On Sunday morning, March 8, 2015, teams from IS&T will upgrade BU WordPress. This is a jump of a few versions in WordPress, bringing BU’s installation up to version 4.1.  In addition to the upgrade and its associated changes, the BU Web Team is also announcing new features being deployed with this upgrade, as well as enhancements to existing tools that we’ve made in recent weeks.  Please review the details below, and if you have any questions/concerns about this upgrade, please contact the IT Help Center.

Dashboard Interface

The WordPress dashboard has seen significant improvements in recent releases. The interface has been streamlined to make it cleaner and uncluttered throughout. New typography and a higher-contrast color scheme is easier on the eyes, and the dashboard interface is now fully responsive, optimizing your experience when accessing the dashboard through your tablet or other smaller-screen device.

The content and location of dashboard items remains relatively unchanged from previous versions of WordPress. The functions and tools you regularly use still remain in their familiar interface locations but provide a more-cohesive overall experience.

Other improvements to the WordPress dashboard in recent releases include:

• Improved visual editor
• Distraction-free editing mode
• Improved media library with endless scrolling through all media content
• Improved image-editing tools.

To see a complete list of updates included in this BU WordPress upgrade, please see the following WordPress release notes. (version 3.8, version 3.9, version 4.0, version 4.1).

Dashboard Help Content

The BU WordPress dashboard modules for self-guided help and WordPress news  easily fell out-of-date.  This content has been updated and moving forward, the BU Web Team will revise BU WordPress news more frequently, linking the updated news directly to your dashboard.  Our support and training section on the dashboard has also been overhauled, highlighting our growing collection of self-guided help documents on the IS&T website.

Google Analytics on the Dashboard

Google Analytics is now coming to your WordPress dashboard.  We’ve implemented a new dashboard module directly from Google, which will display some simplified version of your website’s stats.  The dashboard will feature your most popular pages and posts, allowing you to easily view the most popular content on your site, and where your visitor traffic comes from. The new Google Analytics module will also provide a direct link to log in for your full suite of metrics on the Google Analytics website.

Google Analytics – Custom Tracker

Speaking of Google Analytics (GA), we have enhanced the options for GA tracking codes and have rewritten our GA documentation to make it more helpful. With an institution the size of BU, we are limited in the number of dedicated profiles (for individual sites) we can set up in GA, as this requires admins from smaller sites to set up filters and segments. Setting these up has been confusing; we’ve aimed to eliminate that confusion with new documentation to get the most out of Google Analytics.

Additionally, you can now set up your own Google Analytics account and use a separate analytics tracking code on your site in addition to the overall BU tracking code. This allows individual site admins to tap into the full power of GA without the need to create custom segments and filtered reports.  For more information be sure to see the section on Sending Data to a Separate Analytics Account.

Custom Meta Tags

We’ve enhanced the Page Details/Post Details plugin to now support custom meta tags on a page-by-page basis. So now, if you need to drop in a custom meta tag to prove to Google you are the site owner, go for it!  Do you want to use the Open Graph protocol to optimize your content for display on social media? Now you can! Learn how to add custom meta tags in BU WordPress.

WP LaTeX

We received several requests from research and mathematic sites on BU’s WordPress installation where admins and editors needed to represent complex formulas and equations in their content. The WP LaTeX plugin – now available in BU WordPress – adds LaTeX support via shortcode in the WordPress editor. Formulas/equations are generated as in-line PNG images, so you have the ultimate control in representing mathematical content in WordPress. For more information and support using WP LaTeX, visit the WP LaTeX plugin page and support forum on wordpress.org.

Podcasts

BU WordPress natively supports the WordPress audio embed code. This supports mp3 files, which you can upload to your WP Media Library and embed on your website. This makes sharing your podcasts with the world simpler than ever before. Learn how.

BU Slideshow

The BU Slideshow plugin for WordPress just keeps getting better. We’ve added more options for caption positioning on a per-slide basis, and we’ve fixed a bug that limited the number of slides you could create per slideshow.  Review the documentation to see all this plugin offers. The BU Slideshow now also joins our other BU-developed WordPress plugins that we offer as free open source downloads to any WordPress user. Additionally you can now use the BU Slideshow shortcode in the Content Banner section of BU WordPress themes that offer content banner support — just use the “Add Slideshow” button to create your slideshow shortcode, and cut/paste the shortcode into the “Hand-Crafted HTML” section of the Content Banner.

Custom CSS Editor

The Custom CSS plugin has been updated to make some frequently-requested improvements to enhance the editing experience. Editing your CSS within the WordPress dashboard is now much easier with line numbering and color syntax highlighting directly in the CSS editing interface.  For advanced users, this version of Custom CSS has also added support for Sass and LESS pre-processing of your CSS declarations. And all CSS code is now minified post-editing, to improve performance of page load times.