WebTech Monthly News – January 2022

February Drupal Training Sessions Available

Are you new to editing a Drupal site? Or are you a current Drupal user that wants to improve your editing game? There are Drupal training sessions in February:

  • Wednesday, February 16, 2 - 4 p.m.
  • Thursday, February 17, 9 - 11 a.m.

Learn more and reserve your spot at the Beginning Drupal training page.

Starting this February, WebTech is now offering an Advanced Drupal Training course. The Advanced Drupal training continues where the Beginning Drupal course left off. This hands-on training will show you how to build and implement custom blocks, demonstrate best practices for building accessible tables and will dive into the array of custom styles available on the Ashlar theme to visually fine tune your website.

January Site Launches

Drupal Updates

Drupal Theme Updates          

  • Organizational chart styles adjusted to allow for headings
  • Unpublished page indicator made more prominent
  • SkipTo module added as skip button feature, adds more options for site navigation.
    Skip To Content activated showing landmarks on the page such as Main, Navigation: Main, and Headings, level 1 and 2.
  • Webform style fix

Coming Soon: Small update to the Western Header, with display settings and search moving into another section. Further detailed updates will be posted in the Ashlar Release Notes.

WordPress: Updates from CampusPress

  • WordPress Core Update – 5.8.2 - WordPress will be updated to 5.8.2 on January 4
  • Google Calendar (using Simple Calendar plugin): Fixes issue with drop down menu not working in Google Calendar Widget when added using the new block editor widget interface. Simple Calendar widget renamed to Google Calendar widget.
  • Jetpack: Upgrade from 9.6.1 to 10.4.
  • RSS Featured Image: added support post thumbnail image so featured image displays better in Outlook if RSS feed is used for Mailchimp subscription.

Review the CampusPress Changelog for specific details on plugin updates.

Search Engine Optimization Guide for Web Editors

WebTech just launched a new search engine optimization guide focusing on the basics of on page optimization. If you manage the online content for your department or college at Western Washington University, this guide is meant for you.

Search engine optimization (known as SEO) is a process of optimizing your website with the intention of improving your rankings in search results to receive additional organic (non-paid) traffic. On page SEO includes elements like meta descriptions, page titles and links, that website editors have control of.

Search engines are used by internet users when they are searching for something. Potential students, parents, and others all use search results to find answers to their questions online.  This guide will help content owners optimize their websites to provide the answer to that something.

If you’ve wondered what you could do to make Google consider your website a quality source and rank it higher for your desired search queries so users could find your website, take a look at Western’s new SEO Guide