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University Blog Service

University of Texas at Austin

, Filed Under: News

Out with old themes, in with the new

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  • Are they outdated and/or no longer supported by the theme developer?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:

UT Responsive Theme
UT Responsive Theme
UT Responsive Small Image Theme
UT Responsive Small Image Theme
Twenty Eleven Theme
Twenty Eleven Theme
Twenty Twelve Theme
Twenty Twelve Theme
Twenty Thirteen Theme
Twenty Thirteen Theme

 

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.

, Filed Under: Did You Know, News

The Events Calendar plugin

Events are fun – so are calendars! Publish your events with our new plugin – The Events Calendar. This is a carefully crafted, extensible plugin that lets you easily share your events.

You can activate it from your Plugins directory in your blog. Click Plugins from the left-hand side menu of your Dashboard. Once activated, view the Help link for  step-by-step instructions and videos.

From your Dashboard > left-hand side menu > Events > Help.

Or use this link – http://tri.be/support/documentation/events-calendar-pro-new-user-primer/

Enjoy….

, Filed Under: News

We just made Blogs more accessible!

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 Before

 

Footer After:

Footer After

 

Header Text Before:

Header Before

Header Text After:

Header 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.

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