February 2019

On February 19, version 1.7.29 of the OpenLab was released. It included a few minor updates for plugins and, as well as a number of new features and some bug fixes.

New Features and Updates

We added a Pronouns field to member profiles, so OpenLab members can now include their preferred pronouns (e.g. she/her/hers) on their profile page.

We also made a change to Portfolio functionality, allowing Discussion, Docs, and Files to be activated on Portfolio Profiles.  To activate any of these tools, navigate to your Portfolio Profile > Settings (in the right-hand menu) > Settings (in the sub-menu at the top of the Settings page).  You can click the checkboxes for any of these tools you would like to activate.

OpenLab members may notice a new theme and new plugin available for activation on OpenLab sites.  The theme is called OpenLab Twenty Thirteen, which is a child theme of Twenty Thirteen.  For now the only difference between the two is that activating the theme also automatically activates the plugin, Breadcrumb NavXT, which adds breadcrumb links to pages, making it easier to navigate sites that might have a large number of pages. The plugin may be deactivated if you don’t want to use breadcrumbs, but it is only compatible with the OpenLab Twenty Thirteen and OpenLab Twenty Sixteen themes.

The plugin is Mammoth .docx converter, which allows you to more easily copy and paste from Microsoft Word without losing formatting.  Something to keep in mind with this plugin is that the more semantic your Word docs are (e.g. use of Heading and paragraph styles), the better the formatting will translate in your posts and pages.

Finally, we made a few accessibility improvements to the settings page for the Breadcrumb NavXT plugin.  These were incorporated by the plugin developer, so they are included for anyone who uses the latest version of the plugin in the broader WordPress community.

Bug Fixes

We fixed three bugs in this release.  One was preventing admins from sending messages to all members of a course, project, or club.  Another was causing the accessibility link in the footer to break, and a third fixed a problem where department and major were no longer required fields when editing a member profile.

As always, please contact us with any questions!