There are a number of new features and improvements that have been included in the OpenLab updates in January-Spring 2025 that may be of interest for OER. 

New Features and Functionality

Cloning updates

A number of new options for choosing what you clone to your new site were added:

  1. Clone posts and pages that are currently set to draft (unpublished). This allows you to choose whether or not to clone any posts or pages currently in draft on the site you are cloning. The default is to clone them, but you can choose not to.
  2. Publish all currently-published posts and pages on your new site. By default, all posts and pages that are published on the site you are cloning will also be published on the new site. If you would prefer to publish them gradually, you can choose to set them to draft on the new site.
  3. Set post and page publication dates to today (while maintaining the current publication order). This setting prevents posts and pages from appearing out of date, especially if you are cloning an older site. By default, post and page publication dates will be set to the date you are cloning your site, but the current publication order will be maintained. You can change the setting if you prefer to keep the dates from the site you’re cloning.
  4. Clone unused media library items. By default, Media Library items that are not being used in a page or post will not be cloned to the new site (with the exception of header images), allowing you to save space on your new site. You can change this if you would like to clone unused items.

In addition, any plugins active on the site you’re cloning but retired on the OpenLab will be deactivated on the new site. This will help prevent potential errors from using old plugins.

Bulk user import

The bulk user import functionality was expanded beyond courses so that faculty and staff can use it in projects and clubs to import larger lists of members. You can easily paste in a list of member emails, and any that already have OpenLab accounts will automatically be added to the course, project, or club. 

Retired theme notice

You will now see a notice on your site’s Dashboard if you are using a theme that has been retired. Please switch to a new theme if you see this notice, to avoid potential problems with your site. There is help for changing your theme, as well as help for many different themes available on the OpenLab.

Plugins

Some significant revisions were made to two of the OpenLab-developed and OER-funded plugins, OpenLab Inline Comments and OpenLab Text to Speech, to make them more visually appealing and improve ease of use.

A new translation plugin, Polylang, was added, allowing you to translate your site into multiple languages. It’s intended for sites where a more accurate translation is desired, because the translation is done manually. For automatic translation, there is the GTranslate plugin, which uses Google Translate to create an automatic translation of your site in multiple languages of your choosing. 

A few plugins that are no longer being maintained by their developer were retired: 

  • Admin Commenter Count
  • TablePress Responsive Tables Add-on. 
  • WTI Like Post plugin

These will still remain activated on sites where they are already enabled, but won’t be available for activation on new sites. If they’re activated on your site, please disable them.

The Easy Custom Sidebars plugin was also retired because it is no longer being maintained by its developer, and the plugin’s settings page is no longer accessible from the dashboard. If you were already using the plugin it will continue to work on your site for the time being, but we suggest that you deactivate it and switch to Content Aware Sidebars, a new plugin added in this release that does the same thing. This plugin won’t appear in Dashboard > Plugins, so please contact the OpenLab Team to activate it.

Themes

A few new themes were added:

In addition to these, a number of block or full site editing themes were added. These use blocks for all parts of the site, allowing for more control over the design and layout of the site as a whole. These themes would work especially well for portfolios, but could be used for any site where you want more flexibility in determining the appearance of the site. They are: 

A number of older themes that have become outdated were retired. As with retired plugins, if a retired theme is active on a site it will remain enabled on that site. However, retired themes can’t be activated on new sites. 

  • Twenty Twelve
  • Twenty Thirteen
  • Twenty Sixteen
  • Education Pro
  • Gillian 
  • Typology

Bug Fixes

We fixed an issue with the OpenLab Attributions plugin that prevented attributions from being added to quote, pullquote, or list blocks.

Please contact the OpenLab team with any questions!

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