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UT Drupal Kit

UT Drupal Kit 2.21 Release

ITS is happy to announce the immediate availability of UT Drupal Kit 2.21.0, the latest maintenance release for our University distribution of the Drupal web content management system. This release includes a Drupal core update, an update to the SAML identity provider for Pantheon sites, and a number of other small enhancements. Please read on for details.

DRUPAL CORE UPDATE

The 2.21 release incorporates the most recent release of Drupal Core, bringing it up to the latest version (7.69).

SWITCHING TO ENTERPRISE AUTHENTICATION IDP

The Pantheon custom upstream for the UT Drupal Kit includes configuration for adding UT EID-based authentication to a site using the simplesamlphp library. Prior to this release, this authentication method used the UTLogin SAML identity provider (IdP). With the 2.21 release, the default configuration now uses the new Enterprise Authentication IdP.

This change should be completely transparent to site owners, except that users authenticating to their sites should now see the newer login screen associated with Enterprise Authenication, rather than the old UTLogin login screen.

Enterprise Authentication login screen
The Enterprise Authentication login screen

METATAG TWITTER CARDS ENABLED BY DEFAULT

“Metatag: Twitter Cards” is a submodule of the Metatag project, and has been included with the UT Drupal Kit since the initial 2.0 release, but was not enabled by default. The 2.21 release includes an update hook to enable the Metatag: Twitter Cards module by default, and it will also be enabled by default on all new installations.

This module provides support for the Twitter Cards metatag format, to allow greater control over how pages appear when shared on Twitter.

RESPONSIVE SUPPORT FOR VIMEO MEDIA

In the 2.20 release, the Media Vimeo module was enabled for both existing and new sites in order to provide support for video sources from the Vimeo streaming service to be used in Media Library objects.

The 2.21 release adds custom functionality to wrap these videos in a <div> with the flex-video class so that they will behave responsively, providing parity with the Kit’s existing treatment of Media YouTube videos.

DEFAULT STYLING FOR NESTED ORDERED LIST ITEMS

Prior to this release, list items in nested ordered lists all displayed with the default arabic numeral (“1”) list style. In the latest release of the Forty Acres theme, nested ordered lists now have specific list item styles for each level through six nested lists.

SUPPORT FOR SOCIAL SHARING ON EVENTS

The UT Drupal Kit includes a custom module called “UTexas Social Sharing” which implements a social media sharing block that appears by default on articles created using the News add-on feature. The 2.21 release includes an update which now allows site builders to also place the social sharing block on events created using the Kit’s Events add-on feature.

For more information about enabling the social sharing block on events, please see the updated documentation for the Events add-on feature. Additionally, a minor CSS change is required to allow the block to display correctly on events, which is described in the developer  notes for the 2.21.0 release.

HOW TO UPDATE THE UT DRUPAL KIT

Complete instructions and download links for updating a UT Drupal Kit site are available on the documentation wiki. Pantheon site dashboards that use the UT Drupal Kit distribution should see the upstream updates available now; see the Pantheon documentation for more information on applying upstream updates.

Please review the changelog thoroughly, and always make backups of your code, files, and database before proceeding with an update!

NEXT RELEASES

The 2.x (Drupal 7) branch of the UT Drupal Kit is updated on a bi-monthly maintenance release schedule, with releases targeted for the second Tuesday of even-numbered months. The next planned release is UT Drupal Kit 7.x-2.22, due on April 14, 2020. Please see 2020 Release Schedule for UT Drupal Kit for more details.

If you have questions or concerns about the UT Drupal Kit, please feel free to email us at drupal-kit-support@utlists.utexas.edu.

By Paul Grotevant

Paul Grotevant is the Senior IT Manager of Web Content Management Solutions for Information Technology Services at the University of Texas at Austin.