On January 16 we released version 1.7.83 of the OpenLab. It included some new features, as well as updates to all existing themes and plugins, including BuddyPress and WordPress, the two primary plugins that power the OpenLab.
New Features and Functionality
We added Bluesky as an option to the social media links available to add to your OpenLab Profile page.
We expanded the bulk user import functionality beyond courses so that faculty and staff can use it in projects and clubs to import larger lists of members. If you have a large number of members you want to join your course, project, or club, you can easily paste a list of member emails and any that already have OpenLab accounts will automatically be added to the course, project, or club.
Plugins
We made some significant revisions to two of the OpenLab-developed plugins, OpenLab Inline Comments and OpenLab Text to Speech, to make them more visually appealing and improve ease of use.
We also added a new translation plugin, Polylang, which allows 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, we have the GTranslate plugin, which uses Google Translate to create an automatic translation of your site in multiple languages of your choosing.
We retired a few plugins that are no longer being maintained by their developer: Admin Commenter Count, and the TablePress Responsive Tables Add-on. 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. Aside from this, it’s a good practice for maintaining site hygiene to do a regular check of plugins and deactivate any that you aren’t using.
Themes
We added six new themes and are retiring some old ones that have become outdated. 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.
Most of the new themes are block or full site editing themes, which 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:
Kadence is a non-block theme that could work for any type of site. It’s clean and simple, but also offers multiple ways to customize.
The retired themes are:
- Twenty Twelve
- Twenty Thirteen
- Twenty Sixteen
- Education Pro
- Gillian
- Typology
In addition to the themes we’ve added in this release, there are a number of new themes, such as Astra, Neve, and GeneratePress, added in the last few months that are more modern, and work better on mobile devices.
Bug Fixes
We fixed an issue causing OpenLab menus to display incorrectly on mobile for sites using the Neve theme.
We also fixed an issue causing an error message to appear twice during sign up if you chose a username that was already taken.
As always, please contact us with any questions!
