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, July 19, 3:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
- All other sites: Thursday, July 20, 3:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
- Alternate*: Friday, July 21, 3:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
* The alternate day is used if a scheduling conflict prevents us from performing maintenance according to the original schedule.
Release Highlights
New Back-End Theme
An entirely new "back-end" theme has been enabled on all websites. The theme provides modern styling and improved accessibility. The changes are largely limited to styling only, so existing workflows and functionality should remain the same.
Content dashboard comparison (new theme on the right):

Edit form for a Page A individual item of content. For example, a page, a news article, and an event are all content items, which correspond to the Page, News, and Event content types, respectively. comparison (new theme on the right):

New "Load More" Pager Option
Content list blocks that display a lot of content are often configured to use a pager, enabling visitors to browse to additional pages of items. A new option for pagers is now available for most types of content list blocks (e.g. News List, People List, etc) where a single "Load more" button is used. Pressing the button will quickly load the next page of content and append it to the bottom of the current list. Here's an example showing the two options side by side:

Use the new "Pager style" option in the content list block configuration form to enable this new feature, as shown here:

Changing the Default Featured Image Display
It's now possible for Site Admins to configure the default value that's used for the Featured Image Display field on content entry forms for the following content types:
- News
- Post
- Event
- Event Speaker
- Person

This field controls how a featured image is displayed when viewing the content item's detail page. For example, when adding a new Person, the platform-wide default value for this field is "Portrait". However, some sites prefer to use the "Wide (16:9)" aspect ratio. Rather than remember to set this value for every new person that's added, the default can be change to Wide for all new people.

All Changes
Events
- #2478: Fixed an issue in the Event Speakers List and People List blocks where sorting by last name would not also sort by first name when people had the same last name.
Media
- #2515: The Audio File media type now supports uploading files with extension "m4a".
Miscellaneous
- #151: A "load more" style pager is available for most content list blocks (e.g. News List, Events List, etc). Instead of a traditional pager with links for each page, this new pager option simply shows a "Load more" button, which loads the next page of items and adds them to the bottom of the list.
- #1127: Fixed an issue where multiple content list block pagers on the same page would not always work as expected.
- #1492: The default value for the "Featured Image Display" field on content entry forms can now be adjusted for News, Post, Event, Event Speaker, and Person content types. This can be helpful if you mostly change this field to some other value when adding new content (e.g. specifying Landscape instead of Portrait for all people). Site Admins can visit the Configuration > System > Modules page to control this setting for each 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. .
- #1927: Fixed an issue where automatically generated content summaries in content list blocks could result in empty link tags, causing accessibility issues.
- #2480: Fixed an issue where pages shared on Facebook might contain breadcrumb trails or other unexpected text in the "card" summary. If no explicit summary or body text is provided on a content item that's shared, Facebook will no longer try to generate one automatically. It will just be left blank in the card.
- #2496: The "back-end" admin interface has been overhauled with new styling.
- #2498: The summary field on most content types has been updated to allow specifying a language for text.
Publications
- #2528: Fixed an issue where specifying multiple keyword filters in Publications List blocks would result in an error page.
- #2533: Fixed an issue where the configuration form for the Publications List block would show incorrect dependent form options (fields that should only show up when certain other fields are selected).