The University Blog Service will undergo an upgrade on December 18th, 2018 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM. During this time the service may be unavailable.
Check the IT Maintenance Events Calendar for more information.
If you have any questions, please contact the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400. Thank you!
This post will walk you through getting your site up with Google Analytics and properly configured. Let’s get started!
Before beginning, please be sure to review the best practices policy for the use of analytics on campus. Ensure that you have the following before beginning to configure your blog site:
• Site administrator credentials for a University Blog Service blog
• An email address that is not hosted on UTMail
First, create a Google Account. This can be your own personal Gmail/Google account if you have one. For departmental blogs or sites with multiple administrators, we do strongly recommend that a new Google Account be created for the group and that the credentials be shared in Stache with fellow administrators.
Next, log into the Google Analytics page, http://www.google.com/analytics/web, using the blog’s Google Account.
• Click “Sign Up”
• Fill out the New Account details using your blog information
• And select “Get tracking ID”
Next log into the Dashboard for your WordPress blog site, then:
• Click on “Plugins” in the left hand menu.
• Look for a plugin named “Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights.”
• Click on the “Activate” link under it.
The Dashboard will refresh once the plugin had been successfully activated. At this point the plugin will need to be configured to follow the best practices for Google Analytics use on campus.
• While still in Plugins, find the Google Analytics for WordPress by MonsterInsights you just activated and click on Settings.
• Click “Authenticate with your Google account” and provide the email used to create your google analytics profile, then click “Allow” to allow the plugin to access your Google account.
• Select your site from the “Pick a Profile” dropdown and click “Complete Connection”.
• You will get a message that it is finishing up and you will be taken back to your site. You will be on a page called Insights.
• Scroll down and click “Save Changes”.
That’s it! You’re done! After a short period of time Google Analytics will begin to collect information and you can view your Analytics from your Google Account. If you should have any questions, please send an email to help@sites.utexas.edu
NOTE: On August 9, 2018 Google Analytics for WordPress changed ownership from Yoast to MonsterInsights. This article has been updated to reflect this change.
If you already had Google Analytics activated on your site, please follow these instructions to re-authenticate:
Resources from the plugin Developer:
Starting today, all site administrators now have the ability to force visitors to view their site over HTTPS!
There is much discussion from Google as well as the US Federal Government as to why you might want to consider it. Least to say when it comes to Google search rankings, those that are HTTPs only get a little boost. This is how you do it.
SSL only is configured on the server on a per site basis so you must activate it for each of your sites individually. Fortunately it’s real simple
To enable this feature on your site, log into your Dashboard and click Settings -> SSL
In the resulting page you will see a “Go ahead, activate SSL!”. Click that button and you’re done! Browse your site and ensure that all content is displaying as you expect.
You may notice images not appearing, styling not being applied, Javascript not running, or your site not behaving as expected. This is likely because there are hard coded references to these resources in your website. Changing them from ‘http’ to ‘https’ will address the issue. If you encounter further difficulties, please submit a ticket to help@sites.utexas.edu for assistance.
We recently had a user write in who wanted to share a tip about how to handle a common accessibility problem when embedding Twitter: Minimum Color Contrast.
I have been working to increase our accessibility scores and was able to improve the Twitter color contrast on our other sites by visiting the “set customization options” at https://publish.twitter.com/# where you can choose a higher contrast color for links.
I also shared instructions with all the Twitter content creators on how-to make images accessible,
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptions
–Sarah Snow, COLA
The good news is that you can do this on UBS using WordPress oEmbeds!
oEmbeds are a set of powerful features that allow you to integrates 3rd party sources into your site without the need for a plugin. One such oEmbed for Twitter which allows you to embed Tweets, profiles, lists, collections, likes, or Moments. In this post, we’ll look on how to embed Twitter into your pages, posts, and widgets. Then we’ll look into different approaches to how to check for color contrast.
For this demonstration, we are using the UT Austin Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/UTAustin
Create or edit a post or page and ensure that the editor is in the “Visual” mode. Then paste the Twitter URL onto a line all by itself.
You’ll know it’s working because the Twitter feed will “pop” in automatically.
Done!
This is the tricky part as you’ll need to know what color scheme you’re using, and trying a few things to determine what works with your design AND is color accessible. Twitter gives you the option of light and dark backgrounds, in addition to the option to to enter your own color codes for links. There are a number of tools out there to help with this decision. One tool that I like is contrast ratio.
This will be a little different from the steps that we outlined previously as we won’t rely on the Twitter oEmbed.
Accessibility is a large and encompassing topic that covers a large range of issues but taking it one step at a time can take you a long way in ensuring your website is accessible!
Here are some additional resources to help you as you learn more:
Color Contrast, Beyond the Basics
Twitter Accessibility
UBS has been updated to WordPress 4.9.8. See the link below for more information about this maintenance release.
https://wordpress.org/news/2018/08/wordpress-4-9-8-maintenance-release/
UBS has been updated to WordPress 4.9.7. See the link below for more information about this privacy and maintenance release.
https://wordpress.org/news/2018/07/wordpress-4-9-7-security-and-maintenance-release/
The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin has changed ownership from Yoast to MonsterInsights and UBS stewards will be updating to the current iteration on August 9th, 2018. This change will require that users re-authenticate with Google Analytics in order to continue tracking analytics data on your UBS site.
The updated version of this plugin has been made available in the QUAL environment (https://qual.sites.utexas.edu) for testing.
Instructions to re-authenticate
NOTE: If you are looking for instructions for setting up Google Analytics for the first time, please visit this post for more information.
Resources from the plugin Developer:
UBS has been updated to WordPress 4.9.6. See the link below for more information about this privacy and maintenance release.
https://wordpress.org/news/2018/05/wordpress-4-9-6-privacy-and-maintenance-release/
UBS has been updated to WordPress 4.9.5
https://wordpress.org/news/2018/04/wordpress-4-9-5-security-and-maintenance-release/
UBS Stewards have removed the My Custom CSS plugin from availability in favor of the newly introduced Aditional CSS functionality offered as part of WordPress Core.
From WordPress.org: https://codex.wordpress.org/CSS#Custom_CSS_in_WordPress
If you have been using the My Custom CSS Plugin to input your own CSS, these changes have been retained and moved into Customize > Additional CSS. From this interface, you can continue to input your cust CSS stylings with the added benefit of real-time preview capability offered in the Customize menu.
