University Blog Service

It’s time for new themes! We have reviewed the themes available in University Blogs in order to evaluate:

• Are they outdated and/or no longer supported by the theme developer?
• Does WordPress.org still offer them from their site?

We found a large number of our themes do not meet this criteria, so they will be removed from use.

University Blogs Approved Themes

The themes below will remain in our service:

 

Will my blog be affected?

No. If you are currently using a deprecated theme (not listed above), it will continue to be activated for you.

More themes soon

We have already begun evaluating and testing new themes for our service. Our plan is to have two new themes up and available in the coming weeks.

Moving forward, we plan to regularly evaluate and test new themes for our service in order to build up our Theme library. We are also committed to creating more UT-branded themes as well.

Thank you for your patience as we work through this process. The new themes will be a big improvement towards more modern, mobile responsive and accessible theme designs.

Per the University’s Web Accessibility Policy, all affiliated sites must comply with accessibility standards. For blogs using the UT Responsive Theme (both standard & small header design), we identified and fixed a number of elements to improve accessibility. You likely won’t notice any difference on your UT Responsive blog; you’ll simply have less to do to keep your site accessible.

What we improved

• Font sizes are now set as “em” instead of “pixel” declarations
• Text has a higher color contrast ratio
• The footer is white by default, improving color contrast

Compare the changes

Footer Before:

 

Footer After:

 

Header Text Before:

Header Text After:

 

Does this mean you don’t have to think about accessibility anymore?

No. Many elements that you control contribute to making an accessible website, including ALT text for images, font sizes, table headers and captions, and keyboard navigation. We encourage reviewing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

There comes a time in a WordPress Theme’s life when it hears the call of the sea.

We are beginning our plans to review and retire old blog themes. This, in turn, will allow us to review and load newer and better themes.

We will keep you informed of our process and plans. Themes in production that are retired will continue to work but will no longer be available for selection in the Themes Appearance section.

We are excited about this process and bringing you newer themes with more features that are responsive to any device – smartphone, tablet, desktop, etc.

Stay tuned. Your University Blogs Team

The University Blog Team has created the UT Austin Responsive theme, a UT branded WordPress Theme for use on the University Blog Service. It is based off the theme called Responsive by ThemeID

You can check out this theme in action at the link below:
http://sites.utexas.edu/utresponsive/

Features include:

• UT colors
• UT Wordmark
• UT specific image
• Static homepage or Blog posts homepage
• 9 page templates, such as Blog, Blog Summary and Template based layout designs: sidebar/content, sidebar/content half, content/sidebar and content/sidebar half and full width page
• 9 widget areas
• Responsive design using fluid proportion-based grid system to adapt the design to the viewing environment (mobile, tablet)
• Theme Options to control the content, webmaster tools, logo management, social icons and 4 navigation menus.

For more information on the theme and how to use it, visit the theme’s page on the Blog Service:
http://sites.utexas.edu/utresponsive/

The University Blog Service is a WordPress Multisite platform available for use by current faculty, staff, and students (for non-course related purposes) at The University of Texas at Austin. Blogs can be created for individuals, groups, projects, or departments.

Have a question? Read about the University Blog Service and find help and the Service Level Objectives (SLO). Alternatively, you can submit a Service Now ticket by emailing us at help@sites.utexas.edu.

ITS has upgraded the University Blog Service!

What’s new in this upgrade?
Here are some of the improvements this upgrade will deliver:

• Easier video embedding
• Easier uploading
• New default theme, “Twenty Eleven“
• Built-in Image Editor
• More Customizable
  • Custom Backgrounds
  • Custom Headers
  • Custom Menus
• Global Undo via ”Trash” feature
• Performance Improvements