Version 2.40 Release Notes - October 2024

Important Note

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

  • Most Faculty, Lab, and Researcher sites: Thursday, October 17, 3:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
  • Most Department, Program, and Center sites: Friday, October 18, 3:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.
  • Alternate day (if there's a need to reschedule): Monday, October 21, 3:00 a.m. - 8:00 a.m.

Release Highlights

News Hero Block

A single news article can now be displayed prominently in a page's layout using the new News Hero Block. This block allows site builders to manually select an article to display or automatically display the most recent article that matches filter criteria (similar to the News List Block). The featured image of the article is shown in either an 8:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio with the title of the article overlaid as a link. There's also choices to display the article's summary text and published date, and control if the text appears overlaid on the left or right side of the image:

A sample news hero block. Nassau Hall appears in a wide image display with sample title and summary text overlaid on the left.

Social Links for People

The Person 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. has a new field to input social links:

A portion of the Person content entry form showing form fields for the social media links field.

While you could always input these types of links for the person in the existing Website field, this new field is different in that the links are displayed as icons. The list of icons to choose from is the same as those available in the Social Links Block and includes popular social media platforms and other common website platforms.

The links appear on the person's detail page:

A portion of Mary Smith's person detail page, showing three social media link icon links.

They can also be optionally displayed on People List Blocks:

People List Block showing Mary Smith with three social media link icons.

Links List Block

A new block, Links List, for displaying a stylized list of links is available. Site builders specify a set of links (titles and URLs) to internal or external web pages, along with an optional summary and icon. There are several options for controlling the display of the links:

  • Simple list: A simple two column layout.
  • List: A one column layout; more stylized than the simple list.
  • Grid: Choose between 2-5 columns; Choose to include an additional background color treatment.

All Changes

Accessibility

  • #2822: Updated link fields throughout most content types and block types to make the link text required. This is a best practice for accessibility, as it is easier for users to know a link’s destination when given a simple text explanation. Site editors may be met with a “Fill out this field” form validation error when editing content created before this code update.
  • #2882: Image galleries refrain from automatically advancing for users whose computers are set to prefer reduced motion.

Blocks

  • #2754: A new block, Links List, is available. This block allows site builders to display a stylized list of links with optional summaries and icons.
  • #2902: Fixed an issue where the sort order of manually selected content list items in various content list blocks would not persist correctly if there were more than 20 items selected.

Books

  • #2798: The print link text for top-level book pages has been updated from “Print this section” to “Print all”. Section pages are still labeled “Print this section”.

Courses

  • #2907: Fixed an issue with the Course Catalog List Block where undergraduate courses that satisfied multiple distribution areas were missing an “or” between them. For example, “CDLA” was displayed instead of “CD or LA”.

Events

  • #2850: Event List Blocks that are configured to link directly to event media now have a button displayed that better indicates that clicking the event will bring users directly to the media section of the page. Additionally, the Events List - Conference block can now optionally display a button to do the same thing for events that have videos.

Media

  • #2936: The media library is now sorted by the changed date of media items in descending order. Previously, it was sorted by created date in descending order. This change will push recently modified media to the top of the list. It’s still possible to override the default sort and choose created date or title instead.

News

  • #2895: A new block, News Hero, is available. This block allows site builders to feature a single news article prominently.

People

  • #2876: The Person content type now supports the ability to specify links to a person’s various social media accounts. The links are shown as icons for the selected social platform, similar to what’s supported in the Social Links Block. The People List Block includes a new field output option to show the social link icons, and the person detail page will always display them if provided.
  • #2908: Fixed an issue on the People List Block where the button to display the video player modal would sometimes not appear.

Search

  • #2889: After adding content or making changes or deletions to existing content, site search results will take up to 15 minutes to reflect the change.

Social Media

  • #2941: Fixed an issue where Instagram videos were not loading in Elfsight Blocks.

Styling

  • #2878: Fixed an issue where the mobile menu toggle in the header wasn’t always aligned correctly with the search icon.
  • #2893: Fixed an issue where the sidebar menu would not indicate which part of the menu tree was active if the page being viewed wasn’t in the menu.

User Accounts

  • #1105: Authenticated user sessions will now be ended after 6 hours of inactivity. Previously, this was set to 12 hours. This will typically mean that content authors, content managers, and site admins users will need to re-authenticate to sites they manage via CAS at least once per day.
  • #2906: Fixed an issue where CAS login links formatted to bring a user to a specific page were instead bringing them to the homepage if they were already authenticated.