University Blog Service

The University Blog Service will no longer accept requests for custom domain mapping. The stewardship team has made the decision to no longer provide custom domain mapping for new domains going forward. While we strive to provide additional functionality to UBS, this decision was made due to technical considerations and the internal support required for custom domain mapping.

Current sites in the service that already have a custom domain will not be affected. Those sites will continue to be served at the current custom domain URL.

– Update Google Calendar (now known as Simple Calendar) to 3.1.9

With the retirement of The Events Calendar Plugin, calendar functionality on UBS will now be handled by the Simple Calendar Plugin which utilizes Google Calendar.  These steps will help you set up Simple Calendar and import your existing Events Calendar events into Simple Calendar. For departmental blogs or sites with multiple administrators who will manage calendars cooperatively, we do recommend that a new and separate Google Account is created for the group and that the credentials are shared in Stache with fellow administrators.

1. Activate and configure the Simple Calendar plugin
   • http://sites.utexas.edu/blog/2017/04/26/how-to-use-simple-calendar-plugin/ ‎
2. Export your existing events from The Events Calendar plugin
   • This can be done on a per month basis
   • Go to the Events Calendar page for the month you want to export
     • Use the “view as” dropdown in the top right to put the display in month viewClick the “+ EXPORT EVENTS” button in the bottom right to download an .ics file with the month’s events
     • Click the “+ EXPORT EVENTS” button in the bottom right to download an .ics file with the month’s events
3. Import existing events into your Google Calendar
   • https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37118?hl=en (start at step 2)

Other considerations:

• Set the cache rate for your Simple Calendar to 1 minute while making updates to be able to confirm event creation
  • From the edit view of a calendar, under Calendar Settings at the bottom, select Advanced Settings tab and set cache interval
• Set the earliest event date far enough in the past to account for old events you would like to bring over from Events Calendar
  • From the edit view of a calendar, under Calendar Settings at the bottom, select Events tab and set the earliest event fields to desired point in history
• Consider using the List view if accessibility is a goal for your website. Additionally, the same Google Calendar can be used in multiple formats and in parallel so the same information can be provided in a better accessible form.

Update UBS to WordPress 4.7.3

Update the Events Calendar to 4.4.5

Update WordPress Importer Plugin updated to 0.6.3

Update to internal tools (WP-CLI)

Addition of PHP extensions required by incoming plugins

Hello Blog Owners,

Last week, on April 17th, the UBS stewardship team announced the retirement of the Events Calendar Plugin. UBS stewards have secured the plugin against the reported vulnerability with help from the Information Security Office. As a result, The Events Calendar plugin will not be removed from the service on April 27th as originally stated. However, the plugin will be retired from the service on June 29th, 2017 instead. This decision was made based on ongoing incompatibilities with other critical plugins on the service.

The impact of this change is that sites using the plugin will lose access to their calendar(s) unless site owners find an alternative to displaying calendar information before June 29th.

Stewards have made available the Google Events Calendar plugin which offers similar functionality. Current users will be provided documentation on how to make this transition. Assistance will be made available on a best effort basis during Web Publishing office hours (every Tuesday in FAC 30, between 1:00PM – 2:30PM).

All sites which have The Events Calendar plugin already activated will remain active until June 29th. Do not deactivate the plugin until you are ready to transition away from it as it will become immediately unavailable.

Best,

UBS Stewards

The Information Security Office has identified a cross-site scripting vulnerability originating from this plugin. A fix from the developer has not be identified.  As a result, UBS stewards will be removing The Events Calendar plugin from the service on April 27th. Service stewards have reached out to users of this plugin individually.

UBS stewards are working to find a suitable replacement and migration path. Please stay in touch for further details as they become available.