Category Archives: Service Updates

Admissions FAQ link change

Dear Web Publishers,

Please note that the Admissions FAQ’s will be moving to a new set of webpages early next week

http://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/faq.html will soon live at the following webpage:
https://esd.kent.ac.uk/aspx_helpdesk/faqs.aspx?open=faqs&cctc=KENT&UTYP=APP

We advise all web publishers to update any links that they may have to go to the new address. Please note though that a redirect will be put in place if any links have been missed.

Best Wishes

Web Consultancy and Solutions
Requirements and Solutions
Information Services
websupport@kent.ac.uk
http://www.kent.ac.uk/web/
01227 (82)4851

Release notes: 5th September 2013

Dear web publishers

The latest codebase has been rolled out to the live webserver. We have submitted quite a few fixes and improvements to the web publisher and user experience. If you have any questions at all regarding these fixes please feel free to contact websupport@kent.ac.uk

Kind regards,

Web Solutions

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Template

  • Menu bug fixes

Snippets:

  •  File list snippet:  Displays spaces in browser view when there is a hyphen in the filename
  • Mini staff profiles summary: now shows the job title by default rather than introduction blurb
  • Case studies summary: title of the snippet is now optional
  • Carousel : alt tags now editable for each carousel image
  • Call to Action: general bug fixes to aesthetics and alt tags now editable

Configuration tool:

  • Ability to add Google Analytics account number in the simplified view for Chronos

Dreamweaver views:

  • General improvements to some Chronobuttons in dreamweaver

2013-06-14 Updates to Pantheon and Chronos

Dear publishers,

The latest version of Pantheon and the code base has been rolled out to the server. We have made substantial improvements to a wide range of issues by fixing bugs and introducing some new functionality. Please see the release notes below.

Kind regards,

Luca Macis

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Snippet pack updates

  • Video snippet: Any videos stored on the Chicken server can be displayed using the video snippet rather than going into code view in Dreamweaver
  • General bug fixes

New functions

  • Grid system: development of a new grid system to ensure consistency when creating media rich home pages. Please contact web support to organise a consultation for moving your homepage to the new system or if you would like a new homepage designed

Bug fixes (Chronos)

  • Call to action: The header has been changed from a h2 to a h1. Headers are no longer compulsory
  • Carousel: Headers can now be in italics
  • EventsCalendar: Show end date of event if it spans multiple days. Custom filtering of tags has been reintroduced.
  • GalleryV2: reliability improvements.
  • Imagecontent: Wraps around it’s own content more reliably
  • Show hides: Improved handling when a show hide spans over 1 line. It is still recommended show hides only have 1 line (please see best practice workshop)
  • Social media links: Added tumblr icon
  • Dreamweaver view: updated width of content area for easier design of webpages

Theme and flavour fixes

  • Arts: Included support for new grid system
  • Arts: Added news summary support
  • Dice: Fixed an issue with the DICE header
  • Gulbenkian: Fixed a bug preventing the Gulbenkian RSS news being displayed correctly
  • Teeme: Updated the Teeme map

 

Student email – upgraded from Live@edu to Office 365

The student and kentforlife email service, Live@edu, has been upgraded to Office 365, and as such we have changed how we refer to the service on our websites.

Please change any links to email

  • for current students (undergrad and taught postgrad) email should say ‘Student email’ instead of Live@edu
  • if linking to the alumni/ex-staff service, please refer to it as Kentforlife.

Details are online at www.kent.ac.uk/itservices/email/student (this web address replaces www.kent.ac.uk/itservices/email/live – re-redirects from /live/ are in place, but please also change any direct links if you have any on your pages).

The actual email login page for the service has not changed and continues to be http://live.kent.ac.uk. However, if you have bookmarked the current Microsoft re-direct to outlook.com you may need to update this to reflect the new URLs.

Service interruption to Chicken streaming server

Dear web publishers,

 A service interruption for the Chicken streaming server has been scheduled for maintenance work on Tuesday 8th January between 8am and 10am.

 During this time access to the streaming server will not be possible and videos shown on departmental websites will not load.

 Our apologies for any inconvenience that this may cause.

 Best Wishes, 

Web Consultancy and Solutions
Requirements and Solutions
Information Services
websupport@kent.ac.uk
http://www.kent.ac.uk/web/
01227 (82)4851

Release notes: 11 September

The latest Pantheon web farm update to www-live (release tag 2012-09-06b) includes:

3 core changes
1 theme change

  • Bug fix: Fixed an issue where theme and snippet styles were not loading properly in Internet Explorer
  • Bug fix: We have enhanced the summary3 snippet so that it fails gracefully when presented with bad data (Eg: line breaks)
  • Bug fix: Minor security patch

The latest Pantheon web farm update to www-dev and www-test (release tag 2012-09-10a) includes:

4 core changes
1 snippet change

  • Optimisation: We have made a number of updates to the way that Pantheon generates web pages from published pages. These should speed up delivery of web pages by around 20%.

