WCMS 2.8.1 release

Tuesday, January 14, 2020

All WCMS "FDSU", single page, conference and publication sites are being upgraded to WCMS 2.8.1. At the same time, servers are being upgraded to newer versions of the infrastructure, including PHP 7.3. This release does not affect UWaterloo Scholar sites.

This upgrade is scheduled to be deployed to pilot sites overnight on Friday, March 27th, and to production sites starting on Tuesday, April 7th.

These release notes are subject to change without notice.

Note that this was originally published as the 2.8.0 release; a last minute change necessitated changing the tag to 2.8.1.

Responsive sites

Note: Some of these changes may also apply to Single Page, Conference and Publication sites.

Features/functionality

Fixes/updates

  • breadcrumbs on the events listing page, the daily and monthly calendars, and the month and year archive pages now show a complete trail
  • invalid contact, event, news, blog, project, award, person profile, and publication content type URLs will now return 404 instead of the associated listing page
  • management page for the bibliography content type now properly shows all items on the first visit
  • change frequency in XML sitemap now behaves consistently
  • searching services will no longer display duplicate items in certain conditions
  • logging out from a confidential webform now returns you to the correct URL
  • events metadata now validates properly in Google Search Console (as long as events have a location)
  • filtering on the events listing page now works properly for single-digit months (released as a hot fix to 2.7.1)
  • social media links in the footer now link correctly to all sites (released as a hot fix to 2.7.1)
  • on content creation forms, the image caption field no longer appears when it is not used
  • the "node" URL now returns 404 instead of displaying a list of links
  • the publication content type now shows publication status as text instead of numbers
  • breadcrumbs and page titles for the service content type have been corrected
  • iCal feeds now return unique IDs for all items
  • fixed issues with granular access to web form results (released as a hot fix to 2.7.1)
  • all day important dates now consistently download as all day events
  • iCal downloads on single important date pages now download only that important date
  • filters on the listing page for the award content type no longer display filters that do not apply for the site type
  • added the ability for the contact in the award content type to be picked from a saved list
  • the listing page for the award content type no longer hides the first item in the "level" filter
  • updated to the latest version of the WYSIWYG editor (CKeditor)
  • adjusted the Facebook field in the site footer to accept upper case characters
  • ensured link checking is enabled on all default content types
  • fixed alignment issues with vertical timelines
  • all Twitter embeds now automatically opt out of "tailoring Twitter"
  • all YouTube embeds now automatically use "privacy-enhanced mode"
  • removed TeamDynamix embed support due to end of University support
  • various updates for PHP 7 compatibility
  • numerous contrib module updates

Theming changes

  • site footer logos are now served from and managed by the University Relations site
  • videos and other "block level" embeds will no longer be wrapped in a paragraph tag
  • on the contacts listing page, it is now possible to click on the chevron to expand/collapse the contact information
  • it is now easier to select text in expand/collapse elements without triggering the open/close functionality
  • improved page titles on event calendar pages
  • improved rendering of home page banners when configured as random
  • updated the responsive "hamburger" menu to improve accessibility
  • added support for a global top banner alert (released as a hot fix to 2.7.1)

Single Page

Fixes/updates

  • Google search verification code is now included when entered
  • links in an embedded fact and figure now work correctly without having to be in a separate copy block
  • removed legacy version of University's Google Analytics, which was causing page visits to be counted twice
  • removed unintended display of text version of anchor information for the stories block type

Theming changes

  • on pages using the "floating" jump navigation, the navigation now works properly on smaller screen sizes
  • added support for a global top banner alert (released as a hot fix to 2.7.1)

Publication sites

Features/functionality

  • Publication sites are now "recoupled" and no longer require JavaScript to function.
  • All publication sites will now have access to all of the "embedded" content types.
  • All publication sites will no longer have access to the non-functional promo item content type.
  • Publication sites now support the use of web forms.

Fixes/updates

  • Google search verification code is now included when entered
  • removed "my workbench" link from footer as "recoupled" version includes the standard toolbar at the top.
  • there is now a link to the "manage issues" page by the "issue number" field when on the publication article content creation page