Operational and Enhancement updates

Known issues with SiteWorks production sites along with items of technical interest will be posted here with the most recent first.
Blue items will be of general interest while Yellow items are for Web Managers.

2024 July 18th – WordPress 6.6

On the 16th of July, the next update to WordPress (6.6) was released. From the perspective of a Web Manager, the most important are the Grid block and negative margins.

The Grid block allows for content to be better organised on the screen, and easier to view on a range of devices.
Setting a negative margin sounds odd, but it gives scope for better merging of text and images. To achieve an optimal display, in both cases, the parameters need to be set correctly, hence it is recommended that before implementation on your site, the user guide is reviewed, followed by some practice in Local WP.

Shortly after the release of WordPress 6.6, the SiteWorks team will release several bug fixes. These will be reviewed in August. The next set of SiteWorks enhancements is planned for November 2024. As with all SiteWorks updates (including supported plugins), these will be managed by our Sysadmin team, so Website Administrators do not need to process the updates themselves.

2024 June 30th – plugin update settings

The plugins that come with a SiteWorks hosted site are managed centrally by the Sysadmin team for us. They test new plugins before distributing the new versions to all sites. This is why auto-updates should be left on Disable. The single exception to this is MainWP Child as this plugin manages the whole process.

2024 June 5th – reminder not to change key Settings

Several sites have become inaccessible to visitors and Web Managers as a result of changing URL settings on the Settings > General panel.

WordPress uses them to find your site and the Email address is required to support you.

If you wish to change your Homepage, i.e. the landing page for site visitors, then set it using the Settings > Reading panel.

2024 May 27th – u3a Import Export plugin enhancement

An update to the import export plugin has been released via the update service.  Version 1.6.2 supports the changes introduced in the core plugin v1.1.0 release earlier in May 2024.

Support for core plugin v1.1.0 changes

The updated import export plugin supports the import and export of:

• the new group metadata fields Start time and End time
• the new event metadata field End time
• multiple group categories

The downloadable spreadsheet has also been updated to include the new fields and revise the instructions.

Multiple group categories

Core plugin release 1.1.0 allows multiple categories to be assigned to a group.  Where multiple categories are used, the exported CSV file will include all assigned categories in a single entry with category titles separated using the vertical bar character ‘|’.  So for a group which has the group categories ‘History’ and ‘Virtual’ set, the Category field in the export file will show ‘History|Virtual’.  A CSV file for import can use the same mechanism to specify multiple categories.  Any number of valid categories may be given.

Installing the update

WMs do not need to do anything as the update will be installed by the system admin team, but if they notice the update is available they can apply it themselves.

Users of ‘Local WP’ and site with other hosting arrangements will need to apply the update themselves.

2024 May – Google search results issue (now resolved)

Update June 2024 – the changes noted below have resolved this Google issue.

The team is investigating and has made some changes documented by Google that involve adding so-called ‘structured data’ to a site heading. Google’s documentation warns these changes can take weeks to take effect. So for now it’s a case of fingers crossed.

2024 May 4th – SiteWorks plugins 1.1 being deployed

WordPress 6.5 along with updated u3a SiteWorks plugins with new features started automatic deployment to SiteWorks hosted sites on 4th May.

At the editing/display level there are some nice plugin enhancements. Please note that there have been no changes to current behaviour – what you do now will continue to work.

Here are the summaries. The User Guide also documents these new features and there is a video under Web Managers > New Web Managers > Demo Videos

• Using the u3a groups list block: When displaying the group list you can show or hide items such as status, time, and venue.  Groups can be displayed in alphabetical order by vertical columns or horizontally across the page. Events can be multi-category and filtered by category.
• Using the u3a events block: Can now show previous or future events in ascending or descending order.  They can be displayed by category, show a specified number of events, or events taking place over a specified number of days. Group events from this page can be turned on/off without having to go to u3a settings.
  There are more layout choices.  An image can be displayed alongside the text of your event.  You can add a colour to the background grid of each event.  When setting up an event you can now choose the end time as well as the start time.
• A new WordPress feature for buttons is the ability to apply a drop shadow.  u3a code has been added that enables the shadow to be one of several pre-set colours/ weights/ styles that complement the u3a branding colours.  This feature is available for similar blocks such as columns and images.
• An additional u3a plugin called Contact Form log is available and turning it on or off is controlled by the site Admin. The Contact Form log records all mail sent from contact forms across the site. This data is stored for 90 days, so if this feature is enabled on your site you need to make a small change to your u3a Privacy policy to reflect this.
  The u3a contact form has a field which is invisible to a human that a ‘bot’ will fill in. If your site is being targeted by automated bots the completed hidden field will appear in the log entries.

Note that LightSpeed Cache still needs to be disabled.

2024 April 29th

LightSpeed Cache still needs to be disabled as its use will result in problems using the contact form. An update to the contact form plugin to fix this is currently with our testing team.

Changing Settings. A reminder from the Operational Procedures to not change the following settings as doing so can compromise administration support.

Storing backups. Each SiteWorks production site is backed up daily. If you feel the need to do additional backups then make sure they are NOT stored on the SiteWorks server and are stored elsewhere.