed via the News Importer module can now be configured to automatically redirect detail pages to the source article website. This is useful when you'd prefer to direct your visitors to the source website for the full article details, rather than your own site.
Publications
- #2246: Fixed an issue where certain Publication CSLs would display a number 1 before each entry.
- #2258: Seven additional CSLs have been added for rendering publications:
- #2278: Fixed an issue where Publications with an invalid "Pages" value could cause a Publications List block to produce an error page. To resolve this, invalid page values will be removed from the citation during display.