For those interested, the SVN logs for the above are as follows:

2012-09-06b:

  • [pantheon][core] Extend PostProcessingSnippet, clean up css and remove checking if snippet is empty.
  • [pantheon][core] PostProcessingSnippet: refactor code + add additional alias/types.Improve comments.
  • [pantheon][core] PostProcessingSnippet: call setup per snippet load (init for construct), add error method for warn/dev output & added dev_warn. Wrap calls to setup and run in try/catch errors can be thrown within them. Add clearParams method to empty parameter table settings.
  • [pantheon][core] PostProcessingSnippet: Add backwards compatibility hook (example usage in SimpleSearchBox). Rewrite SimpleSearchBox to use new snippet style.
  • [pantheon][core] PostProcessingSnippet: Add support for named cells + sub attributes are now multidimensional.
  • [pantheon][core] Port twitter snippet to use PostProcessingSnippet
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][Summary3] Fix 500 error when bad xml docs were imported
  • [pantheon][core] PostProcessingSnippet now compatible with elementDefinitions. ParamaterTable parser will no longer run/cause errors if no parameters are expected. Port: IncludeCSS,IncludeJavaScript and IncludeMeta to use new system.
  •  [Pantheon][Snippetor] Fixed bug where some snippets were not wrapped in snippetbox div.
  • [Pantheon][Themes][CCUSB] Fixed missing font issue in IE8
  • [Pantheon][Themes][CCUSB] Fixed social media header alignment bug
  • [Pantheon][Themes][CCUSB] Changed inline-blocks to floats where possible to fix menu in IE7

2012-09-10a:

  • [Pantheon] Added methods which now allow metadata to be displayed – generally cleaned up.
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][ResearchDataGrid] Added snippet to Chronos theme config.
  • [pantheon][core] Add Parser as [Inactive] – rewrite of PostProcessing & ElementParser classes (now with comments!)
    To enable: in template.class.php on line 227, comment out the call to postProccessing & uncomment the call to Parser.
    Parser:

– Rewrite of PostProcessing & ElementParser

– 20% faster on most page loads

– Adds debug date about how page was parsed

– Deprecates weighting system to avoid un-needed pass’s

– Extend HTML object to encapsulate DOM activity for Parser (Add ReadyForParse, ParseSnippets & stillSnippets method)

– Update Element to remove |snippet format as well as <snippet used by old Elementparser. (maintain compatability with both)

– Neaten code for str_replace_once, add debug() as quick method to add debug info that will only show with “?debug_performance”. Allow in_dev status to be overwritten from config (to make local testing easier)

– Add parser to class_map

 

Other: remove some rubbish from decorator & pageHeader.

  • [pantheon][core] Add more documentation to parser. Save is_readable calls on theme’s being loaded.
  • [Pantheon][Core][PostProcessingSnippet] Ensure Profiler is always ended
  • [Pantheon][Core][PostProcessingSnippet] If we warn and exit in child class, dont try and call decorator
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][TwitterSnippet] Commit a disabled fix for Twitter for when its needed.
  • [pantheon][core] Parser now users safer replace-er character. May switch to native tag rendering depending on performance tests.

Release notes: 28 August

The latest Pantheon web farm update to www-dev and www-test (release tag 2012-08-23a) includes:
0 core changes
fixes to 5 snippets
changes to 0 themes

The svn logs of these changes are:

  • [Pantheon][Snippets][Summary3] Upload of Feed component
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][Summary] Fix Unicode issue for Arts site
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][ResearchDataGrid] Initial version of Research DataGrid snippet.
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][DataGrid] Modified syntax of makeDialog for sizes to prevent “px” being added to height and width. Added option to use a javscript variable as a data source.
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][DataGrid] Fixed bug where the getSelectedRow function would modify the json directly corrupting it and preventing further queries.
  • [Pantheon][PG Prospectus] fixed missing feeurl for keyfacts box

There has also been an update to Oil (release tag 2012-08-24-castor) involving some security updates.

Release notes: 20 August

The latest Pantheon web farm update to www-dev and www-test (release tag 2012-08-20b) includes:
3 core changes
fixes to 1 snippets
changes to 2 themes

The svn logs of these changes are:

  • [pantheon] Fix error messages from twitter & EventsCalendar snippets.
  • [pantheon][chronos] Canary page – add webfarm snippets + EventsCalendar
  • [pantheon][chronos] Updated sample site
  • [Pantheon][Themes][CCUSB] Custom tabber.js file
  • [Pantheon][Themes][CCUSB] New style tabs, fixes to summary styling.
  • [pantheon][core] Pantheon now writes errors to error logs instead of simply eating them.
  • [pantheon][core] – SiteStat.class.php modified
  • [Pantheon][Online Prospectus] new PG Prospectus layouts

These updates will be rolled out to the live webfarm servers once the Clearing period is over.

Release notes: 9 August

The latest Pantheon web farm update (release tag 2012-08-07a) includes:
2 core changes
fixes to 2 snippets
changes to 3 themes

The svn logs of these changes are:

  • [Pantheon][Snippets][Chronos] CSS fixes for news-content snippet
  • [Pantheon][Themes][Chronos-SAC] Fix SAC flavour menu
  • [Pantheon][Themes][CCUSB] Additional CSS fixed, added missing files
  • [Pantheon][Engine] Fix intermittent issue with PostProcessing
  • [Pantheon][Components][Summary3] Sign Off meeting fixes and FeedComponent module for future use
  • [pantheon][ugprogrammes] – removed year from urls in UG programmes listings and the search box
  • [Pantheon][Sample Site] Backports and fixes

The Castor branch has now been updated with some security fixes, and is now at version 2012-08-07castor.

Release Notes: 2 August

The latest Pantheon web farm update (release tag 2012-08-02a) includes:
1 core change
fixes to 5 snippets
changes to 1 theme

The svn logs of these changes are:

  • [pantheon][pgprogrammes] – fixed a bug where the ‘see also’ box was showing in some cases even when there were no related subjects or programmes
  • [Pantheon][MenuGenerator] Fix submenus
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][KentContent] Fix Unicode issue with Staff Profile Blurbs
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][KentSummary] Fix error when the optional ‘a’ tag is omitted
  • [pantheon][ugprogrammes] – added UPProgrammes folder to assets
  • [Pantheon][Snippets][DepartmentFooter] Add back-end code to allow attributions to live again

The Castor branch has now been updated with some security fixes, and is now at version 2012-07-30castor.