Custom CSS Comes to BU WordPress

During the Fall 2012 semester, we passed the 4-year anniversary of the first implemention of BU WordPress as an IS&T-supported content management system. As of this writing, BU WordPress is serving nearly 750 BU websites, in addition to over 2500 BU blogs. We also know that migrating to WordPress has resulted in a 75% decrease in support requests from at least one BU school, simply because it’s so much easier to use. We are launching, on average, another 44 websites in BU WordPress every quarter (not including blogs) so that’s a lot of websites — and a lot of content.

Until now, the look and feel of all that content was determined primarily through the styles defined in your WordPress template. We are happy to announce the availability of a custom CSS plugin for BU WordPress. This new plugin adds the ability for individual website editors to maintain a collection of your own custom style rules directly within WordPress. The styles apply sitewide as a supplement to your theme’s stylesheet, and provide you with a centrally-managed option for your custom CSS, complete with revision history and rollbacks (just like WordPress pages).

The new plugin was deployed Wednesday, November 21st. Sites that were already using a custom.css file uploaded via FTP (or uploaded via requests to IS&T) were automatically converted to the new plugin. Sites that were not already using custom CSS are eligible to request the new BU Custom CSS Editor plugin.

For more details and other important information, please see Using Custom CSS on TechWeb.

Some other upcoming features for WordPress include:

• Mobile Themes – Versions of the 9 standard Flexi Framework themes designed specifically for mobile devices.
• Personal Sites – A new network of BU WordPress sites — sites.bu.edu — intended to provide websites for individual faculty and staff members, student groups, and other personal and non-official entities of BU.
• Advanced Permissions and Workflow – Two new plugins to add advanced permissions and workflow to the WordPress environment, allowing greater control of editing privileges and how content is released.

The official release dates for these new additions to the BU WordPress CMS will be announced at a future date.