Category Archives: Updates to Blog Network

A change log for the plugins and themes installed on the Lane Blog Network. If you suddenly start seeing issues, please check here to see if an update may be the problem. If so, contact us for help resolving the issue.

6-28-2017 Blog Network Updates and Additions

Posted on by June 28, 2017

Several updates as well as a couple additions today.

Theme Update
Weaver Xtreme v3.1.7

Plugin Updates
Weaver Xtreme Theme Support v3.1.7

Plugin Additions
Google Docs Shortcode v0.4
Inline Google Spreadsheet Viewer v0.12.4

With Lane’s transition to GSuite, it seems like a good idea to give the ability to embed GSuite documents in blogs.  I found two that look to be well supported and stable.

Google Docs Shortcode is by CUNY, the City University of New York.  They do quite a lot of open source WordPress work and they generally keep their plugins updated and secure.  This plugin lets you embed most Google Docs (Docs, Sheets, Slides…) so they simply display in your post or page.  If you remember <iframe>’s, it’s a lot like that.  You’re basically looking at a GSuite doc through a window in your page or post.

Inline Google Spreadsheet Viewer is more focused on Sheets and turns your GSuite Sheet into a datatable.  Datatables automatically add sorting by click, header rows, pagination and some other niceties to a spreadsheet making it much more usable in a website.

As always, if you have any questions, let me know. 

6-12-2017 Blog Network Updates

Posted on by June 12, 2017

WordPress v4.8 “Evans”

Plugins:
Easy Google Fonts v1.4.3
TinyMCE Advanced v4.6.3

Themes:
TwentyTen v2.3
TwentyEleven v2.6
TwentyTwelve v2.3
TwentyThirteen v2.2
TwentyFourteen v2.0

WordPress v4.8 was a pretty good upgrade.  For those who would like to read all about it, you can see the official release here.

A couple of the biggest things to know:

New widgets

  • Image Widget: Display an image in a widget.  Not groundbreaking, but still cool.
  • Video Widget: Display an embedded video in a widget.  No longer requires a plugin, so a very good thing.
  • Text Editor Widget:  The default text widget now includes a rich text editor so you can more easily include bold/italicized text as well as lists and links.

 

One other thing that is important to know is that WMV and WMA files no longer work natively.  As has been for quite some time, the best way to get a video on your blog is to embed it from a service set up to stream videos like Youtube or Vimeo.

 

Login Upgrade

Posted on by June 22, 2017

As of 3:00pm today, the blog network uses CAS (Central Authentication Service) to manage user accounts.

What does this mean for me?
When you get to the new login screen, you will see a new button above the login form that says “Log in using CAS”.  If you have a lanecc.edu email address, you will need to use that button to log into the blog network.

Login Button

Once you click the magic button you will be routed to the standard CAS login screen.  After logging in you will be sent back to the blog network address you were originally trying to view.

If you have any problems logging in, please let me know.

5-24-2017 Blog Network Updates

Posted on by May 24, 2017

WordPress 4.7.5

Plugins
Authorizer v2.6.11
Gravity Forms v2.2.3
Wordfence v6.3.9

Theme
Panoramic v1.0.29

 

WordPress 4.7.5 Update Information

WordPress 4.7.5 is now available. This is a security release for all previous versions and we strongly encourage you to update your sites immediately.

WordPress versions 4.7.4 and earlier are affected by six security issues:

  1. Insufficient redirect validation in the HTTP class. Reported by Ronni Skansing.
  2. Improper handling of post meta data values in the XML-RPC API. Reported by Sam Thomas.
  3. Lack of capability checks for post meta data in the XML-RPC API. Reported by Ben Bidner of the WordPress Security Team.
  4. A Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)  vulnerability was discovered in the filesystem credentials dialog. Reported by Yorick Koster.
  5. A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered when attempting to upload very large files. Reported by Ronni Skansing.
  6. A cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability was discovered related to the Customizer. Reported by Weston Ruter of the WordPress Security Team.

Thank you to the reporters of these issues for practicing responsible disclosure.

In addition to the security issues above, WordPress 4.7.5 contains 3 maintenance fixes to the 4.7 release series. For more information, see the release notes or consult the list of changes.